The Solo Melones

It's been a few days since Matt left and the world doesn't seem to have fallen apart, which makes me think we might actually make it through this whole "being apart" business. My first night I spent at Veronica's place, nursing a cup of hot chocolate spiked with Bailey's while watching Little Women. Oh yes, and cried myself to sleep (I haven't not done that yet, but tonight might be a winner).

The next day I woke up late and Veronica made me a scrumptious breakfast. Sometime in the afternoon, I decided I needed to get back to our house to face the loneliness and take a shower. Walking in the door was an experience because so much of Matt was still in the house: his flip-flops by the couch, his bible on the coffee table, his ACU backpack, towel in the bathroom...those kinds of things. My heart didn't quite know what to do with everything. Once I finally made it into the house, I just focused on making it to the shower. Once I was clean things were more manageable and I was able to pick some stuff up around the house. Though I will say that the clothes he wore on his last day here are still on the bed so I can smell them.

Later that day Veronica picked me up to go run an errand with her, and that evening we went to Krista's to eat some delicious goulash, peach cobbler, and to watch a couple of movies. When that was done I reluctantly came home to face the lonely bed. Let me tell you, that was not fun.

I won't give you a play-by-play, but the general gist is that I've tried to keep myself busy by talking to people on the phone (those who called, you don't know how much I appreciate that!), reading some from this Army book Matt wanted me to read, organizing the house, and watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

BUT! I have gotten two emails and a phone call from Matt! I didn't expect to hear from him for a couple of weeks, but I'll insert some excerpts from what he wrote:

"I'm situated here for a few days before moving to the next place. It's hot here... No, I mean
like really hot... No, I don't think you're understanding how hot it is here. Imagine someone with four blow dryers blasting all over your body all the time.
...

There's really nothing new to report. I'm just enjoying taking advantage of having access to computers right now because in a few days I'll be somewhere new and probably won't have this luxury anymore.

Today dust blots out the sky. It's 121 degrees and the worse part is the fierce winds. You have to wear sunglasses everywhere. At least three guys, including myself, have commented on how the sunsets remind us of the ones from Star Wars. On the up side, I do get to wear a sweet boonie cap here.

The days are long and lame. Rachel, you should know that I'm doing quite well in Monkey Island 2. I rarely have to cheat now and look at the walkthrough. There's a starbucks here and two other generic 24 hour a day coffee houses that have plush seats, books and sweet smoothies. Today we lounged for hours drinking icy cappucinos. Last night I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall at a movie theatre here.

So, as you can imagine, I'm in no danger right now and am taking it quite easy. Hope you're all well."

I think that says it well! I'm trying to download some pictures we took before Matt left, but the internet is being especially slow tonight, so if there are no pictures, I just couldn't get Vodafone to behave.