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Inshallah is an Arabic word meaning “If God (Allah) wills it”. The phrase is used when Muslims refer to something happening in the future. They pepper their conversations with inshallah. For example, one of my Engineers may ask a contractor “When are you going to submit an updated construction schedule?” A typical response from a Muslim contractor would be “I will have the new schedule to you on Tuesday, inshallah.” This comes from an Islamic scripture that says “And never say of anything ‘I shall do such and such thing tomorrow’. Except if Allah wills it.” Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Now when Tuesday rolls around and the contractor did not submit a new schedule, I’ll ask him why he didn’t submit the schedule. He’ll reply “mashallah” which means “God has willed it”. Inshallah has become almost an escape clause for not doing something you were supposed to do. This has made it a very popular phrase with the soldiers here in Iraq.

I spent the last two nights sitting at the airfield trying to get a flight to COB Speicher in Tikrit. It was time for the semi-annual Engineer Conference. I was there for the last conference in October 2007. Check-in for flights is 1 hour prior to lift-off. I was scheduled for a 2330 flight on Tuesday night. When I checked in at 2230, I was told that the flight was on a weather delay. Everyone was instructed to stand-by and wait for updates. An hour later at 2330, the person working the desk announced that the delay was still on and to stand-by again. The same thing happened at 0030 and 0130. Finally at 0200, the flight was officially cancelled.

When your flight is cancelled, that’s it. You are not automatically booked on the next flight. You must request a new flight. The catch is that all flight requests must be submitted at least 72 hours prior to the flight. But you can sign up for stand-by at any time. So I went back at 2120 on Wednesday to wait on stand-by for a 2220 flight to Speicher. At check-in, I was told everything was on schedule. The board showed the flight consisted on 2 Blackhawks. Each Blackhawk will typically carry about 11 troops in addition to the crew. So that meant 22 seats. There were 11 people that had previously booked for the flight, so that left 11 seats for stand-by. I think there were about 25 of us waiting on stand-by. Normally, you would think that the first 11 on the list would be told to wait, and everyone else would be told to go home. But that’s not the case because sometimes they have the wrong aircraft on the list. If the flight shows up with a Chinook instead of a Blackhawk, then that means an extra 30 available seats on that one bird. So in true Army fashion, once again, we wait.

Well, at 2230, the desk officer announced the flight was again on weather delay. This happened again at 2330. But at 2355, he gave us the good news, “it’s on”. He got us all organized in our different lines, one for scheduled passengers and another for stand-by passengers, in order of priority. We gave him our ID cards so that he could scan them into the passenger tracking system. He was finalizing his instructions at about 0020 when another flight operations person came out to report that the flight was cancelled. The birds had left their initial location, ran in to some bad weather, and had to return to their starting point.

Why didn’t I go to the Engineer Conference in Speicher? Mashallah.

Today was Gabe’s District Spelling Bee. The school had sent home a notification that the boys should wear ties. It was a bit of a surprise since Josiah was allowed to wear his regular school uniform complete with sweatshirt over it for his Spelling Bee. Josiah has been much relieved that he no longer is required to wear a tie to school. He is not a boy who enjoys getting dressed up. He has a bit of his Father’s fashion sense. Yesterday, he was wearing his blue school pants and blue school shirt and went to put on his belt. He put it on so that the brown side not the black side was facing out. His sister looked at him and suggested he change it to black side out. He was not interested in her opinion. She replied, “I’m just trying to give you some fashion advice.” I can’t wait until her Father returns and starts getting her fashion recommendations as well. My favorite fashion moment with Dale was when he went to buy a suit when we were in Germany. The sales girl convinced him that he looked great in a certain suit, shirt, and tie so he bought it. When he showed it to me, I commented that I was surprised that he was willing to wear a pink shirt. He said, “It’s not pink, it’s tan!” I then was forced to explain to my colorblind husband that he had really bought a pink shirt which was quite stylish at the time, but not exactly in his style. Why the Elementary students needed to be dressed to the nines, I didn’t know. Gabe, who on most occasions is dressed in rags, thanks to his unerring ability to stain, rip , and shred his clothing had gone to school over the last month in pants with a large rip in the knee. Thankfully, his Grandmother arrived last week to patch his school pants. I, however, decided that a large patch on the knee might detract from a nice tie. So, this week I went to purchase Gabe some new clothes. I bought him a new tie, a white shirt, and blue dress pants. Gabe decided that these new clothes warranted new actions. He decided to take a shower when he woke up. Grandma ironed his shirt and pants. Gabe found Josiah’s old black school shoes from Australia and went looking for polish. I didn’t have any in the house, so Grandpa decided to shine them the old fashioned way with ample quantities of spit. Grandpa combed Gabe’s hair and when Gabe was dressed he was looking quite good. Gabe didn’t win the Spelling Bee, but as his Grandma told him, “He was certainly the best looking one there!”

On Friday night, Josiah and Abby attended a Reformation Party in honor of Martin Luther. They were to dress up as kings, queens, knights, friars, peasants, etc. Abby went as a princess, of course, and sat with all of her princess girlfriends. Grandma managed to get Josiah dressed as a Friar, although he attended under protest. I signed the paper saying he would attend and he turned it in before discovering that his friends weren’t going. The party was pretty entertaining. For jousting, the kids rode bikes at each other and tried to knock each other off the bike with a pillow. They also had archery and stone throwing. The kid who won the jousting was crowned king and had to choose a girl to be queen. There then took place an awkward 10 minutes of a middle school boy holding a fuzzy pink crown uncertain what to do and a large group of middle school girls trying to avoid being chosen. After the party, I talked to Josiah and Abby about how to be gracious in an uncomfortable and awkward situation. Graciousness is a bit of an old fashioned concept in todays pushy world and something that I’m often lacking in. It is encouraging, however, that as we grow more like Christ, we too can be characterized by kindness and warm courtesy. When that change occurs in us, we begin to reveal our own reformation.

I love books and I love to buy books for my children. Therefore, we have a lot of books. However, I do not have a lot of bookcases. I dream of one day having a house full of nice solid wood bookcases instead of the hodgepodge of particle board and unpainted pine shelves that I currently own. I periodically make a pledge to not buy another cheap bookcase. I declare that I will save my money and invest in wooden bookcases that will survive our relentless moving. Then, I move to a new house and have piles of books with no where to put them. I see in the newspaper ads that Big Lots has white particle board book cases for $25 and I think “I could buy a bookcase for each of the kids for less than the price of a nice one.” So, off I go to Big Lots. There are people who love Big Lots, the Dollar Store, and yard sales. I am not one of them. I greatly admire frugal people. They love to search for the best deal and save money. I like to go to the nearest shop and spend too much for an item, because I’m too lazy to look around. I walked into Big Lots and told myself to walk out before I purchased more cheap bookcases, but I couldn’t be stopped. Big Lots is a dangerous place. It convinced me I couldn’t pass up a great deal on a jewelry table and a child’s table with stools. So, I came home to assemble all my various purchases. I had help in assembling. Gabe operated the screwdriver and Zeke helped with the hammer. Zeke has a special knack for hitting my thumb. I successfully assembled the jewelry table and the child’s table with stools and was beginning to feel cocky that I was finally getting the hang of these home improvement tasks. Gabe, Zeke, and I started on the first bookcase and I made sure the unfinished edges were all facing upwards. Gabe worked the screwdriver and Zeke worked the hammer. We screwed the boards together and carefully pounded the nails that held the back on. I then went to put in the shelves and realized that I had connected one side with the peg slots facing out. I let out a frustrated scream and scared Zeke. All my new gained confidence was gone and I was reminded of the two other home improvement fiascoes I had this week. Josiah was out mowing the lawn and came into tell me that the lawnmower had stopped. Assuming that it had run out of gas, I went and got the gas can and filled it up. I went back inside and seconds later Josiah came in to tell me the lawnmower was smoking. I went outside to find the lawnmower coated in oil and smoking. All I could think was that Dale had mentioned to me that the weed eater took an oil, gas mix and I must have filled up the lawnmower with the wrong can. I stood there thinking, “I can’t believe I’ve broken Dale’s brand new lawnmower.” I sent the neighbor kid to bring his dad who concluded that when Josiah checked the gas, he also checked the oil and forgot to screw the oil cap back on. The oil bubbled out onto the engine which resulted in the smoke. I was much relieved. This week I also decided to shock myself by attempting to pull out an old fashioned multiple plug expander from the outlet without turning off the power. I didn’t do so well in electrical engineering at college, but I do remember learning that if you grab a bit of metal connected to a power source, you will get shocked, and get shocked I did. I have had many offers of assistance for home improvement tasks and have finally agreed to accept one, because who knows what I could do next.

I’m sitting in an internet cafe on Ali Al Salem (AAS), the major US staging area in Kuwait. I arrived on AAS at about 0200 this morning. The next 30 minutes were spent in typical Army fashion: 10 minutes of break time, 10 minutes of standing in line, and 10 minutes of briefings. I then went to meet the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) liaison officer (LNO) to arrange processing into the Gulf Region Division (GRD). I’ll try to use as many acronyms as possible! Then from 0230 to about 0350, I sat in the USACE cubicle while he had to process some individuals that needed to go to the embassy. Finally, he helped me pick up my 4 duffle bags and showed me to a bunk in the USACE tent. After handing me some linen, the LNO instructed me to check in around lunch time today to find out when I’ll be moving up to Mosul. When I got up this morning at about 1115, my flight was listed on the board for 2200 tonight. So today I just get to enjoy the amenities of AAS!

This place is pretty amazing. In the tent city, there are about 20 rows of tents; each row contains approximately 15 tents; and each tent sleeps at least 20 individuals. That’s temporary accomodations for about 6000 personnel! I must say that this temporary sleeping arrangement is more comfortable than any time I’ve ever gone to the field before. Each tent has it’s own air conditioner. It works suprisingly well even in this environment. When we landed at the Kuwait International Airport at 2200, the temperature was still 104! Anyway, after I woke up, I walked down to the end of my row of tents and went to the shower trailer. The are numerous male and female shower trailers throughout tent city. Then I ate some lunch in the dining facility (DFAC). After luch, I went to the post exchange (PX) to buy some chap stick. Then I went to the barber shop to get my real deployment haircut. It’s short! The young middle-eastern man that gave me the cut did a really nice job. He caught me off guard at the end when he put this massage tool on his hand and gave me a scalp massage! Maybe he thought it would help more hair to grow. After the haircut, I went to the Green Beans coffee shop and got a cappuccino, the first good cup of coffee I’ve had since leaving Virginia! Now here I sit, drinking cappuccino and blogging.