Finally bought Halloween candy and have wisely hidden it.
I have also been a very good Army wife and helped my husband with the large task of sorting through and cleaning his gear. A lot of it he has to turn in, as a part of "clearing post." So I sat on the steps and picked lint out of the Velcro straps of many a helmet, knee and elbow pad, as well as bulletproof vests and ammo holders.
The gear completely fills the entire downstairs family room, spilling out of arm chairs, draped across the back of the couch and propped up against the entertainment center.
"I feel like I joined the Army," I complained to Keith.
"At ease, Private!" he barked out, by way of reply.
We experienced a "The Gift of the Magi" moment today. Today was the second day of the two day argument recess and consequently the dead line of when we would have to ante up and decide together what to do. It turns out each of us had privately given in to the other person's point of view and was just waiting to confess.
I saw our house on one of the websites it's advertised on. It looks very cozy and attractive, and since the price reduction is now comparable, but not a steal. Keith and I get ancy and want to drop the price but our realtor says to wait out the week, which is easy for her to say, as she is not liable for the mortgage.
However, she has been a rental agent and realtor for a long time and hasn't steered us wrong in the past, so wait we will. Just in case, I am starting to mentally prepare for Double Mortgage December. Wouldn't that be a Merry, Merry Christmas!
On a different note, I find pundits amusing. Their motto should be "I express, therefore I exist." They feed off of one another. Countering what one pundit said yesterday in The Washington Post makes for a perfectly good article the next day in the New York Times.
Within the concentric circles of Washington are the politicians, their aids, then the journalists and then there are the pundits, scurrying rapidly around and constantly talking about what everybody else is doing.
Not that I am not fond of them, at least some of them. And I'm not really sure exactly what the difference is between a columnist, a journalist and pundit, as they do seem at times to be interchangeable.
I will however follow absolutely everything that Charles Krauthammer has to say or write. He is one of the first names I began to recognize. As he never engages in wishful thinking, reading him can be a little unsettling, but the clarity more than makes up for it. He recently had an interview with a German magazine that was fascinating. (Link)
To be honest, I did begin to recognize the work of Paul Krugman early on as well, but only because along with Keith Olbermann they make up the lowbrow bullies and heavy weight hitters of the liberal media.
Update: Our realtor called! She has officially had two calls on the house and one walk through scheduled for tomorrow at 3:00. (The other interested party is not so sure about the school system here; rightly so, I would think, just from what I've seen.) As the realtor will be busy tomorrow we will be doing the walkthrough ourselves, which should be interesting.
Every single night before we sleep, Keith prays and every night for weeks now he has prayed for God to send the right renters our way, people that would enjoy the house as much as we have. It feels like we are a little closer to finding them.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
October 26th-27th
It's been hitting home lately that I'm really leaving this state, and I feel more sorrow over that than I would have expected. There is such a kalaidascope of impressions, images and emotions all tied up in this state.
When I first moved out here, I lived in a small town in northern Colorado, in near abject poverty. The rent was a little over four hundred a month and located directly in back of an Albertsons, if I remember correctly. If I bought juice, it was a splurge. My coffee came in large, red plastic jugs with snap covers.
I remember standing on the small front porch in the mild March sunlight, looking off toward the Rockies. That town was where I took my first job caring for the elderly, where I experienced the first death of someone that I loved and cared for with my own hands. It was where I first took the responsibility and risk of being a leader at work, something that took me from a part time position overnight to the hiring manager of an Alzheimer's wing in under two years.
And that's the crux of it, I suppose. Technically I was an adult before I moved out here, but I only came of age afterward. When I leave, not only will I leave a landscape that I know so well now, I'll leave that younger part of my life behind.
Now I'm in my thirties, married and hoping for children. I follow politics, I know how to balance a budget, my husband and I have financial assests and the risks that come along with them. We are squarely in the middle class. We're still young; far younger than I thought the thirties would feel back when I was, oh, seventeen.
October 27th
Keith and I are in the middle of one of those Level 10 arguments, you know, the kind that kicks one in the gut. The fascinating thing is that we are able to function perfectly well around the argument. This should come in handy when we have kids; they'll never even know.
Keith is the only man I know who can simply drop an argument, just drop it on its head. It doesn't matter how big it is or how emotionally charged. If he says there will be no more discussion, there is no more discussion. Last night he declared we would have two days to think it over, at the end of the two days we would decide together and that we would discuss it no more that night. Consequently, ten minutes later I'd almost forgotten we had been arguing.
I hate this week. This is a interminable week, the terrible, tension laden calm before the storm of three days of movers. Will they be here for eight hours a day? What will I do with myself? Constantly supervise?
No, I will hide. I hate having strangers in the house, I'm shy and don't like supervising. But where will I hide? They'll be systemically dismantling my entire home.
And after that, we'll have three days of essentially camping out in the bare bone remains of our home, cleaning. We'll be living out of suitcases. Will we have a renter by then? Who knows.
Three days of that before Keith can sign out on leave. By the time he does, we'll have lived through seven days of stress and upheaval. We'll have had no Internet, no TV.
After that, we drive the sixteen hour drive, still living out of the same suitcases. Our route takes us across the entirety of Kansas, which should be considered a punishment for low level crimes, like check fraud.
Finally, we arrive in Indiana and from a temporary home base at Keith's brother's house, we will begin the house search. That's where the good news begins, there are several houses to choose from. I guess that's a good thing about this market. There is one that is absolutely dirt cheap, but because someone tore out the entire kitchen before they moved out. We could buy that and with the savings buy new, energy star appliances. But also cupboards. Eh.
Tonight they are calling for snow, lots of snow. I've been feeling blue lately, especially today. So Keith surprised me with Mudslides and movies when he came home from work. I have been sitting on the couch nearsightedly attempting to sew up huge rips in his jeans but pretty much only succeeded in making them bulge and then tighten up in strange ways that harken back to the eighties. I'm going to have to tear out the stitches and try again using patches.
When I first moved out here, I lived in a small town in northern Colorado, in near abject poverty. The rent was a little over four hundred a month and located directly in back of an Albertsons, if I remember correctly. If I bought juice, it was a splurge. My coffee came in large, red plastic jugs with snap covers.
I remember standing on the small front porch in the mild March sunlight, looking off toward the Rockies. That town was where I took my first job caring for the elderly, where I experienced the first death of someone that I loved and cared for with my own hands. It was where I first took the responsibility and risk of being a leader at work, something that took me from a part time position overnight to the hiring manager of an Alzheimer's wing in under two years.
And that's the crux of it, I suppose. Technically I was an adult before I moved out here, but I only came of age afterward. When I leave, not only will I leave a landscape that I know so well now, I'll leave that younger part of my life behind.
Now I'm in my thirties, married and hoping for children. I follow politics, I know how to balance a budget, my husband and I have financial assests and the risks that come along with them. We are squarely in the middle class. We're still young; far younger than I thought the thirties would feel back when I was, oh, seventeen.
October 27th
Keith and I are in the middle of one of those Level 10 arguments, you know, the kind that kicks one in the gut. The fascinating thing is that we are able to function perfectly well around the argument. This should come in handy when we have kids; they'll never even know.
Keith is the only man I know who can simply drop an argument, just drop it on its head. It doesn't matter how big it is or how emotionally charged. If he says there will be no more discussion, there is no more discussion. Last night he declared we would have two days to think it over, at the end of the two days we would decide together and that we would discuss it no more that night. Consequently, ten minutes later I'd almost forgotten we had been arguing.
I hate this week. This is a interminable week, the terrible, tension laden calm before the storm of three days of movers. Will they be here for eight hours a day? What will I do with myself? Constantly supervise?
No, I will hide. I hate having strangers in the house, I'm shy and don't like supervising. But where will I hide? They'll be systemically dismantling my entire home.
And after that, we'll have three days of essentially camping out in the bare bone remains of our home, cleaning. We'll be living out of suitcases. Will we have a renter by then? Who knows.
Three days of that before Keith can sign out on leave. By the time he does, we'll have lived through seven days of stress and upheaval. We'll have had no Internet, no TV.
After that, we drive the sixteen hour drive, still living out of the same suitcases. Our route takes us across the entirety of Kansas, which should be considered a punishment for low level crimes, like check fraud.
Finally, we arrive in Indiana and from a temporary home base at Keith's brother's house, we will begin the house search. That's where the good news begins, there are several houses to choose from. I guess that's a good thing about this market. There is one that is absolutely dirt cheap, but because someone tore out the entire kitchen before they moved out. We could buy that and with the savings buy new, energy star appliances. But also cupboards. Eh.
Tonight they are calling for snow, lots of snow. I've been feeling blue lately, especially today. So Keith surprised me with Mudslides and movies when he came home from work. I have been sitting on the couch nearsightedly attempting to sew up huge rips in his jeans but pretty much only succeeded in making them bulge and then tighten up in strange ways that harken back to the eighties. I'm going to have to tear out the stitches and try again using patches.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
October 24th-25th
October 24th
Who knew domestic tranquility could be bought for as little as $3.99?
I purchased ten purple earplugs at Walgreen's yesterday and used them for the first time last night, and oh the bliss! I did not even use my fan, the use of which dates back into the early twenty first century, when I was living at home with a basement full of younger brothers and their rowdy friends.
My brother Jesse recently reminded me of this, and of how he and his friends would dread my eventual, haggard appearance on the stairs late at night, white faced and bleary-eyed with exhaustion.
"Do...you...have...any...idea....how late it is?" I would rasp out, hair in my face.
This earned me the affectionate nickname of "Dragon Lady." It did not tend to quiet them down, though and one night, invention being the child of desperation, I got myself a fan, put it inches away from my face, but blowing in the opposite direction and voila, a noise maker was born.
But now I have lovely, silky purple earplugs. I did not hear my husband playing "Grand Theft Auto," even with surround sound so loud it caused a dish to fall off the rack. I don't even hear the sounds I myself make when moving around at night, say to let the dog out. The door opens silently, the dog makes no sound on the wood floor, outside in the dark I hear nothing but the quiet, fluid sound of my own body, echoing around in my head. It's a little eerie.
October 25th
Beware Spider Solitaire; it is the worst time sucker of all
My husband and I are both suffering from the tedious effects of being the grown ups. We have some huge decisions to make that will have significant financial repercussions on our future. We must make them in two weeks. Being the grown ups, we alone must make them. Sometimes I hate being a grown up.
Anxiety over this situation peaked in the last couple days when we learned the VA will not cover loans for mobile homes and the realtor we were working with in Kentucky stopped communicating with us, leaving us with what appeared to be no options.
I believe this whole process is just an exercise in faith and patience; I have been trying to "stay loose" and just trust that God would lead us in the right direction naturally. Well, yesterday I went on line to do some looking of my own and found a whole bunch of extraordinarily affordable homes. The mortgage payment would be hundreds of dollars less than our BAH.
We called the realtor, she got back to us and sent us more info on one house we really like and is finding more like it. It's looking like within a few days of arriving in Kentucky we will be closing on our second house, one of half a dozen solid little brick ranch homes fifteen to twenty minutes from Ft. Knox.
Also, Keith does not think that we would be moving to GA anytime soon, we'd have at least a couple years. That is more than enough time to pay off at least one more vehicle, if not both and to be able to save the six months rent total that we need for the Colorado Rental Fund. If we end up staying in Kentucky longer, we might even be able to pay off the Kentucky house entirely.
We see the light and thank God! This is a scary time to be investing, to be building a future. In the long run we have to give up control and trust that no matter what happens, God has a plan. In my limited experience, God's plan is usually revealed one step at a time. I feel like Indiana Jones in "The Search for the Holy Grail." We are stepping out into the abyss and just trusting that each time we step out, we'll find solid ground underneath.
I think finding this realtor and these properties are yet another piece of evidence that we are stepping out in the right direction; I have to leave the rest of the path up to God. Like finding a renter for this house; two weeks and counting and we have not had a single walk through.
Free fallin', that's us, baby!
Who knew domestic tranquility could be bought for as little as $3.99?
I purchased ten purple earplugs at Walgreen's yesterday and used them for the first time last night, and oh the bliss! I did not even use my fan, the use of which dates back into the early twenty first century, when I was living at home with a basement full of younger brothers and their rowdy friends.
My brother Jesse recently reminded me of this, and of how he and his friends would dread my eventual, haggard appearance on the stairs late at night, white faced and bleary-eyed with exhaustion.
"Do...you...have...any...idea....how late it is?" I would rasp out, hair in my face.
This earned me the affectionate nickname of "Dragon Lady." It did not tend to quiet them down, though and one night, invention being the child of desperation, I got myself a fan, put it inches away from my face, but blowing in the opposite direction and voila, a noise maker was born.
But now I have lovely, silky purple earplugs. I did not hear my husband playing "Grand Theft Auto," even with surround sound so loud it caused a dish to fall off the rack. I don't even hear the sounds I myself make when moving around at night, say to let the dog out. The door opens silently, the dog makes no sound on the wood floor, outside in the dark I hear nothing but the quiet, fluid sound of my own body, echoing around in my head. It's a little eerie.
October 25th
Beware Spider Solitaire; it is the worst time sucker of all
My husband and I are both suffering from the tedious effects of being the grown ups. We have some huge decisions to make that will have significant financial repercussions on our future. We must make them in two weeks. Being the grown ups, we alone must make them. Sometimes I hate being a grown up.
Anxiety over this situation peaked in the last couple days when we learned the VA will not cover loans for mobile homes and the realtor we were working with in Kentucky stopped communicating with us, leaving us with what appeared to be no options.
I believe this whole process is just an exercise in faith and patience; I have been trying to "stay loose" and just trust that God would lead us in the right direction naturally. Well, yesterday I went on line to do some looking of my own and found a whole bunch of extraordinarily affordable homes. The mortgage payment would be hundreds of dollars less than our BAH.
We called the realtor, she got back to us and sent us more info on one house we really like and is finding more like it. It's looking like within a few days of arriving in Kentucky we will be closing on our second house, one of half a dozen solid little brick ranch homes fifteen to twenty minutes from Ft. Knox.
Also, Keith does not think that we would be moving to GA anytime soon, we'd have at least a couple years. That is more than enough time to pay off at least one more vehicle, if not both and to be able to save the six months rent total that we need for the Colorado Rental Fund. If we end up staying in Kentucky longer, we might even be able to pay off the Kentucky house entirely.
We see the light and thank God! This is a scary time to be investing, to be building a future. In the long run we have to give up control and trust that no matter what happens, God has a plan. In my limited experience, God's plan is usually revealed one step at a time. I feel like Indiana Jones in "The Search for the Holy Grail." We are stepping out into the abyss and just trusting that each time we step out, we'll find solid ground underneath.
I think finding this realtor and these properties are yet another piece of evidence that we are stepping out in the right direction; I have to leave the rest of the path up to God. Like finding a renter for this house; two weeks and counting and we have not had a single walk through.
Free fallin', that's us, baby!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
October 21st-22nd
October 21st
It is a dark, dismal day. Almost all the leaves have been torn off the aspen outside and the branches, bare against the sky, are an ominous indication that months of grey winter sky are on the threshold. All that gold that was on the branches is now on the lawn and consequently the lawn holds what little sunlight I will see today.
"What time is it?" I mumbled into my pillow, when Keith came home from PT.
"Eight," he said.
"Ha!" I replied. I was certain it would only be seven at the most.
"Did you say, "Ha?" Is my little kitten not a morning person?" he teased, indulgent; clearly thought about leaping on the bed to cuddle and then thought better of it.
He has only recently realized the thing about me not being a morning person, though he's been feeling the effects of it for quite some time. Knowing why I'm such a witch in the morning apparently makes it cute.
There is a "For Rent" sign on our front lawn and it leaves a slight hollow feeling in my stomach. Our house is now open to the general public. So far we have had no one come in, or call. Our realtor did say we had the rent a little on the high side, but she wanted to leave it that way for a few weeks anyway, just to see.
Keith has warned me that for years now there have been rumors of Ft. Knox closing and moving to GA. Yesterday he came home and said he thought the rumors might be more substantial than usual and it might be prudent to rent a house in Kentucky instead of buying, in case we might have to move again if the rumor proved true.
I think that I am getting my period, a blow yet again to my pregnancy hopes. It's silly. It takes people a while to get pregnant and Keith and I have been trying only for two months yet and still I am crushed each time my period comes.
Each time I have to fend off fears that I might be infertile, that I'll never get pregnant, never have a family. Then my period finishes and I start to look up again and then I start to wonder if I am and the wondering increases in intensity and it doesn't help that signs of pregnancy are so like signs of impending menstruation.
"Wow, my breasts are swollen and tender; I'm really, really tired and moody! I must be pregnant! It really must be true."
And yet not.
I find myself longing for a baby with a strange kind of clarity. I see the translucent nose and ears of my future newborn, the windswept like reddening on the cheeks and the way the tiny clenched fists move jerkily in the air. I smell baby powder and spit up. I see a pile of tiny onesies and bibs in the laundry, dishes in the sink I haven't had time to do and the bed unmade.
It doesn't help that a wide variety of people ask on a regular basis if we are pregnant or not. First of all, I don't think I'll be comfortable announcing it until we are well along, maybe two or three months. Secondly, it's just doesn't help with alleviating the pressure.
People keep telling me that it'll happen when we aren't thinking about it, but I just honestly don't know how not to think about it. I cook a meal and think about how it will be like to cook for a family, one baby squalling at my hip or under foot, two playing rambunctiously upstairs or hungry and whining about when dinner will be ready, their heads just above the counter.
I want this. I want to be continually smothered under a tide of dirty clothes that I never come ahead on. I want to induce small children to sit down and do their homework at the kitchen table when they would rather be outside, I want to see them off to school with backpacks larger than they are and I want the chance to outsmart my teenager in his or her attempts at rebellion.
Maybe in all the stress of moving I won't think about it and it'll just happen. And yet they say stress inhibits one's chances, so that probably won't happen. The only that does help is remembering that I really have very little control over the whole process anyway, so just to let go and enjoy the ride.
It's just hard to do that around this time of the month.
October 22nd.
Wow, what a couple of days. Yesterday Keith and I argued pretty much all evening and all night and into the morning.
There are some days when I have to admit, I just want to argue. I really don't care about what, really. I just want to get angry and state things loudly and as though they were as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. (Could that have anything to do with my PMS? Noooooooo. I totally think they are soooo unconnected.)
Firstly, we argued over having yet another guest come over to the house for dinner. We've had another soldier living here for the past week, as his barracks room was given away. He's a very good friend of Keith's, I mean, like a brother good friend, so there was absolutely no question of him paying for a hotel room.
And the guy is great, he washes up; he's done so twice now. He even wipes down the counters, he washes his own clothes, he makes the bed in the morning.
"Honey, you're in trouble now," I teased Keith, about this.
"You love me!" protested Keith.
I kissed him on the top of his head and went on up stairs.
"I wash the dishes!" I heard him call up, a moment later. "Honey! I've washed up for you!"
He has.
Anyway, Keith wanted another friend of his to come over for dinner, but my relationship with this guy is strained by the fact that he and his wife openly disapproved of me back last summer and told Keith so and were rude to me. Naturally, thing are not all sunshine and light now, when I am the bonafide wife and have not actually run off with the silverware and the bank account during the deployment.
He came over though and we all played friendly. Maybe it would help to clear the air if I just said out loud sometime, "Hey, I know you hated my guts last summer, but I can see that you feel differently now, so why don't we just start over?" Yeah, right.
Argument number two was about money. We had round one, which was a lightening round and I lost that one and retreated with grace.
Round two began upstairs gracefully while making up for round one. That slowly escalated into "Let's discuss the past problems which were not even admitted, let alone resolved." I always love opening up that Pandora's Box O'fun.
Once past issues (which I had thought were unrelated) resolved, we moved again to discuss the initial argument and it ended up with Keith stating right out that he was just going to do what he wanted to do, which was to spend money.
Instead of getting incensed over this, I actually admired his honesty. I then turned the tables on him. This didn't have the impact I thought it would. We simply have two entirely different world views when it comes to spending money, surprise!
I lock down tighter than "The Rock" and he plays it nice and easy. Sometimes I give into him, but right now the stress level and the current financial level being what it is, I just can't unclench my mindset. He sees the whole situation being not just about money but his manhood, so he is not budging either.
We decided to call it quits while we still could, the argument was postponed with remarkable amity, considering. But it quickly deteriorated, and under unexpected circumstances.
Keith and I are still working out our sleeping arrangements. I anticipate these negotiations might take us years. He wants to be close to and touching me. I want to be untouched and him to be facing away from me, so that the volume of his snores is muffled by the bulk of his body.
This last is of extreme importance to me. My husband's snores are so loud that even my elderly grandfather at the other end of the trailer in Minnesota could hear him. It is not fun to have the source of that unadulterated racket mere inches away from one's face, especially as the night grows longer and more desperate.
I wore the new earplugs; they were painful and inadequate. I tried stuffing two pillows between him and I, I tried literally hanging off the bed so that I could get as close to the fan as possible (the sound of the fan muffles the irregular, grinding sound of his snores). I do this until my right arm falls asleep and the pain in my head from the earplugs begins to shoot into my brain.
Then I give up and attempt to wake him up. This takes several tries. Once awake, he agrees to roll over, but doesn't do so. This goes on for a long time, each time I take a deep breath to prevent myself from screaming from sheer frustration. Finally he wakes up enough to say, irritably "No!"
I am now seething. Not only do I carry the bruises, unhealed, from our earlier unresolved arguments, but now this. I think a great many incoherent things and fortunately decided to act on none of them. I'm stuck with this great, unmoving, ungrateful lump of a noise maker two inches from my sore and throbbing ears.
Since the earplugs are clearly not working, I take them out and simply suffer the undiluted assault. I begin to get fuzzy headed from sheer exhaustion but cannot fall asleep. Finally, Keith moves away in his sleep and soon after, I fall asleep. Sometime later, he moves over toward me again. I wake him up and this time he acquiesces. This happens about three or four more times in the night.
In the morning, he is angry. Apparently he remembered being woken up; this is not always the case. He asserts that he is the one that has to work and he got no sleep. I counter with, "I told you to roll over the way we always do it, but you didn't." I want to expound on this, along the lines of, "I ask you to do it for our sake, we should just agree that your back to me is our start out position every night here after," but I don't get the chance because he's too angry to listen.
However, he still leans over to give me a goodbye kiss on the cheek and to mumble "I love you," which proves him to be a very, very good man and I feel tons of remorse for keeping him up. I also feel resentful of feeling remorseful. After a while this muddle clarifies into simply remorse.
Later in the morning, before I begin to write this and while I am still reading articles from Realclearpolitics.com and drinking my bitter coffee, he calls. He is clearly remorseful and loving and my apology rolls out unhindered and genuine and like that we have made up and all is well in the world.
But all bets are off tonight, naturally.
It is a dark, dismal day. Almost all the leaves have been torn off the aspen outside and the branches, bare against the sky, are an ominous indication that months of grey winter sky are on the threshold. All that gold that was on the branches is now on the lawn and consequently the lawn holds what little sunlight I will see today.
"What time is it?" I mumbled into my pillow, when Keith came home from PT.
"Eight," he said.
"Ha!" I replied. I was certain it would only be seven at the most.
"Did you say, "Ha?" Is my little kitten not a morning person?" he teased, indulgent; clearly thought about leaping on the bed to cuddle and then thought better of it.
He has only recently realized the thing about me not being a morning person, though he's been feeling the effects of it for quite some time. Knowing why I'm such a witch in the morning apparently makes it cute.
There is a "For Rent" sign on our front lawn and it leaves a slight hollow feeling in my stomach. Our house is now open to the general public. So far we have had no one come in, or call. Our realtor did say we had the rent a little on the high side, but she wanted to leave it that way for a few weeks anyway, just to see.
Keith has warned me that for years now there have been rumors of Ft. Knox closing and moving to GA. Yesterday he came home and said he thought the rumors might be more substantial than usual and it might be prudent to rent a house in Kentucky instead of buying, in case we might have to move again if the rumor proved true.
I think that I am getting my period, a blow yet again to my pregnancy hopes. It's silly. It takes people a while to get pregnant and Keith and I have been trying only for two months yet and still I am crushed each time my period comes.
Each time I have to fend off fears that I might be infertile, that I'll never get pregnant, never have a family. Then my period finishes and I start to look up again and then I start to wonder if I am and the wondering increases in intensity and it doesn't help that signs of pregnancy are so like signs of impending menstruation.
"Wow, my breasts are swollen and tender; I'm really, really tired and moody! I must be pregnant! It really must be true."
And yet not.
I find myself longing for a baby with a strange kind of clarity. I see the translucent nose and ears of my future newborn, the windswept like reddening on the cheeks and the way the tiny clenched fists move jerkily in the air. I smell baby powder and spit up. I see a pile of tiny onesies and bibs in the laundry, dishes in the sink I haven't had time to do and the bed unmade.
It doesn't help that a wide variety of people ask on a regular basis if we are pregnant or not. First of all, I don't think I'll be comfortable announcing it until we are well along, maybe two or three months. Secondly, it's just doesn't help with alleviating the pressure.
People keep telling me that it'll happen when we aren't thinking about it, but I just honestly don't know how not to think about it. I cook a meal and think about how it will be like to cook for a family, one baby squalling at my hip or under foot, two playing rambunctiously upstairs or hungry and whining about when dinner will be ready, their heads just above the counter.
I want this. I want to be continually smothered under a tide of dirty clothes that I never come ahead on. I want to induce small children to sit down and do their homework at the kitchen table when they would rather be outside, I want to see them off to school with backpacks larger than they are and I want the chance to outsmart my teenager in his or her attempts at rebellion.
Maybe in all the stress of moving I won't think about it and it'll just happen. And yet they say stress inhibits one's chances, so that probably won't happen. The only that does help is remembering that I really have very little control over the whole process anyway, so just to let go and enjoy the ride.
It's just hard to do that around this time of the month.
October 22nd.
Wow, what a couple of days. Yesterday Keith and I argued pretty much all evening and all night and into the morning.
There are some days when I have to admit, I just want to argue. I really don't care about what, really. I just want to get angry and state things loudly and as though they were as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. (Could that have anything to do with my PMS? Noooooooo. I totally think they are soooo unconnected.)
Firstly, we argued over having yet another guest come over to the house for dinner. We've had another soldier living here for the past week, as his barracks room was given away. He's a very good friend of Keith's, I mean, like a brother good friend, so there was absolutely no question of him paying for a hotel room.
And the guy is great, he washes up; he's done so twice now. He even wipes down the counters, he washes his own clothes, he makes the bed in the morning.
"Honey, you're in trouble now," I teased Keith, about this.
"You love me!" protested Keith.
I kissed him on the top of his head and went on up stairs.
"I wash the dishes!" I heard him call up, a moment later. "Honey! I've washed up for you!"
He has.
Anyway, Keith wanted another friend of his to come over for dinner, but my relationship with this guy is strained by the fact that he and his wife openly disapproved of me back last summer and told Keith so and were rude to me. Naturally, thing are not all sunshine and light now, when I am the bonafide wife and have not actually run off with the silverware and the bank account during the deployment.
He came over though and we all played friendly. Maybe it would help to clear the air if I just said out loud sometime, "Hey, I know you hated my guts last summer, but I can see that you feel differently now, so why don't we just start over?" Yeah, right.
Argument number two was about money. We had round one, which was a lightening round and I lost that one and retreated with grace.
Round two began upstairs gracefully while making up for round one. That slowly escalated into "Let's discuss the past problems which were not even admitted, let alone resolved." I always love opening up that Pandora's Box O'fun.
Once past issues (which I had thought were unrelated) resolved, we moved again to discuss the initial argument and it ended up with Keith stating right out that he was just going to do what he wanted to do, which was to spend money.
Instead of getting incensed over this, I actually admired his honesty. I then turned the tables on him. This didn't have the impact I thought it would. We simply have two entirely different world views when it comes to spending money, surprise!
I lock down tighter than "The Rock" and he plays it nice and easy. Sometimes I give into him, but right now the stress level and the current financial level being what it is, I just can't unclench my mindset. He sees the whole situation being not just about money but his manhood, so he is not budging either.
We decided to call it quits while we still could, the argument was postponed with remarkable amity, considering. But it quickly deteriorated, and under unexpected circumstances.
Keith and I are still working out our sleeping arrangements. I anticipate these negotiations might take us years. He wants to be close to and touching me. I want to be untouched and him to be facing away from me, so that the volume of his snores is muffled by the bulk of his body.
This last is of extreme importance to me. My husband's snores are so loud that even my elderly grandfather at the other end of the trailer in Minnesota could hear him. It is not fun to have the source of that unadulterated racket mere inches away from one's face, especially as the night grows longer and more desperate.
I wore the new earplugs; they were painful and inadequate. I tried stuffing two pillows between him and I, I tried literally hanging off the bed so that I could get as close to the fan as possible (the sound of the fan muffles the irregular, grinding sound of his snores). I do this until my right arm falls asleep and the pain in my head from the earplugs begins to shoot into my brain.
Then I give up and attempt to wake him up. This takes several tries. Once awake, he agrees to roll over, but doesn't do so. This goes on for a long time, each time I take a deep breath to prevent myself from screaming from sheer frustration. Finally he wakes up enough to say, irritably "No!"
I am now seething. Not only do I carry the bruises, unhealed, from our earlier unresolved arguments, but now this. I think a great many incoherent things and fortunately decided to act on none of them. I'm stuck with this great, unmoving, ungrateful lump of a noise maker two inches from my sore and throbbing ears.
Since the earplugs are clearly not working, I take them out and simply suffer the undiluted assault. I begin to get fuzzy headed from sheer exhaustion but cannot fall asleep. Finally, Keith moves away in his sleep and soon after, I fall asleep. Sometime later, he moves over toward me again. I wake him up and this time he acquiesces. This happens about three or four more times in the night.
In the morning, he is angry. Apparently he remembered being woken up; this is not always the case. He asserts that he is the one that has to work and he got no sleep. I counter with, "I told you to roll over the way we always do it, but you didn't." I want to expound on this, along the lines of, "I ask you to do it for our sake, we should just agree that your back to me is our start out position every night here after," but I don't get the chance because he's too angry to listen.
However, he still leans over to give me a goodbye kiss on the cheek and to mumble "I love you," which proves him to be a very, very good man and I feel tons of remorse for keeping him up. I also feel resentful of feeling remorseful. After a while this muddle clarifies into simply remorse.
Later in the morning, before I begin to write this and while I am still reading articles from Realclearpolitics.com and drinking my bitter coffee, he calls. He is clearly remorseful and loving and my apology rolls out unhindered and genuine and like that we have made up and all is well in the world.
But all bets are off tonight, naturally.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
October 20th
I keep wanting to go back to my previous entry to see if in any way I am endorsing a return to a Puritanical, repressive society. It's interesting to notice my own reaction to myself, once I put the words out in public. I get a little queasy and wonder if I might be offending someone. What if I'm wrong?
This reaction is indicative of not only my own lack of self confidence, but I believe a larger, societal pressure. In our society, it is acceptable to be loud, edgy and opinionated only if a person holds a certain worldview.
For example, it is perfectly acceptable to decry the fall of Mother Earth and the decimation of human kind due to global warming...oh I'm sorry, right...climate change. (Because the earth is not actually warming, and hasn't been for over ten years now.)
But for me to say so is risque, and not in a good way.
I've been thinking for a while now that politically correct thinking and speech is, in fact, a religion and it imposes a moral code on those who use it. It is a reverse moral code; it implies judgement itself to be wrong.
We cannot say, for example, that gay marriage is morally wrong, or else we are homophobes and branded as extremely offensive. We cannot say, for example, that sexually crude, explicit movies are degrading, as it is someone else's work of art and we must respect that.
Politically correct speech was engineered, seemingly, in order to avoid offending anyone. Anyone, that is, who does not hold a Judeo/Christian worldview. If they do, it is one's solemn PC duty to ignore and marginalize them.
I started thinking about this in more depth after I read the article, "A Tale of Two Sound Bites," by Mark Steyn. In it he talks about the media's response to Anita Dunn, who cited Mao as one of her two favorite political philosophers. (The other being Mother Theresa.)
"If you say, “Chairman Mao? Wasn’t he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?”, you’ll be hounded from public life for saying the word “Chinks.” But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any school room in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it’s so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out.
"Which is odd, don’t you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly decadent."
Profoundly decadent. That phrase really stuck out at me.
I believe, for example, that it is profoundly decadent to ban DDT in developing worlds at the cost of the lives of millions of children who now die from malaria, in order to save...how does that song go?...the birds and the bees. (link)
I believe it is profoundly decadent to defend Roman Polanski, a man who drugged and then anally raped a thirteen year old girl, on the grounds of him being an artiste.
Lately, I have had to admit to myself that I have a moral code and it is not PC. I will, therefore, clash with my own society's rules for acceptable thinking and behavior. I am fulfilling the one great cause of my age: that of self expression and fulfillment. Ironically, my self expression will cause me to receive moral judgement from the very society that erroneously believes itself to be all accepting.
And that is enough moral/political philosophy for one day.
This reaction is indicative of not only my own lack of self confidence, but I believe a larger, societal pressure. In our society, it is acceptable to be loud, edgy and opinionated only if a person holds a certain worldview.
For example, it is perfectly acceptable to decry the fall of Mother Earth and the decimation of human kind due to global warming...oh I'm sorry, right...climate change. (Because the earth is not actually warming, and hasn't been for over ten years now.)
But for me to say so is risque, and not in a good way.
I've been thinking for a while now that politically correct thinking and speech is, in fact, a religion and it imposes a moral code on those who use it. It is a reverse moral code; it implies judgement itself to be wrong.
We cannot say, for example, that gay marriage is morally wrong, or else we are homophobes and branded as extremely offensive. We cannot say, for example, that sexually crude, explicit movies are degrading, as it is someone else's work of art and we must respect that.
Politically correct speech was engineered, seemingly, in order to avoid offending anyone. Anyone, that is, who does not hold a Judeo/Christian worldview. If they do, it is one's solemn PC duty to ignore and marginalize them.
I started thinking about this in more depth after I read the article, "A Tale of Two Sound Bites," by Mark Steyn. In it he talks about the media's response to Anita Dunn, who cited Mao as one of her two favorite political philosophers. (The other being Mother Theresa.)
"If you say, “Chairman Mao? Wasn’t he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?”, you’ll be hounded from public life for saying the word “Chinks.” But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any school room in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it’s so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out.
"Which is odd, don’t you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly decadent."
Profoundly decadent. That phrase really stuck out at me.
I believe, for example, that it is profoundly decadent to ban DDT in developing worlds at the cost of the lives of millions of children who now die from malaria, in order to save...how does that song go?...the birds and the bees. (link)
I believe it is profoundly decadent to defend Roman Polanski, a man who drugged and then anally raped a thirteen year old girl, on the grounds of him being an artiste.
Lately, I have had to admit to myself that I have a moral code and it is not PC. I will, therefore, clash with my own society's rules for acceptable thinking and behavior. I am fulfilling the one great cause of my age: that of self expression and fulfillment. Ironically, my self expression will cause me to receive moral judgement from the very society that erroneously believes itself to be all accepting.
And that is enough moral/political philosophy for one day.
Monday, October 19, 2009
October 19th
Keith is now the proud owner of a twenty foot car trailer. On it we will put my Civic and the Bruteforce and away to Kentucky we will go, along with dogs, whiskey and rifle. Woohoo.
I didn't want to buy the car trailer, because of the cost. But eventually I realized that, for Keith, this was clearly an identity purchase. He was born to have a car trailer; assuming ownership of said trailer was further expression of his manhood. Already he wants to buy a winch for it.
And I love the man that he is. I love that he is the kind of man that others will call now, whenever they need anything moved. Anything. Three grand pianos? Check. Septic tank? We got'cha. Five foorwheelers with a cooler full of beer...yeah, buddy.
Meanwhile, I have been busy chasing down every single loose object ever put down anywhere out of place. This occupies a lot of my time. We can't leave the house without the dishes washed, dried and hidden, the bed made, the pillows just so. Well, we could. But I'm convinced the second we do, Karen will call to say she's bringing people over right then.
She hasn't called, so it's as though we're constantly running cleanliness drills. Also, nothing is where it should be and the house is so bare it echoes.
*Update: Karen stopped by without warning, so that justified some of the cleaning. I love our realtor, she is personable, upfront and knowledgeable. Also, she is just as motivated as we are to get the place rented and for as much as possible, as her fee is ten percent of the rent.
It is a gorgeous fall day. The lawn is slowly being covered by yellow aspen leaves and in the morning, the sun shines full through the crown of the tree, lighting it up as though it were a living glass challis.
I've been familiar with the expression "gratuitous sex and violence" for as long as I can remember but only recently is it hitting home. Perhaps due to cable TV.
Gratuitous: not needed by the circumstances. I think it needs a stronger word. Superfluous, with its added meaning of "able to be thrown away" or untenable, as that means "indefensible."
I wondered the other day why. I mean, why? Why, for example, is it necessary that we see a man's genitalia being mangled (Waiting, Old School)? Why do we need to see genitalia at all? Is it necessary to the plot line?
I think not. I think anything to that degree is completely unnecessary; I think it decadent and degrading. I think it degrades us as a society, it desensitises us; we lose our ability to be shocked and dismayed and ultimately, such degradation erodes our own sense of dignity and self respect.
Would I be in favor of legislation that would limit or restrict such things? No, I would not. I don't believe government can change the nature of society. In fact, I believe in completely the opposite; that society shapes the government.
If we were still a sober, moral community there wouldn't be a market for such things, no regulation would be necessary. Government regulations cannot make up for morality; government is not a moral or ethical replacement for individual character.
On the other hand, government can sway; it carries a lot of weight which can be and is put to terrible use. For example, $50,000 of stimulus money went toward a pornographic film called "Thundercrack."
Isn't that great? You, me and every other tax paying American just funded and endorsed a film described as "“the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” Would most Americans ever want to see this? No, of course not. And yet it is pushed on the national agenda.
It makes me think of this quote by Benjamin Franklin:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
I didn't want to buy the car trailer, because of the cost. But eventually I realized that, for Keith, this was clearly an identity purchase. He was born to have a car trailer; assuming ownership of said trailer was further expression of his manhood. Already he wants to buy a winch for it.
And I love the man that he is. I love that he is the kind of man that others will call now, whenever they need anything moved. Anything. Three grand pianos? Check. Septic tank? We got'cha. Five foorwheelers with a cooler full of beer...yeah, buddy.
Meanwhile, I have been busy chasing down every single loose object ever put down anywhere out of place. This occupies a lot of my time. We can't leave the house without the dishes washed, dried and hidden, the bed made, the pillows just so. Well, we could. But I'm convinced the second we do, Karen will call to say she's bringing people over right then.
She hasn't called, so it's as though we're constantly running cleanliness drills. Also, nothing is where it should be and the house is so bare it echoes.
*Update: Karen stopped by without warning, so that justified some of the cleaning. I love our realtor, she is personable, upfront and knowledgeable. Also, she is just as motivated as we are to get the place rented and for as much as possible, as her fee is ten percent of the rent.
It is a gorgeous fall day. The lawn is slowly being covered by yellow aspen leaves and in the morning, the sun shines full through the crown of the tree, lighting it up as though it were a living glass challis.
I've been familiar with the expression "gratuitous sex and violence" for as long as I can remember but only recently is it hitting home. Perhaps due to cable TV.
Gratuitous: not needed by the circumstances. I think it needs a stronger word. Superfluous, with its added meaning of "able to be thrown away" or untenable, as that means "indefensible."
I wondered the other day why. I mean, why? Why, for example, is it necessary that we see a man's genitalia being mangled (Waiting, Old School)? Why do we need to see genitalia at all? Is it necessary to the plot line?
I think not. I think anything to that degree is completely unnecessary; I think it decadent and degrading. I think it degrades us as a society, it desensitises us; we lose our ability to be shocked and dismayed and ultimately, such degradation erodes our own sense of dignity and self respect.
Would I be in favor of legislation that would limit or restrict such things? No, I would not. I don't believe government can change the nature of society. In fact, I believe in completely the opposite; that society shapes the government.
If we were still a sober, moral community there wouldn't be a market for such things, no regulation would be necessary. Government regulations cannot make up for morality; government is not a moral or ethical replacement for individual character.
On the other hand, government can sway; it carries a lot of weight which can be and is put to terrible use. For example, $50,000 of stimulus money went toward a pornographic film called "Thundercrack."
Isn't that great? You, me and every other tax paying American just funded and endorsed a film described as "“the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” Would most Americans ever want to see this? No, of course not. And yet it is pushed on the national agenda.
It makes me think of this quote by Benjamin Franklin:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Friday, October 16, 2009
October 17th
October 16th
At any moment I will be interrupted by our realtor coming to take pictures of the house. We're officially putting it on the market as a rental, and that is just a little bit stressful. I surely hope she doesn't want to take pictures of the closets because she will be confronted with towering, head height piles of sheer crap.
My husband is officially back at work. Yesterday they had PT twice. He came home for lunch in PTs, but needed his ACUs just in case. However he left without his boots and got a few miles down the road before he remembered. So I, the dutiful Army Wife stood out on the curb with his pair of stinky boots in hand, in order to pass them off speedily so he would not be late to work. I got a few drive by kisses in return, not a bad exchange.
October 17th
I am madly decluttering. The kitchen has been denuded of every appliance but the Kitchen Aid and even the dish rack is empty and hidden in a cupboard. The whiskey is in the plastics drawer, the bar has been dissembled and packed away in a footlocker, ready for resurrection at our new house.
The realtor was very impressed. "This is like a show house!" she said, which was richly rewarding for all my hard work. However, now I must keep it up to that standard as at any moment she might bring people in to show.
This means no dish must rest, no shoes on the floor, no jacket on the chair. We must live as though we are not really living here, no mean feat.
Further, we have no idea what house we are moving into; the two primary candidates have been disqualified. One, which looked remarkably like a trailer actually turned out to be a trailer, (surprise) and the VA does not approve loans for trailers. Too bad. It was completely renovated and on a cinder block foundation and would have done perfectly well.
The other, a five bedroom with pole barn on over one acre (and within our budget) doesn't, it turns out, accept VA loans. I thought that was too good to be true anyway.
So now we are free floating. Wheee! I wake in the night gripped by extreme anxiety regarding the state of my geranium. I remember, too late, that I have left it outside and am convinced that it will freeze to death and I will be solely responsible.
It's clear to me that the anxiety over moving is being displaced unto my houseplants, since worrying about their state is so much more manageable than worrying about where we will be living, how we will be paying for it, who will rent our house, what we will do if we don't get any renter, if we have enough money saved, if the rent will cover the mortgage and rental agent fee and last but not least, what the hell we will do for Thanksgiving.
So much easier to worry about the geranium.
I roasted a chicken last night. I took it out too soon and didn't let it rest long enough after I took it out, so instead of carving it, I merely mangled it. That aside, it was tender, moist and flavorful; I stuffed it with chopped sweet onion, thyme and basil and rubbed basil, thyme, garlic and lemon juice on skin.
Mainly I wanted roasted chicken remains for chicken pot pie and that I most certainly have. I picked the carcase as clean as I could possibly stand and since that wasn't very clean, I decided to make chicken stock with it. That turned out very well, but of course there was still the perfectly good chicken remaining.
I threw it away; I felt shades of Great Depression housewives rolling in their graves; I'm sure I could have made a pound of chicken salad. I was damned, however, if I was going to pry any more greasy chicken from the bones with my bare hands.
But I didn't do two badly, with about six (eight?) cups of stock, one meal for three and another for who knows how many out of a six dollar chicken.
We have a mandatory picnic to attend this afternoon; I hate those things.
At any moment I will be interrupted by our realtor coming to take pictures of the house. We're officially putting it on the market as a rental, and that is just a little bit stressful. I surely hope she doesn't want to take pictures of the closets because she will be confronted with towering, head height piles of sheer crap.
My husband is officially back at work. Yesterday they had PT twice. He came home for lunch in PTs, but needed his ACUs just in case. However he left without his boots and got a few miles down the road before he remembered. So I, the dutiful Army Wife stood out on the curb with his pair of stinky boots in hand, in order to pass them off speedily so he would not be late to work. I got a few drive by kisses in return, not a bad exchange.
October 17th
I am madly decluttering. The kitchen has been denuded of every appliance but the Kitchen Aid and even the dish rack is empty and hidden in a cupboard. The whiskey is in the plastics drawer, the bar has been dissembled and packed away in a footlocker, ready for resurrection at our new house.
The realtor was very impressed. "This is like a show house!" she said, which was richly rewarding for all my hard work. However, now I must keep it up to that standard as at any moment she might bring people in to show.
This means no dish must rest, no shoes on the floor, no jacket on the chair. We must live as though we are not really living here, no mean feat.
Further, we have no idea what house we are moving into; the two primary candidates have been disqualified. One, which looked remarkably like a trailer actually turned out to be a trailer, (surprise) and the VA does not approve loans for trailers. Too bad. It was completely renovated and on a cinder block foundation and would have done perfectly well.
The other, a five bedroom with pole barn on over one acre (and within our budget) doesn't, it turns out, accept VA loans. I thought that was too good to be true anyway.
So now we are free floating. Wheee! I wake in the night gripped by extreme anxiety regarding the state of my geranium. I remember, too late, that I have left it outside and am convinced that it will freeze to death and I will be solely responsible.
It's clear to me that the anxiety over moving is being displaced unto my houseplants, since worrying about their state is so much more manageable than worrying about where we will be living, how we will be paying for it, who will rent our house, what we will do if we don't get any renter, if we have enough money saved, if the rent will cover the mortgage and rental agent fee and last but not least, what the hell we will do for Thanksgiving.
So much easier to worry about the geranium.
I roasted a chicken last night. I took it out too soon and didn't let it rest long enough after I took it out, so instead of carving it, I merely mangled it. That aside, it was tender, moist and flavorful; I stuffed it with chopped sweet onion, thyme and basil and rubbed basil, thyme, garlic and lemon juice on skin.
Mainly I wanted roasted chicken remains for chicken pot pie and that I most certainly have. I picked the carcase as clean as I could possibly stand and since that wasn't very clean, I decided to make chicken stock with it. That turned out very well, but of course there was still the perfectly good chicken remaining.
I threw it away; I felt shades of Great Depression housewives rolling in their graves; I'm sure I could have made a pound of chicken salad. I was damned, however, if I was going to pry any more greasy chicken from the bones with my bare hands.
But I didn't do two badly, with about six (eight?) cups of stock, one meal for three and another for who knows how many out of a six dollar chicken.
We have a mandatory picnic to attend this afternoon; I hate those things.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
October 13th-15th
Home again.
We were up around two in the morning and the night before I was swamped with the worst feeling of abysmal loneliness I have ever experienced. It was partly due to living in a trailer. We'd been living in a trailer for the three or four days and my feelings toward the trailer swung back and forth considerably during that time.
Coming in from the damp, sharp cold of the Minnesota wilderness, I felt cozy within the trailer despite the pervasive plastic smell and the general drapery of clothing and bedding. However, shortly thereafter another feeling would creep in; that of vulnerability.
We were located on Wilderness drive, but it felt more like Wilderness Central and the thin walls of the trailer seemed only to heighten the cold outside, the wind, the miles and miles of marshland and forests all around, dotted with deer stands and hunting shacks.
I felt this isolation keenly the night before we left. My brother described the wind in Minnesota as "old." It felt that way, an ancient, cold wind driven across the northern plains, the vast empty spaces before getting entangled in the pines and hardwoods that surrounded us.
"Water sublimates," Dad said, during the visit, when we realized the dryer didn't work.
Keith and I paused.
"Even I don't know what that means," I replied dryly.
"What does it sound like?" was his response.
I wandered down the narrow hallway with an armful of damp clothing, pondering. Drop "sub-"clearly a prefix indicating below and "-ate" clearly a suffix indicating a process and that leaves "lim." Lim was not ringing any bells.
"I don't get it," I confessed, when Dad wandered through, book in hand, reading glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose.
"To transform," he explained, 'but in leaps. To go from the mundane to the sublime is to sublimate."
"Oh. You're saying the water will experience transfiguration by evaporation."
(Actually, I didn't say that, it being so clever. I came up with it later. I said something far more banal at the time.)
"Will someone please speak English?" loudly complained Keith. "How did you all learn those words?"
"We read a lot," I explained, draping the damp clothing over the dining room chairs. "And then we banter," I concluded with a little grin.
He gave me the evil eye.
The parents of my brother's wife life on a farm straight out of a faerie tale. It has gables, eaves and windows in unexpected places and gardens on all sides, spilling out of old wheelbarrows and buckets. It's heated by a wood stove, has a huge library that holds the musty smell of old books and a Sewing Parlor.
Outside it was just as magical, with tiny sheds and houses and barns everywhere, like a town for elves. In the back pasture countless cars slowly die from rust, some upside down, some sinking into the rich, black Minnesota soil.
They appear ghostly from between trees, they lie shoulder to shoulder in solidarity under the grey and lowering sky. There are also stoves, axles, snow mobiles, deer stands and shovel heads. They spill out into the field like the foam on a wave and cattle wander between them.
Our first night I talked with one of the sisters. She and her husband run a dairy farm, thirty head, seventeen replacement cows, one bull. They own over a hundred acres which are devoted to corn and winter wheat for feed, they buy soy and minerals to supplement that.
They can't make a living; what they bring in for the milk doesn't cover the expenses. The government dictates to them how much cows to milk in order to artificially manipulate supply and demand. As a small dairy farm, they can't absorb the prescribed losses as well as the larger farms. They are throwing the towel in.
I wanted to weep. I hate the way my government works right now, for many, many reasons. Hate is a strong word, but it's true.
We drove up through South Dakota into North Dakota and the rolling farm lands sunk deep into my soul. The beauty of the land, the strong imprint of American hard work, sacrifice, it all evoked such a strong response from me. Those early farmers worked from dawn to dusk, they pitted their own strength against the land. They didn't ask for hand outs.
They expected that everything they worked for would be passed down to their children. The idea that the government would take a portion of what they worked so hard for and then give it away would have been unthinkable. If someone in their community needed help, the community helped, each according to their ability.
It makes me so angry. We are looking at one of the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of this country, but the primary purpose of government is to protect private property.
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." -John Adams.
"Property is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement it industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence...I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good." -Abraham Lincoln
But decade after decade, we have voted in a Congress that voted against these principles. We can't even afford the entitlement programs we have now. We accrue five hundred million in debt every single day. Our deficit this year alone, at 1.4 trillion dollars, is a number greater than there are stars in the Milky Way. This year alone. Our total debt, near twelve trillion, is equal to the economies of Great Britain, Australia and China combined. (Defeatthedebt.com)
What about helping one's neighbor? I hear some of the talking heads on the left mention how we are a stingy country, how providing health care is a moral issue and why can't we, the wealthiest nation in the world, not provide it for our citizens?
Perhaps we could, (though I think that the rationing and poor care so evident in other countries who have adopted this system show clearly that no nation is wealthy enough to support this self imposed burden) but more importantly, to ensure health care is not the role of our government, that is not the way our Republic was set up. That is the role of a Nanny state. Is that what we want? Do we really want to trade our individualism, our liberties for the percieved securities of an overseeing, all providing government?
When we endow the government with the power to provide a service or a perceived right, we also endow it with the power to take that service or right away. It ceases to be an individual right. We have traded our individual responsibilities for dependence upon the government.
We risk either way. Individually, we risk not providing ourselves with something we need. But handing it over to the government means that we risk the government not being able to provide it and we relinquish control.
Our founders, they risked. They risked their lives, their livelihood. There was no safety net. They laid a foundation for us to move forward on. And we, I can't help but conclude, have squandered it. Are we industrious, are we thrifty? Hell no. We want it all, we want it now. We've waved our open hands to the government and piled on our own personal debt. We say it is someone else's fault, we say the system is stacked against us. I have been as guilty of this as anyone else.
But no more, damn it. I no longer feel that my children will have a better future than I. I feel that unless I act, unless I take accountability, they will have it worse and they will have it worse because of my selfishness, my apathy.
I have wept more times than I can count this late summer and fall, thinking about my country and what it's come to. I'm infuriated by the arrogance of Congress. I feel like my country is slowly being eaten alive.
The government created the problems in health care affordability, by the mandates and regulations already in place. It refuses to consider actual solutions. Instead, it demonizes, distracts and makes deals behind closed doors in order to put more of the same in place. I cannot wait for 2010.
I was going to write more about the wedding, but I've run out of time; I have to start cleaning. But here is one last quote, from the Supreme Court of 1936:
"No man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact... The legislature, therefore, had no authority to make an act divesting one citizen of his freehold, and vesting it in another, without a just compensation. It is inconsistent with the principles of reason, justice and moral rectitude; it is incompatible with the comfort, peace and happiness of mankind; it is contrary to the principles of social alliance in every free government; and lastly, it is contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution."
We were up around two in the morning and the night before I was swamped with the worst feeling of abysmal loneliness I have ever experienced. It was partly due to living in a trailer. We'd been living in a trailer for the three or four days and my feelings toward the trailer swung back and forth considerably during that time.
Coming in from the damp, sharp cold of the Minnesota wilderness, I felt cozy within the trailer despite the pervasive plastic smell and the general drapery of clothing and bedding. However, shortly thereafter another feeling would creep in; that of vulnerability.
We were located on Wilderness drive, but it felt more like Wilderness Central and the thin walls of the trailer seemed only to heighten the cold outside, the wind, the miles and miles of marshland and forests all around, dotted with deer stands and hunting shacks.
I felt this isolation keenly the night before we left. My brother described the wind in Minnesota as "old." It felt that way, an ancient, cold wind driven across the northern plains, the vast empty spaces before getting entangled in the pines and hardwoods that surrounded us.
"Water sublimates," Dad said, during the visit, when we realized the dryer didn't work.
Keith and I paused.
"Even I don't know what that means," I replied dryly.
"What does it sound like?" was his response.
I wandered down the narrow hallway with an armful of damp clothing, pondering. Drop "sub-"clearly a prefix indicating below and "-ate" clearly a suffix indicating a process and that leaves "lim." Lim was not ringing any bells.
"I don't get it," I confessed, when Dad wandered through, book in hand, reading glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose.
"To transform," he explained, 'but in leaps. To go from the mundane to the sublime is to sublimate."
"Oh. You're saying the water will experience transfiguration by evaporation."
(Actually, I didn't say that, it being so clever. I came up with it later. I said something far more banal at the time.)
"Will someone please speak English?" loudly complained Keith. "How did you all learn those words?"
"We read a lot," I explained, draping the damp clothing over the dining room chairs. "And then we banter," I concluded with a little grin.
He gave me the evil eye.
The parents of my brother's wife life on a farm straight out of a faerie tale. It has gables, eaves and windows in unexpected places and gardens on all sides, spilling out of old wheelbarrows and buckets. It's heated by a wood stove, has a huge library that holds the musty smell of old books and a Sewing Parlor.
Outside it was just as magical, with tiny sheds and houses and barns everywhere, like a town for elves. In the back pasture countless cars slowly die from rust, some upside down, some sinking into the rich, black Minnesota soil.
They appear ghostly from between trees, they lie shoulder to shoulder in solidarity under the grey and lowering sky. There are also stoves, axles, snow mobiles, deer stands and shovel heads. They spill out into the field like the foam on a wave and cattle wander between them.
Our first night I talked with one of the sisters. She and her husband run a dairy farm, thirty head, seventeen replacement cows, one bull. They own over a hundred acres which are devoted to corn and winter wheat for feed, they buy soy and minerals to supplement that.
They can't make a living; what they bring in for the milk doesn't cover the expenses. The government dictates to them how much cows to milk in order to artificially manipulate supply and demand. As a small dairy farm, they can't absorb the prescribed losses as well as the larger farms. They are throwing the towel in.
I wanted to weep. I hate the way my government works right now, for many, many reasons. Hate is a strong word, but it's true.
We drove up through South Dakota into North Dakota and the rolling farm lands sunk deep into my soul. The beauty of the land, the strong imprint of American hard work, sacrifice, it all evoked such a strong response from me. Those early farmers worked from dawn to dusk, they pitted their own strength against the land. They didn't ask for hand outs.
They expected that everything they worked for would be passed down to their children. The idea that the government would take a portion of what they worked so hard for and then give it away would have been unthinkable. If someone in their community needed help, the community helped, each according to their ability.
It makes me so angry. We are looking at one of the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of this country, but the primary purpose of government is to protect private property.
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." -John Adams.
"Property is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement it industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence...I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good." -Abraham Lincoln
But decade after decade, we have voted in a Congress that voted against these principles. We can't even afford the entitlement programs we have now. We accrue five hundred million in debt every single day. Our deficit this year alone, at 1.4 trillion dollars, is a number greater than there are stars in the Milky Way. This year alone. Our total debt, near twelve trillion, is equal to the economies of Great Britain, Australia and China combined. (Defeatthedebt.com)
What about helping one's neighbor? I hear some of the talking heads on the left mention how we are a stingy country, how providing health care is a moral issue and why can't we, the wealthiest nation in the world, not provide it for our citizens?
Perhaps we could, (though I think that the rationing and poor care so evident in other countries who have adopted this system show clearly that no nation is wealthy enough to support this self imposed burden) but more importantly, to ensure health care is not the role of our government, that is not the way our Republic was set up. That is the role of a Nanny state. Is that what we want? Do we really want to trade our individualism, our liberties for the percieved securities of an overseeing, all providing government?
When we endow the government with the power to provide a service or a perceived right, we also endow it with the power to take that service or right away. It ceases to be an individual right. We have traded our individual responsibilities for dependence upon the government.
We risk either way. Individually, we risk not providing ourselves with something we need. But handing it over to the government means that we risk the government not being able to provide it and we relinquish control.
Our founders, they risked. They risked their lives, their livelihood. There was no safety net. They laid a foundation for us to move forward on. And we, I can't help but conclude, have squandered it. Are we industrious, are we thrifty? Hell no. We want it all, we want it now. We've waved our open hands to the government and piled on our own personal debt. We say it is someone else's fault, we say the system is stacked against us. I have been as guilty of this as anyone else.
But no more, damn it. I no longer feel that my children will have a better future than I. I feel that unless I act, unless I take accountability, they will have it worse and they will have it worse because of my selfishness, my apathy.
I have wept more times than I can count this late summer and fall, thinking about my country and what it's come to. I'm infuriated by the arrogance of Congress. I feel like my country is slowly being eaten alive.
The government created the problems in health care affordability, by the mandates and regulations already in place. It refuses to consider actual solutions. Instead, it demonizes, distracts and makes deals behind closed doors in order to put more of the same in place. I cannot wait for 2010.
I was going to write more about the wedding, but I've run out of time; I have to start cleaning. But here is one last quote, from the Supreme Court of 1936:
"No man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact... The legislature, therefore, had no authority to make an act divesting one citizen of his freehold, and vesting it in another, without a just compensation. It is inconsistent with the principles of reason, justice and moral rectitude; it is incompatible with the comfort, peace and happiness of mankind; it is contrary to the principles of social alliance in every free government; and lastly, it is contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution."
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
October 6th
We are in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and when I close my eyes, visions of prairie hills dance in my head. We passed through some of the most breathtakingly beautiful scenery and saw some of the worst poverty in close conjunction.
They melded together for the most jarring effect in Mission, South Dakota. I felt like my soul was expanding through each breath as I took in the image of rippling hills, silvered with sun and wind, rolling on under an endless sky. And then there were the houses and trailers and trash.
We forked out seventy bucks for a very nice hotel room, instead of sleeping on the truck bed in sleeping bags, the original plan. However, fall at home is early winter up here. My husband is fond of the "forced cuddling" technique; that of lowering the general temperature to the point where he, as the only source of heat, becomes an object of overpowering attraction. (Not that he isn't that in general terms, of course.) But sleeping out in thirty degree weather would have elevated Forced Cuddling to Unnecessary Torture, and who wants that? Not us.
Tomorrow we drive another six hours north toward Duluth, Minnesota. The rest of my clan are all converging on this point as well. Someone should warn the townsfolk.
They melded together for the most jarring effect in Mission, South Dakota. I felt like my soul was expanding through each breath as I took in the image of rippling hills, silvered with sun and wind, rolling on under an endless sky. And then there were the houses and trailers and trash.
We forked out seventy bucks for a very nice hotel room, instead of sleeping on the truck bed in sleeping bags, the original plan. However, fall at home is early winter up here. My husband is fond of the "forced cuddling" technique; that of lowering the general temperature to the point where he, as the only source of heat, becomes an object of overpowering attraction. (Not that he isn't that in general terms, of course.) But sleeping out in thirty degree weather would have elevated Forced Cuddling to Unnecessary Torture, and who wants that? Not us.
Tomorrow we drive another six hours north toward Duluth, Minnesota. The rest of my clan are all converging on this point as well. Someone should warn the townsfolk.
Monday, October 5, 2009
October 5th
I very much like this blog and have been filled all day and night with stuff that I could and would and indeed, needed to write about. Which of course has all flown out of my head as soon as I sat down, but I'm used to that.
Keith will be home soon anyway, he's off in the little Bronco to make an appointment with the movers. We will be moving in less than two months.
After weeks of modifying our diet, Keith's gone on a mini cheese and pizza roll rebellion. I did however switch out regular dressing with fat free and we use 2% Velveeta, so I did get away with a lot. I introduced him to pork loin: his first instinct was to make it a sandwich, slapped between two pieces of (reduced fat) mayo slathered bread with a slice of cheese and some ketchup to top it off.
I made a roast as well, finally. I kept mentioning the possibility of roasts, but Keith was ambivalent about it. It seemed strange to me, him being such a meat and potatoes kind of guy. But I've learned that Keith will like just about anything I cook so I just went ahead and bought a chuck roast.
I like watching "The Barefoot Contessa" because she looks like my mom, and the weathered shingle Cape Cod house and the artsy fartsy-ness of her particular culture; that Old Money New England feel, it feels like home.
Not that we were Old Money, no. We were the solid working class/artisan sub strata that is so genuinely appreciated by Old Money. There's a good symbiotic relationship between the classes; they need us to keep things up and running, we enjoy their architecture and little boutiques that cater to them; we might not be able to afford the hand made, maple wood mixing bowl on display for eight five bucks, but we're glad somebody can.
Anyway, the Barefoot Contessa cooked a roast the other day and before she seared the meat she rolled the roast in flour with salt and pepper to thicken the sauce. I tried that, it turned out ok but I think there's more flavor if the meat is directly against the pan and besides, it's easy to thicken the gravy later.
I had to call my dad, my go to culinary guy, because I suddenly panicked about how much water should be in the roasting pan. My dad is the kind of cook that throws unexpected things together and somehow delivers something delicious. I don't think he uses the measuring cups at all anymore.
I had to call my dad during the Deadly Brown Bread episode as well. It was my first attempt at making bread with my Kitchen Aid. I was prepared for mishaps, but I should have upped the ante. It all started when I realized I had only one bread pan and therefore had to halve the recipe.
Which I did, but forgot to alter the directions. Therefore, in the directions it called for three cups of wheat flour to be added, when in the list of ingredients the total amount of wheat flour was only two cups. Did this add up? No. I put three cups of wheat flour into the bowl and ended up with flour dusted bread dough bits.
I got very angry with my handwritten recipe card until I called Dad and light dawned. What to do? Dad suggested returning the entire recipe back to the original volume and keeping one half the dough in the fridge while the first half baked. This I did.
The first loaf came out lopsided and I was reminded of Pollyanna's first attempt at baking bread. I ate two pieces of the bread and almost immediately experienced an overwhelming sensation of fullness. The second loaf came out better and I knew Keith and I would never be able to finish it, so I pawned it off on the ever obliging Larry the Good.
Early the next morning I woke with some of the worst stomach cramps ever and spent a full hour getting up close and personal with both toilet bowls in the house. I started with the upstairs bathroom, but it was impossible to put my head between my knees and still remain comfortable, that particular throne is too high off the ground. And I absolutely had to keep my head between my knees if I wanted to keep my head at all.
Eventually I wound up prostrate on the carpet downstairs, not wishing to stray far from the blessed bowl and too tired to sit upright.
I spent the rest of the day recovering and in deadly fear for the neighbors. Were they even alive? I was too afraid to call. The house appeared silent; I was certain I was single handedly responsible for the decimation of clan Larry.
The next day to my incredible relief I saw Mrs. Larry and Larrietta alive and well in the front yard. I confessed my fears.
"We're fine," they exclaimed, amazed. "We ate it with butter and jam."
"I'm just glad you're alive!" I returned, before ducking into the house. I don't think I'll be giving away anymore bread, that is unless I find myself needing to take care of a pesky future neighbor or experience a rodent problem.
Anyway, the roast turned out absolutely mouthwateringly delicious and though it was consummed rather late at night (I had gotten the idea of cooking it around five in the afternoon), neither of us suffered any ill effects.
Keith will be home soon anyway, he's off in the little Bronco to make an appointment with the movers. We will be moving in less than two months.
After weeks of modifying our diet, Keith's gone on a mini cheese and pizza roll rebellion. I did however switch out regular dressing with fat free and we use 2% Velveeta, so I did get away with a lot. I introduced him to pork loin: his first instinct was to make it a sandwich, slapped between two pieces of (reduced fat) mayo slathered bread with a slice of cheese and some ketchup to top it off.
I made a roast as well, finally. I kept mentioning the possibility of roasts, but Keith was ambivalent about it. It seemed strange to me, him being such a meat and potatoes kind of guy. But I've learned that Keith will like just about anything I cook so I just went ahead and bought a chuck roast.
I like watching "The Barefoot Contessa" because she looks like my mom, and the weathered shingle Cape Cod house and the artsy fartsy-ness of her particular culture; that Old Money New England feel, it feels like home.
Not that we were Old Money, no. We were the solid working class/artisan sub strata that is so genuinely appreciated by Old Money. There's a good symbiotic relationship between the classes; they need us to keep things up and running, we enjoy their architecture and little boutiques that cater to them; we might not be able to afford the hand made, maple wood mixing bowl on display for eight five bucks, but we're glad somebody can.
Anyway, the Barefoot Contessa cooked a roast the other day and before she seared the meat she rolled the roast in flour with salt and pepper to thicken the sauce. I tried that, it turned out ok but I think there's more flavor if the meat is directly against the pan and besides, it's easy to thicken the gravy later.
I had to call my dad, my go to culinary guy, because I suddenly panicked about how much water should be in the roasting pan. My dad is the kind of cook that throws unexpected things together and somehow delivers something delicious. I don't think he uses the measuring cups at all anymore.
I had to call my dad during the Deadly Brown Bread episode as well. It was my first attempt at making bread with my Kitchen Aid. I was prepared for mishaps, but I should have upped the ante. It all started when I realized I had only one bread pan and therefore had to halve the recipe.
Which I did, but forgot to alter the directions. Therefore, in the directions it called for three cups of wheat flour to be added, when in the list of ingredients the total amount of wheat flour was only two cups. Did this add up? No. I put three cups of wheat flour into the bowl and ended up with flour dusted bread dough bits.
I got very angry with my handwritten recipe card until I called Dad and light dawned. What to do? Dad suggested returning the entire recipe back to the original volume and keeping one half the dough in the fridge while the first half baked. This I did.
The first loaf came out lopsided and I was reminded of Pollyanna's first attempt at baking bread. I ate two pieces of the bread and almost immediately experienced an overwhelming sensation of fullness. The second loaf came out better and I knew Keith and I would never be able to finish it, so I pawned it off on the ever obliging Larry the Good.
Early the next morning I woke with some of the worst stomach cramps ever and spent a full hour getting up close and personal with both toilet bowls in the house. I started with the upstairs bathroom, but it was impossible to put my head between my knees and still remain comfortable, that particular throne is too high off the ground. And I absolutely had to keep my head between my knees if I wanted to keep my head at all.
Eventually I wound up prostrate on the carpet downstairs, not wishing to stray far from the blessed bowl and too tired to sit upright.
I spent the rest of the day recovering and in deadly fear for the neighbors. Were they even alive? I was too afraid to call. The house appeared silent; I was certain I was single handedly responsible for the decimation of clan Larry.
The next day to my incredible relief I saw Mrs. Larry and Larrietta alive and well in the front yard. I confessed my fears.
"We're fine," they exclaimed, amazed. "We ate it with butter and jam."
"I'm just glad you're alive!" I returned, before ducking into the house. I don't think I'll be giving away anymore bread, that is unless I find myself needing to take care of a pesky future neighbor or experience a rodent problem.
Anyway, the roast turned out absolutely mouthwateringly delicious and though it was consummed rather late at night (I had gotten the idea of cooking it around five in the afternoon), neither of us suffered any ill effects.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
October 4th, 2009
Ta da! Well, I wanted to title my blog "scribblings," but that was already taken many times over, so I used the on line thesaurus and found scrivenery, which is the art or practice of a scribe or copiest. Not exactly what I was going for, but it's kind of cool and more importantly, was free.
Free!!! Free to free flow.
This morning I heard the heater go on. We've had it on for a while now, but the house is usually too loud for me to hear the click and whir of its mechanics. The sound took me so far back into the deployment that I was almost disoriented.
My life is nothing like it was. I'd completely forgotten how isolated I was last winter. I knew that I would miss the quiet and I do. Only on the dreariest, saddest evenings would I sit upstairs in front of the large TV. Now we practically live there.
I haven't been to the library for weeks and weeks now. Granted, I haven't finished "War and Peace," but I wasn't really expecting to. About that, I was expecting doom and gloom in that book, instead I found an incredibly detailed description of the social mores of the Russian upper class during that time period. I mean detailed to the point of making note of how an eye brow was raised and then someone else said something in a particular tone of voice and then twisted his body to the left and then someone else smirked.
I did finish "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." I was just curious and nostalgic for a simpler America. It was like reading in sepia tones and it was incredibly off putting to hear the word "nigger" used so casually all the way through the book. It helped put into place all this talk of racism in the political world of late; America has come a long, long way.
Free!!! Free to free flow.
This morning I heard the heater go on. We've had it on for a while now, but the house is usually too loud for me to hear the click and whir of its mechanics. The sound took me so far back into the deployment that I was almost disoriented.
My life is nothing like it was. I'd completely forgotten how isolated I was last winter. I knew that I would miss the quiet and I do. Only on the dreariest, saddest evenings would I sit upstairs in front of the large TV. Now we practically live there.
I haven't been to the library for weeks and weeks now. Granted, I haven't finished "War and Peace," but I wasn't really expecting to. About that, I was expecting doom and gloom in that book, instead I found an incredibly detailed description of the social mores of the Russian upper class during that time period. I mean detailed to the point of making note of how an eye brow was raised and then someone else said something in a particular tone of voice and then twisted his body to the left and then someone else smirked.
I did finish "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." I was just curious and nostalgic for a simpler America. It was like reading in sepia tones and it was incredibly off putting to hear the word "nigger" used so casually all the way through the book. It helped put into place all this talk of racism in the political world of late; America has come a long, long way.
But back to the TV: my god, I watch way, way too much. Cable TV is like having a bottomless box of cheap chocolates by the side of the bed. One doesn't want to eat them, knows it will make one sick and yet cannot resist because it is endlessly available. It is much worse because we have a TV in the bedroom and both living areas.
Keith had one of his crew come over to help with a repair on the house. They worked on that all day; it was a bright, cool day and their equipment was all over the yard. There were coiled extension cords, pliers, end bits of boards and over all, the fallen yellow leaves.
Later on that evening, a couple we've been riding with a couple times dropped by. We were suddenly a party, sitting around a football game on a chilly fall evening. The candles were lit and gave the whole room a nice glow.
I don't know how it came up, but Keith's friend Rob mentioned that his wife's pillow was softer than his. Keith exploded beside me, he flung his arms out in exclamation and then leaned forward, roaring on about how thank god someone else could confirm this very important fact: that the women's pillows were indeed softer and therefore greatly to be coveted. Laughter rocked the household as the men expressed their delight in knowing they were not alone in this particular issue.
"Why is this?" my husband demanded. "Why are their pillows always so much better?"
We women were having a side conversation of our own.
"I just end up giving it to him, it's easier that way," she said.
"I don't," I said, stubborn. "That's my damn pillow, that's the pillow I brought with me all the way from New Hampshire. He's not getting my pillow."
He has tried; we had about an hour long wrestling session over said pillow. I may or may not have been knocked out of the bed, but in the end, I retained my rightful property, and my pride.
Shortly after the pillow discovery, the men bounded outside in order to do something unintelligible. Mere seconds later the football game gave way to HGTV's "Color Splash" and we women were comfortably talking about how our men were getting on our last nerve.
"We just spent the last four days arguing," my guest said calmly. She's always calm.
"Us too," I said. "And over the stupidest things. I don't know what the army's thinking, keeping people apart for a whole year and then throwing them together with nothing to do for a month."
We watched the program long enough to critic the end result of the show (too much stripes, uncomfortable looking dog bed...) and then went out to see what the men were up too.
Spot lighted in the glow of the open garage, our men were leaping like baboons on and off the trailer and running at and then over the fence all the while whooping and hollering. Seriously. We watched as one guy tore a fence post loose with his bare hands while another one popped up on the other side of the fence triumphant, lost basketball in hand.
Apparently this is how soldiers in the United States Army play "Around the World." It's not surprising Keith has gone through a number of basketballs in his day.
The couple went home, but the original soldier stayed the night. Keith and he were up until the early morning hours. I came out of the bedroom once to hear Keith talking about the jug of Irish whiskey that has remained untouched on the counter since his return, as the stuff is about a hundred dollars worth of pure burn.
"Honey, are you really getting into that stuff?" I called down from the stair landing.
"Busted," I heard Keith say quietly, with a certain amount of amused resignation.
The soldier did take a shot of the stuff and declared it to be excellent. As he is, in his own words, of pure Irish/Scot stock, I trust his judgement.
Not at all coincidentally, the next morning both of them teetered down the stairs around ten am looking like escapees from a nursing home, in order to fall into the welcoming embrace of the leather sofas and hold their heads. They were fed cheesy eggs and toast, coffee and SunnyD and recovered.
One more day and then Keith and I are heading up to Minnesota for my brother's wedding; over sixteen hours in the truck together.
"It's going to be a fun ride," Keith said to me earlier today, with a Cheshire Cat grin.
I'm sure it will be.
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