♪♫ It's the final countdown♫♪

Not my favorite song in the world.  Even though I'm an 80's baby, I did my best to avoid the strange digitized sounds, roboticly choppy beats, and often redundant lyrics of the music.  However, Europe's song has been in my head ever since I woke up this afternoon.

Why?

Because it's the final countdown:  my last week of work as a law enforcement officer starts tonight at 2300 hrs.  I am strangely nervous.  I am such a pessimist so often.  I'm a strangely happy pessimist.  I guess it's because I generally expect the worst, so even mediocre makes me happy by comparison.  Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best, right?  I spend so much time waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering what's going to be just around the corner, or what new ways the fates and other humans can find to mar something good.  I am anticipating being on the blocks a lot through the next five days.  That only seems appropriate since, with the help of my doctor, I managed to skate out of work the last two weeks.  I am thinking there might be some minor retribution in store by assignments to my least favorite posts, and ribbing by my lieutenant and coworkers.  But we shall see.

Chance warned me, in what I suppose passes for concernedly stern from him (he's really such a teddy bear of a guy and very sweet.  But I do imagine that when his temper gets piqued he could be intimidating), that I am not allowed to slack up in caution and vigilance just because I'm a short-timer.  No worries there.  The jail is not a place to stop paying attention, although after a while you do tend to get inured to the things you are exposed to and sort of acquire callouses over your eyes and ears.  Words like 'ordinary' start to apply to a host of things that, in the daily lives of the average person would warrant something closer to 'unusual', 'revolting', 'offensive', or even 'frightening' just to list a few.

At times I wonder if I will miss it at all.  I believe the answer to that is complicated.  I will not miss the environment, the stress, the schedule, etc.  But I will miss the exceptional people I've had the opportunity to work with.  Not all of the officers are good.  Unfortunately, quite a lot of them are the exact opposite and worse than some of the inmates.  But the people who are good are exceptional.  I've met some wonderful people at the LEC.  People who I could without a doubt trust with my life, people who can be relied on in a whole host of situations, people with huge hearts and caring dispositions who will still step up and throw down when necessary.  I guess in a sense it's sort of like the friendships forged in combat situations for soldiers, because even though we don't go out on a "battlefield", we do encounter life-threatening situations and have to be able to know that our comrades will stand ready.

It has been an educational experience if nothing else, and while I will miss some people, I am honestly glad to be done with it.  Nearly five years is quite enough, and thankfully I have few lasting injuries to show for it.  Some of the folks I've worked with are not so lucky, and I am hoping my luck continues to hold for one more week.

Here we go!  Let's rock this funky nougat!  Because once this week is over, that's just one more week closer to my love coming home!  *woot woot*!