Thank God for Monday. This weekend was so busy. We had a pool party on Saturday, so there was much cleaning and preparing to do early on Saturday and the guests stayed until eight pm.
As usual, I was my spaz-o-rific self. Only more so, I'm afraid, because the place I go in order to write Torii doesn't exactly get folded completely away when I'm not writing it, if you know what I mean. So I was super weird and awkward. The only good thing is that I was completely resigned and therefore, sort of cheerfully weird.
I think everyone had a good time; I know the guys did. There were two wives, one I knew from Kentucky and one I had never met before. Naturally, the Kentucky wife and I were more comfortable with each other, which sort of left the other wife out. I noticed this happening and then earnestly tried to include the wife in our conversation, knowing exactly how that feels, having been in her position many times before. I don't know how well I managed it.
I got to hold two babies, one two months and the other five months, which caused me no pain at all and a great deal of pleasure. I seem to be in a completely different place concerning children. It still stings when it occurs to me that we are not conceiving; like, what is wrong with us, exactly? Why not us? It's sort of a passing pain. And sometimes I remember what it was we thought our life would be like, and I feel a certain kind of grief.
Most of the time, however, I'm content. The life I'm living now would be absolutely impossible with a child. There would be no quiet, no time to oneself, no more clean house. There would be no writing. I'm content to be doing this with my life right now.
Later on, we'll adopt. It doesn't matter how old we'll be when we adopt: aging eggs have nothing to do with that. Though, I'm supposed to be signing myself into the doctor's program here so that we can get back into the whole infertility thing.
Anyway, so on Saturday night we had just collapsed onto the bed when Keith got a call from the MPs. A friend of his had been drinking and then had gotten into a major fight. The MPs said either Keith could come pick him up and take him to our house to sober up, or he'd have to spend the night in a barracks room.
So, there we were, out on a little evening jaunt. Before we got there, his wife called and said they'd moved him to the MP office, though we could still pick him up. The problem was, we had no idea where that was.
We asked the gate guard and got almost there, then got turned around and headed all the way back, past that gate and to a dinky little gate in the middle of nowhere. There are no such gates in Ft. Carson, or Ft. Knox that I remember, but Ft. Benning is just full of them.
Make the wrong turn, and they can be staring you down before you know it. They lead nowhere. They are not manned. They have those spike strips laid down, so you can go out, but then never return. You are just ejected, as it were, from paradise, and made to find your own way home.
I said, "The hell with this." and pulled off the road and two MP cars drove on past me. Boy, was that ever eerie. I knew cars were behind me, but I had no idea they were police cars. Thank goodness I didn't know, my anxiety was already high enough as it was.
We turned around and asked at a minimart and headed off again into the night and came to the older part of post. That's the part that looks like the show "Army Wives." It's full of old white stuccoed houses and plaques and the speed limit is 15 miles per hour for miles. And you'd better keep to it, because you don't want some fullbird colonel's wizened wife on the phone to the MPs complaining about the rabble that's speeding down the road at an unthinkable thirty miles per hour, threatening children, toy dogs and patriotic parades.
Anyway. So we crawled along. We were just completely lost, just turning at random along this maze of tiny roads with massive speed bumps, past houses that all looked the same because... wait... they are exactly the same. The same houses, the same parks, the same ghostly trees, trimmed bushes, the same plaques. Over and over and over again, round and round we go.
Finally Keith called the MP back. The MP said it was too late anyway, his boss had come along and made plans for the guy, plans which did not include him getting off the hook. Ironically, mere moments later, Keith exclaimed "I know where we are!" and that is how we found our way home.
Then yesterday, in the pool, Keith said, "Hun, I'm sorry I get so angry at you when you're driving."
And I was all, "That's ok; I know it's because you're stressed out by the circumstances. It's not really about my driving."
A pause, while several expressions passed over his face. "Right...." he said at last. "That's exactly the way it is. It's the circumstances. But I'm telling you, if you were my soldier..." another long pause, "....God help you," he finished solemnly.
