Oh, you mean he's in the middle of a war?

This deployment has been weird. There seems to be very little going on in Iraq, at least from John's perspective. I haven't worried about his safety at all. The first deployment was quite a bit scarier. Lots of mortar and rocket attacks. I'll never forget the first time he called me from Iraq back in 2006. The sirens went off and then the phones cut out. He couldn't communicate back home for several days as this mortar attack resulted in a casualty. This became the norm for his time over there and I got used to it.

This time there have been very few communication blackouts (these occur so that the military can notify family members of hurt or deceased troops officially, before it gets back to them via gossip). I hate communication blackouts because you know it means somewhere someone like you is getting some very, very bad news. And sometimes you wonder if it's going to be you that gets that knock at the door. But, as I said, we've experienced very few communication blackouts this deployment. Not only does that mean I get to communicate with my husband regularly, it also means that very few people are getting that horrible news. It's been great.

The last 24 hours has been a reminder that there's still conflict going on over there. There seem to be a lot of bad guys set on doing some damage. John sent me an email last night as quickly as he could to let me know there would be a blackout in communication starting very shortly. He didn't give me too many details (OPEC and all), but it sounded pretty bad and it also sounded like it hit pretty close to him. I had trouble sleeping last night. I lay in bed thinking of how it was possible for John to get any sleep, knowing that there were people out there that were planning to drop explosives on him.

John's got just over a month left in that place. I'm hoping that this increased activity does not continue so I can go back to pretending that he's just away on business.