Can't wait to get out of the southwest.

In the past decade, I've lived in many parts of the country, and each was so different.

I became a soldier, and a land surveyor, in the Ozarks. The mountains were beautiful, the grass was green, and in the winter, the snow was fun to play in. Hammering surveyor's stakes into the rocky, frozen ground, made me strong, and road marching up and down the hills through all kinds of weather built strong character, taught me that I can do anything I really am determined to do, and are among my most cherished memories.

I served in a Combat Heavy line company in Central Texas. It was among the most beautiful places I have seen. It wasn't as green as Missouri, nor as hilly, but creeks and rivers cut through the small hills, and there were lakes to spend weekends at with friends. There were springs, and trees to swing off of from a rope. It was close enough to Mexico to have really good food, and that it was handy to speak Spanish, but far enough away from the border that it still felt like the United States.

Then there was Georgia, which was 10x as green as Missouri, with tall pines and cypruses, and swamps that bloomed in every color imaginable in the spring time. Sure, we were an hour from anything, but the drive there wasn't bad. We could drive through the crop fields to Vidalia, down the coastline to Brunswick, or through the swamps and salt flats to Savannah. It was very Old South, which could get difficult at times for an interracial couple, but mostly, it was an easy place to live after we got used to the horrible duty assignment that Ft. Stewart is.

Then we moved here. This is a cool place to visit, but after being here for a month or so, it's just brown, and ugly, and depressing. We are in a big city, but if we have to do anything in another city, we are at least four hours away from the nearest. For a big city, El Paso has very little because it's so poor, and for many products or services, the only way to get them is to go to Odessa, Midland, or Lubbock. They are 4, 5, and 5 hours from here, respectively. It's not just the drive that's prohibitive, but what the drive consists of. It's not like there's civilization anywhere along the way. It's like you drive 4-5 hours through the desert, amid absolutely nothing, and you better fill up with gas before leaving town, bring plenty of food and water, and hope nobody has to go to the bathroom, and if they do, you better hope it's not warm enough for rattle snakes to be out, because there's nothing but roadside, desert, cactus, and joshua trees as far as the eye can see. It's depressing. It makes you not want to go anywhere, because everywhere you go is a million miles away, and the route there is all the same... rocky, desolate, and brown.

Yesterday, we went and got Thak's motorcycle in Lamesa, which is right between Odessa and Lubbock. Northwest Texas is pretty. It's plains, more midwestern than anything... small towns along the way, dotted with the occasional oil field, and oil millionaire's mansion. Aside from the oil, it's very Wizard of Oz. If there were a way to transplant Ft. Bliss to Lubbock, we'd do it in a heartbeat.

It's nice to go to other parts of Texas, which actually feel like the US, and NOT the southwest. It is extremely hard to go back home after being back in the US again for the day. It's nice to hear English spoken in an American accent, and seeing women who wear clothes that fit, and don't shave their eyebrows off and draw them with a pencil the way southwestern women do. It's nice to see white people. That may sound racist, but literally, 9 days out of 10, the only way I see a white person is to look in the mirror. It's nice to see only models of cars sold in America, and to share the roads with people who learned to drive in this country, and don't act like complete idiots behind the wheel. Not seeing a single Mexico license plate all day long is awfully nice, and only someone who's lived on the border for a while can truly appreciate that.

This may be the one place I have truly been counting the days until we leave. Ft. Stewart was a bad assignment because of the nature of the mission, and the post itself, but Georgia wasn't a bad place to live. If we could have lived there minus the constant deployments to the most God-forsaken places on the planet, and the crappy housing policies, then it would have been great. I have hated duty stations, but never the PLACE itself, until we came here. Ft. Bliss is actually not a bad duty station, or it wouldn't be, were it not located in the deepest pit of hell.

We only have a little over a year until we're done here. We discussed what it would take for us to stay if someone offered Thak a really good job in town, and we really couldn't think of anything that would make it ok to continue living in this land of brown landscape, ugly people, and rudeness. The closest to here I'd ever want to live is Odessa, although Lubbock would be better because Odessa is still really brown. It's at least not as poor as this place because of the oil fields. We're probably not staying in Texas, but our logic is to close no door until we're established in the private sector, so yeah, there's some possibility we may end up in Texas for the long haul. In all honesty, I would hope that it is not west Texas of any variety, though. It's too spread out, too desolate... too brown.

Thak graduates in 15 months, and then we can leave. He's begun pushing for a medical discharge so that he can get out of the Army sooner, then switch to day school instead of nights. If he gets that to happen for him, then we could be out of here before 2010 is out. I can't wait. Every time we have to leave El Paso, and face an all day trip just to go get something in the next town, it just wears down my patience for this shithole just that much more.