Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

4: 59 am: After an hour of tossing and turning on the bed, Mary decides it is time to get up.

5:01 am: Check email. Nothing from Bill. Haven't heard from him in over 32 hours. His last email said something like: "I'm off on a trip. I'll call when I can. I love you immensely and if this should be the last email you ever get from me, know in your heart that I will always be watching out for you and our precious children." Or something like that.

5:03 am Put on Pingu for Mary to watch. Brew coffee. Say morning prayers. Read headlines off my iTouch. World has not come to an end while I slept.

5:28 am No email.

5:37 am No email.

5:51 am No email.

6:11 am No email. Get dressed. Lace shoes.

6:19 am Put on Dora DVD for Mary. Consider that she watches too much TV. Conclude that pediatricians who establish such guidelines do not have toddlers who wake up before dawn.

6:22 am Get on treadmill. Ponder whether I should call my mother first with any terrible news and then have her call my sister or if I should call my sister and then have her call my mother. Decide that I would be crying too hard to make any phone calls.

7:10 am The boys are awake, and I tell the girls to get up. Open front blinds. Look outside and check for strange cars with uniformed people inside waiting for signs of life so they can come knocking on my door to deliver bad news. See none.

7: 12 am No email.

7:29 am My watch alarm goes off. "Dad's thinking about us," announces Billy for the benefit of those in the next room. I smile, knowing that Bill's watch alarm is also going off. I wonder, if he were dead, if anybody else would hear the alarm and know what it meant.

"Dad should be calling any minute now," says Billy.

"No, honey, Dad is traveling. He doesn't have access to his computer. He's not going to call this morning."

7:31 am My Skype ringer goes off. I guess he's back. And not dead. I answer. I see his face. I smile.

I tell him about looking for a waiting car outside. He smiles and nicely tells me that I'm silly. And that I'm spoiled by daily communication. I agree. I am spoiled. Seeing my husband on the computer or getting emails from him every day is a luxury.

I wish my favorite soldier a happy Veteran's Day. I suggest he take the rest of the day off to celebrate. Alas, a day off is also a luxury. He can take a day off in January.


Tonight, I tried to do my usual Wednesday night grocery run to the commissary. They closed early due to the holiday. I had long forgotten it was Veteran's Day. By this evening, it was just Day 134 without my husband.

All Agreed say "Aye!"

Obama Doesn't "Get" the Military He Commands

Aye!

My Parrot

"DOG-nacious!" exclaims the four year old.

"Dognacious?" I repeat, inquiringly. I look over at the boy, down on his hands and knees, sweeping the leaves into the dust bin, his afternoon chore.

Dognacious? From the root dogno meaning I walk on four legs?

"Oh! PUG-nacious," he corrects himself.

DOG - PUG. I get it. He's just repeating his older siblings' vocabulary words. No big deal. I'm sure there are many preschoolers who randomly exclaim words like pugnacious all the time.

One day this child will write things, and I will need a dictionary to read them.

Because having only one kid with me IS a break

I hired a girl to come over once a week to watch the kids so I can get out. She came last week. And she came this past Wednesday.

Last week was fine. This Wednesday, Peter decided he wanted to come with me. I was less than enthusiastic about having his company, but I know very well the determined look that was on his face. Fighting him was not going to help the situation. I tried a different tactic.

"You don't want to come with me, Petey. I'm going to church."

"I want to go to church with you, Mommy." Ah, such sweet devotion. He would walk through fire, or sit quietly in church, for me.

"I'm running errands, Pete. You don't like to run errands."

"I want to run errands with you, Mommy," he insisted in a tone that betrayed his suspicion that I was on the verge of saying no.

Instead, I relented, and welcomed him. Really, a four year old is not as difficult as a two year old, especially if he has my exclusive attention. Besides, if I happily took with with me, perhaps he could see just how boring Mommy's errands were and decide staying home building houses from leaves with his siblings was an infinitely better way to spend the afternoon.

And so we went. First, to the library where we looked only at grownups books since we had gone the day before for kids' books. And then to the dry cleaners, a place devoid of entertainment. Then briefly into a tent in the parking lot that advertised furniture. Nothing interesting there. Then to the PX.

First, we explored the hair product aisle in search of some magic potion that would render his sisters' tangled messes comb-able. And we looked at hairbrushes, since they constantly misplace theirs. Then we looked at lipstick. As I stared at the seemingly endless ocean of color choices, Peter kept busy a few feet away. When I looked over, I realized he was neatening the display. Instead of tubes of lipstick arranged in apparently random order, he had tidied it up and placed all the lipstick to the far left filling each slot before moving to the next column.

We put them back.

I did let him pick some chocolate in the checkout line, provided he share with me. He picked Lindt milk chocolates. Excellent taste.

Then off to a friend's house to return some things. This was the only fun part, and I tried to keep it as brief as possible.

Then to Bed, Bath & Beyond for miscellaneous items, including my own stocking stuffers, which Bill will not be home in time to do. Buying one's own stocking stuffers has certain advantages. I'm pretty sure I'll like what I got.

Finally, off to church for as long as he could bear. OK, as long as I could bear.

Last night at dinner, I cheerfully asked him if we had had fun. He agreed. "And you're coming with me next week, too...right?" I said with enthusiasm.

"No!" he stated, emphatically.

"Aw, come on. It was great. You have to come with me," I insisted.

"No!" he said again.

Success! I thought triumphantly. And then Jenny spoke up.

"I'll go with you," she offered. Uhhh....

"We'll go to church..." I warned.

The pot calling the kettle extremist

GOP Gains Could Hurt Obama Political Capital, If Not Agenda - FOXNews.com: "Still, Democrats suggest the Tuesday night wins are anything but helpful to the Republican Party.

'They're in a civil war over the definition of their party,' said Paul Blank, a Democratic consultant. 'And the extremists have won.'"

Yes, and the Democrats know all about that.

Uncertain

If the couple in the pew behind you, who talked throughout the entire Mass, tells you how well-behaved your children are, can you take it as a complement? Or can you just assume they have no idea of what they speak?