It's December...

And as of this moment I have no ticket home.  It's kinda our fault, but mostly the Army's fault as they suck at communication.  With Ben being discharged, he got moved from Alpha Company to Rear-D, which is the group that stays behind when everyone else goes on deployment or leave.  They handle CQ, staff duty, mowing the general's yard (seriously) and various work details.  But even though Ben is now in Rear-D, he's still assigned to Alpha Company as his 1st Sgt.'s....well, personal secretary, really.  It's all really confusing, but the jist of it was, we were waiting to see when Ben would be allowed on leave to buy our tickets.

Turns out, he's not.  Allowed on leave, that is.  Which really sucks-no one else in Alpha Company will be working during Christmas leave (especially 1st Sgt), and he won't be doing the usual Rear-D stuff...so he's going to sit around at the office everyday doing nothing.  He asked if maybe he could leave the island for Christmas weekend, and the 1st Sgt looked at him like he was crazy.  So Ben can't leave the island for Christmas.  He's willing to send me to WA for it, but I don't want to spend another Christmas away from my husband.  I did that once, and it sucked.  I'm not doing it again.

We are looking into getting me a ticket for next week or the week before Christmas, just to fly out for a few days to see people, but ticket prices are stupidly expensive.  My dad's looking into how many airline miles he has, so we'll see what happens.  But if it doesn't happen, I guess it doesn't happen.  Which sucks.  I've never been away from my family at Christmas before.  I won't be able to make my cousin's wedding on New Year's Eve, either-the first cousin in my family to get married.  It's supposed to be really fancy, too. On the plus side, I don't have to buy a dress...

Ben and I bought our first Christmas tree, though, and it's now covered in all my Star Trek/Star Wars ornaments, which is all the ornaments we have, really.  Maybe I should look into getting some normal ones... We even hung two strands of lights.  My apartment has never felt so festive...well, the dining room does anyway.