On Saturday my nice neighbor Carl came to fix the trench that the plumbers made when they did all their work. As you know it was done in the middle of winter and even though the backhoe guy tried to cover it up best he could, it was still a mess. Carl spent a good 2 hours smoothing it over and adding some dirt where it had sunk. When he finished his wife came over to meet us. She is a very nice lady and we had a good visit. We talked about Terry leaving and she told me to call any time. Carl would help me with anything. I talked about being nervous about the first winter without him here and Carl said "Well at least you will never be snowed in". As much as I want to be on post, I appreciate the kindness of people that we really don't know very well.

My friends husband left yesterday and all evening she had people stopping by to offer help and bringing by food.

This is how we survive. It is in times of need that you find out how good most people truly are. And it is very important to have that support system. So all you civilians that want to help, just ask or even better just do something nice for someone you know that has a spouse deployed, because even though we will all say we can handle everything, having help is how we survive.