"...he said I wasn't allowed to get stressed out..."

Dated 30 Oct 05:

Everyone,
Hey! Well, it's Sunday! Church day! They usually call Sundays the "three C's" day. Church, chow and clean. haha. We're supposed to get a phone call every Sunday, but sometimes the stupid people in our platoon screw everyone over and we don't get to use them. I hope we do today [she didn't, jn].

Grandma Ruth sent me so much stuff. She put gum in the package but the drill sgts. didn't find it. She also sent me some Mary Kay stuff, pens, paper, post-it notes, stamps, pre-stamped postcards, a sketch book, graphite pencils and lots of Burt's Bees lip stuff.

I made two really good friends here. Venicia and Crafton (Crystal & Casey). If you can, and have time, send them a little care package. They don't get too much mail and I would appreciate it if you got them something small like Burt's bees or pens and paper/stamps, that type of stuff. They never get any packages and the smallest thing would help a lot.

Oh, dude, guess what. So today, I was getting ready for Church and my friend Crafton asked me if I would go to her church with her today, so I said "sure" (her church is Protestant). So we went, and we walked into the bathroom and Kara was up there!!! AHHHHH. We both flipped out and wouldn't stop hugging. lol. I started crying when we were hugging. Then she started and it was like the water works in there. haha. All the other girls looked at us like we were insane. HA. So we're switching churches every week to see each other. WOO! It was so good to talk to someone. lol.

[Kara is from New Hampshire and is going into the Old Guard F&DC with Lindsay, jn]

I was just informed that my platoon (again) probably won't get to use the phone tonight. Wow. What a surprise. NOT! Well, I'll just have to tell you this then. When we were in the simulation for the M-16 (it's like duck hunt on Nintendo) I was feeling a little stressed (just because I was). And so I started drawing, trying to get my stress out. Anyways, the drill sgt. caught me and took my notebook in front of the whole platoon. About an hour and a half later, he called me into his office and was asking me why I was drawing and stuff during training (first of all, I was just sitting in line doing nothing). So I told him I was stressed out and was trying to get over it so I can chill and he said I wasn't allowed to get stressed out because I'm one out of three people in the whole platoon that keep it going. The other two are Venicia and Crafton. And he said that I need to chill because he needs me to keep everyone in line. Haha.

It's funny because I got away with saying some crazy stuff to him over the past couple weeks. One day, I was climbing this huge vertical ladder (60ft.) and all the rungs are 5 feet apart and he was shaking it to get me scared (ha, it worked!) and I yelled down from the top "THAT'S NOT FAIR DRILL SGT., I CAN'T TELL YOU TO SHUT UP!" lol. I thought I was gonna get it but he just went "oh really Natiw?" and shook it more. lol. Everyone laughed their butts off.

Then last night I got a letter from Emily with the teen girl squad cartoon in it and he looked at it and went "what the heck. I don't get it." And without thinking I went "I didn't think you would drill sgt." and everyone went "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!" lol. But then he actually laughed at me and chucked the letter across the room, haha. Woo. Yeah, funtime!

I've been in a weird mood lately. Sometimes I'm like "Woo! LET'S DO THIS THING!" Then others I'm like "meh.... I miss my family, blah, blah blah." I'm really tired right now. There isn't anything to do. It's cleaning day. All we do is sit around, clean, eat, more sitting around, eat, sit around, formation, personal time, bed. I <3 Sundays. lol.

Oh, but seriously, those packages. If you can, send one to PVT Venicia and one to PVT Crafton. Crafton is like my closest friend here. In my pictures that you sent me with me on the wall with three other people, Crafton is the really short girl sitting right next to me. She's so funny. I would send them myself, but I can't lol. But yeah. I should go write other people now so I don't seem retarted for getting letters and not writing them. OH, I don't get in trouble for getting letters, so SEND THEM!!!! XD. lol.

I gotta go. I'll hopefully get to actually TALK to you all soon providing my platoon stops being retarted. lol. I love you guys. 40 more days!

Love,
Lindsay

p.s. oh, try to make some labels of my address so I don't have to write it out on the envelope please!