Exhausted
We spent the day at the White House. No, really, we did. Check it out. I’ve got pictures to prove it, but I’m exhausted, so I’ll share tomorrow.
Early Easter Fun
Good things do happen to us, too! It’s hard to remember that when times become difficult and things start to pile on.
Last Saturday we had chance to have a little early Easter fun at the base egg hunt. Boo complained that it wasn’t Easter yet. True, we told him, but this event was going to have very little to do with the Resurrection, so it was less about the date on the calendar and more about just having a good time.
The hunt was run by Youth Services, which on this base is well known for being, how shall we say it…disorganized. I’ll give them credit though, because it was better laid out than previous years.
First up was Bip’s category – 2-3 year olds. We gave him a briefing and he was all fine and good until the Easter Bunny showed up. Then he sort of hid himself in his hood and eyed the giant furry creature suspiciously. Once I jumped in and helped him walk around the scary bunny man, he was fine. A lot of over enthusiastic first-time parents got in the way of picking up eggs, with their camcorders, staged photos and “Honey, sweetie, look over here! look at mommy!”. I’ve done this many times now and realized that a good, candid shot is too hard to get, so I didn’t have my camera out.
Bip got about 5 eggs and one had a prize ticket that entitled him to 2 bags of candy instead of one. He refused to return his eggs and I didn’t want to make a scene. Next year I’ll just bring a few from home and toss them into the box. Maybe.
We had to wait a bit until Pumpkin Girl in the 6-7 year old group was up. While we stood next to the field, we were treated to a mom firmly telling her son to “just get a lot of eggs.” I resisted the urge to loudly tell Pumpkin, “Just have a good time.” We should have had to wait another 5 minutes, but for some reason they started Pumpkin’s group early. She was much faster than Bip and had part of the field almost to herself. She practically filled up her basket, but didn’t find any prize tickets. She had fun anyway. I heard Competitive Mom saying, “Thirty six eggs and not one prize!” Hmm.
Boo’s field was set and ready. As soon as Pumpkin’s group had turned in all their eggs and collected their candy and prizes, they let Boo’s group go, even though now they were a good 20 minutes earlier than the published time. Boo had almost half a field to himself and was even casually strolling as he picked up eggs.  He moved so slow that I got a picture. That boy found himself two of the big prize tickets. When he claimed his prizes, we were surprised to find that he had won a boy Easter basket and a girl Easter basket. Bip was thrilled to see that the boy basket contained a bouncy ball and he kept saying, “Boo play ball with me outside?” Pumpkin Girl was over the moon with the big Easter bunny in the other basket, which Boo generously gave to her.
After we got over our excitement, turned in our empty eggs, and took some pictures, we were ready to go. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I noticed the time – 10:30, the same time that Boo’s age group was scheduled. I felt bad for any families that might have shown up thinking they were on time for that group, only to find out that they’d missed the whole thing. I wonder how many complaints Youth Services got about that.
They are happier than they look here, the sun is just in their eyes.
Finally, I have to share one more picture of the other furry creature at the egg hunt. It had quite a lot of people stumped, but I have it on good authority that it’s the base mascot. Nothing quite says “Easter” than a goose, don’t you think?
Calm Before the Storm
This week has been such a nice one. Because it is Spring Break, Pumpkin Girl didn’t have ballet class and we don’t have either our homeschooling group or a Brownie meeting. Not those things aren’t fun, but they take time out of our day and can add to the feeling of having to rush around. We have absolutely no where we need to be this week.
The temperatures have been mild, sort of jacket weather, sort of not. We had a gentle rain today. I let the children watch some extra TV because Pumpkin Girl had a fever and the boys were stir crazy. I made chicken pot pie for dinner. All was well.
Do you sense the other shoe about to drop? I sure didn’t.
Pumpkin Girl sat up and said maybe she was having an allergic reaction to something. She said she had bumps on her forehead. I took a look at her and sure enough – bumps. But not hives. I took a look at her chest and stomach – more little bumps all over her. She also had a sore throat with her fever, which I had totally forgotten is a symptom of strep throat. So much for my nice calm week.
I called a friend who called a nurse ( no such thing as an advice nurse with military medicine anymore), and I called a nurse (my mom) who called a doctor. My friend and I consulted books and the internet. The verdict: scarlet fever.
Time: just past duty hours. Which means a trip to the ER.
And I forgot to mention that Philip is TDY again. So after dinner I bundled my crew into the car and head out to Andrews AFB. If it was strep throat/scarlet fever we’re dealing with, there was no way I could leave them with a friend. Better to expose the already sick people in the ER. Plus, they could swab us all and we’d all come home with antibiotics and be all happy in a day or two.
Wrong!
Pumpkin Girl’s scarlet fever was confirmed. They wouldn’t even deal with the rest of us who didn’t have symptoms. The pharmacy was closed and they didn’t have antibiotics for us to take home. The only off base pharmacies I know of are in the absolute worst part of DC. Nobody I know, man or woman, goes to the area right outside our base after dark. So three hours later, I have a prescription to fill first thing in the morning. I will spare you a diatribe about the quality of military medicine and what a waste of time it can be.
The good news is, scarlet fever isn’t the terror it used to be. We all know about Helen Keller and Mary Ingalls, but nowadays we’ve got good antibiotics to square us away. That is, when the pharmacy is open.
The Annual Cursing of the Shamrocks
Every year it’s the same thing. In a burst of motherly love, I don the apron, drag out the jar of cookie cutters, the mixer and flour and get to work making St. Patrick’s Day cookies. I don’t mind making cookies, especially if they are of the drop onto the cookie sheet variety. Half the fun comes from sampling the dough – strictly for quality control reasons I assure you – and the finished product isn’t so bad either. Cookies are easy and I often grit my teeth and let my children help.
But when the occasion calls for sugar cookies, watch out.
I usually forget that I’m supposed to make sugar cookies until the actual day arrives. Probably a form of self preservation. I pull out the recipe – butter, sugar, flour -easy enough, right? A little food coloring to match the holiday. Still good. Wrap the dough and refrigerate for an hour. Dig out the pretty pink silicone rolling pin. Get out the flour shaker.
And then it all goes to hell in a handbasket.
My pink rolling pin does wonders on any kind of dough. You should see me whip out a pie crust. But sugar cookie dough is a whole other monster. That stuff sticks like, well, like cookie dough to a rolling pin. Finally, after much muttering under my breath, the dough is rolled out. I proceed to cutting out the shamrocks. My first attempt is with a plastic green shamrock cookie cutter. The problem is that the stem keeps falling off the shamrock before I can even get it to the cookie sheet. Over the years I stopped even trying to stick it back on because then the stem only falls off the baked cookie.
It’s not my fault, of course. The cookie cutter has been engineered poorly. See – the stem is so narrow that you can’t stick your finger through it to push the cookie out. Every time I roll out the dough, I am only getting about 5 cookies successfully on to the cookie sheet.
By this time my children have discovered me. Cries of “ooo! Shamrock cookies!” and “Can I help?” and a round of the Donut Man song “God is three in one, three in one” are met with “Get. Out. Of. The. Kitchen!”
First batch in the oven and I’m swearing under my breath like Yosemite Sam. Frickin’ frackin’ frickin’ frackin’ tarnation shamrock cookies! Because nothing says “let’s celebrate the lives of the saints” more than mom cursing the shamrocks.
I do this every year. Every. Year.
This year, however, I remembered that I might have my mom’s shamrock cookie cutter that she used when I was a kid. It’s not really a shamrock, though, it’s a club, like in a suite of cards. Took me until high school to figure that one out.
Turns out I don’t have the club/shamrock cutter, but I found a different metal shamrock that I think my mom gave me after last year’s Shamrock Debacle. While not as cute as the plastic shamrock cutter, this one’s stem is large enough to poke your finger through. Plus, being metal, it gives a sharper cut.
Behold – almost 4 dozen shamrock cookies:
If that doesn’t say “love”, I don’t know what does.
Anticipation
Originally written on March 1, 2008
Philip is on his way home, or at least I think so. Last I heard, he was going to board a C-17 in the wee hours of March 1 and then a commercial airline for the rest of the trip home. He’s been calling almost every day, so I assume that since I have not heard from him, that he’s en route. I guess I’ll know when he either calls from the airport or shows up at our front door.
I’m trying not to think about it.
I’m tired of driving. I hate driving. With a passion. Yes, “hate” is a strong word and if I could use a stronger one I would. “Despise” might do the trick. Yes, I despise driving. I’m tired of dragging everyone to folklorico class, 30 minutes each way, every Saturday. A few Hail Marys each time I start the car, the GPS and snacks for the kids to keep them quiet got me to and from my destination safely. On our way home today, as we took the exit that would bring us back to the safety of our base, I was filled with relief. This will be the last time I have to drive to folklorico class. Next week I can stay home and let Bip nap and have quiet house to myself. I almost cried with relief as the MP inspected my ID and waved me in. This was the Last Thing I Had to Cope With. Phil will be home tomorrow.
I hope. Maybe he was delayed along the way and he won’t make it until Monday.
But I’ll try not to think about it. Sunday or Monday, it won’t make that big of a difference. Which ever day he shows up, all the weight of sustaining our family alone will be off of my shoulders. I know I was lucky in that this could have been a year or longer deployment. But I also know my own limits and I have to say that if this had been a longer deployment, many of our outside activities would have been dropped. And I would have found a nice babysitter who was available late afternoons to come by so I could run to the commissary or PX while Bip napped.
So in 24 -26 hours, this will all be over. Maybe. It’s the not knowing for sure that’s doing me in.
Soldiering On
A soldier’s absence always seems to trigger all sorts of minor disasters. While Philip was gone:
An old friend (both in terms of age and years we’ve known him) died.
One former next door neighbor was in a horrible car accident in Israel and was not expected to live. (She is still alive, thank God!)
Another former next door neighbor’s house was damaged in a tornado. They lost all their outdoor toys, both cars and their sofas. Everyone survived.
(ok, so those three things were major disasters)
The toilet plugged up and the plunger broke.
The humidifier broke.
The master bathroom lost it’s electricity.
I got the flu.
I discovered that one of Bip’s repaired teeth had fallen apart.
As I type this on February 21, we still have over a week left on our own. I’m hoping we’ll make it. No, I know we will. We will keep the home fires burning. We will soldier on because it is what we must do. We try not to complain.
We’re not always successful.
Ow
Originally written on February 9, 2008
Every muscle in my body aches, especially the toddler lifting ones. In general, I make Bip move around life by his own power. He’s just too darn heavy to be lifting and carrying all over the place. Plus, that’s what dad is for. But being on single parent duty has shifted all the Bip carrying responsibilities to my shoulders. Literally.
Not to mention that today I had to do one of my least favorite, most hated activites: driving. Not just driving, but driving on the freeway. In Washington, DC. I had to take Boo and Pumpkin Girl to their Mexican folkdance class w-a-y over in Virginia. (Yeah, so it was only in Arlington, but I’m complaining mode, so work with me here.) Of course, this dance class is at the exact same time that Bip has his nap. And with no one else to do the driving or the staying home, he got to skip his nap and join us.
So there I am, driving along, probably all tensed up around the shoulders, trying to listen to the nice lady in my GPS tell me where to turn, hauling the hefty toddler in and out of the car, sitting on the cold hard floor for an hour and driving back. The long way, over the Wilson Bridge, because I’m too chicken to try to go back the way we came.
And we went to church tonight, where Bip fell asleep in my arms. At the time it seemed like a good idea for him to sleep because he was acting all silly, which I know is very distracting for the entire congregation sitting behind us. Which is everyone, because my children make me sit in the front row. So he fell asleep in my arms, and I held him standing up, and I held him half kneeling, until I got brave enough to lay him down in the pew. He slept through the whole thing. Me, I can hardly move my arms.
At dinner time, I can barely hold myself upright. Pumpkin Girl asks if this is week 2 of daddy being gone. “No honey”, I tell her. “It’s day 4. ”
Ow.
The Next Thing
The first few hours of a deployment are oddly the same and predictably different. We close the door behind us, shutting out the rest of the world blissfully living its life. We look at each other, wipe away the tears and blow our noses. We smile and say, “We can do this,” and hope that we speak the truth.
Pumpkin Girl and Bip return to the living room to finish the movie they were watching when Philip’s ride arrived. Boo, my tenderhearted boy, seeks refuge upstairs. I can hear him crying. Actually, he doesn’t cry so much as he howls. No subtlety for that one. A few minutes he emerges, looking much smaller than usual and clutching his three best “warriors” – Bear, Sock Monkey and Donald Duck. I meet him at the bottom of the stairs and give him a hug and he starts howling again.
Boo will bear the brunt of this separation in different way than his siblings. He’s already known way too much loss and sadness for a boy his age and his already soft heart is heavily bruised. Someone once described him as being “sifted like Paul.” So I will do my best to take his burden upon myself.
“Boo,” I say, looking into his eyes, “we CAN do this. It isn’t going to be easy, but we will make it. What we need to do is take it one step at a time. We need to just make it through tonight and it’ll get easier. Do you think you can make it through tonight?”
He starts howling again. “Ok, then let’s do this – let’s just get through the movie. Then after the movie, we’ll work on getting through bedtime. Then we’ll just go to sleep and it’ll be morning and we’ll be through the first night.”
He sighs heavily and takes his warriors to finish the movie.
I stand up and try to figure out what to do next. I know that I, too, just need to get through one moment at a time. I go into the kitchen to try to find something to do. I see Philip’s commuter coffee mug in the dish strainer. I put it away. I find a few other of his things sitting where he left them. I take care of them, too, trying not to get too maudlin over how long it’ll be until he needs them again.
For tonight and the rest of this separation, we will survive by just getting to the next thing. When it gets to be too much, we will just focus on that next thing, each note on the calendar bringing us closer to reunion.
The Final Hours
The final hours before a deployment or an extended TDY are the worst. The pit that’s been growing in your stomach slowly rises and lodges itself in your throat. Each passing minute brings another last moment. This is the last time he’ll tuck them in for a long time. This is the last story he’ll read, the last prayer, the last hug, the last kiss.
A million tasks, both big and small, steal the time. The to-do list grows longer, then shorter until there is nothing left. Brave smiles betray the emotions that are brewing.
Finally it’s time. There’s not much more that can be said and nothing more that can be done. It’s time to say goodbye.
And just like that…he’s gone.
note: On Tuesday, February 5th, Philip left for what turned into a 4 week temporary duty assignment (TDY) in Afghanistan. In the interest of security – both mine and his- I chose not to mention it until he safely returned. However, I did continue to blog during this time and over the next several days I’ll share those posts with you in the order they were written. Philip will have some guest posts, too, as I share some of the emails he sent.