First, it was Michael Crichton's linking horse manure to predicting the next century.

Now it's Thomas Sowell:

For thousands of years, horses had been the way to go, whether in buggies or royal coaches, whether pulling trolleys in the cities or plows on the farms. People had bet their futures on something with a track record of reliable success going back many centuries.

Were all these people to be left high and dry? What about all the other people who supplied the things used with horses-- oats, saddles, horse shoes and buggies? Wouldn't they all go falling like dominoes when horses were replaced by cars?

Unfortunately for all the good people who had in good faith gone into all the various lines of work revolving around horses, there was no compassionate government to step in with a bailout or a stimulus package.

If there's a bad analogy involving horses at the turn of the century, I haven't heard it!

Posted by: Sarah at 03:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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My friend said something a while back to the effect of: Sometimes life gets so crappy that you forget it's not normal to do shots of vodka at 3 PM. It made me snicker at the time. I was reminded of it today at 3 PM and thought, what the heck.

Hooo boy. Why couldn't she have said "White Russians" instead?

Posted by: Sarah at 10:14 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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We had a new ETA for late tonight, so I ran some errands today and started getting excited. I came home to a new message on my machine saying that this timeline is also not happening anymore. The husband is stuck in Europe, waiting on his next leg of the journey. Maybe tomorrow will be our lucky day. Right? This is excruciating.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:12 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The last time, I had a vivid dream about the welcome home ceremony. Last night I dreamt that the husband and I were back together in our kitchen. I was wearing the outfit I plan to wear to pick him up, and he was drinking a beer. I woke up with a jolt and realized disappointedly that it was just a dream.

Today has been a very long day. Right now was the original time I was supposed to go pick him up.

I thought I'd better get back to Real blogging today instead of this dumb personal stuff I've been doing. But I can't seem to concentrate on anything lately. I just can't get into the news. Even Blagojevich's bleep-laden tirades couldn't compel me to blog. Only to laugh at home and tease my parents about living in Illinois.

I'm just sitting here crocheting and looking at the clock. Maybe I ought to do some things on that list; it seems healthier than this Waiting Game. I thought about going in to work today even though I got the day off, but the only task I have left to do at work is to put together more of those foam structures. That definitely ain't healthy.

And I haven't heard anything else today, no more updates, no new timeline, no hint of things to come.

Just lots of crocheting.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:59 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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One chore down...

Poor fella. It's hard out here for a pup.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Aw, crap.
I just KNEW it was too good to be true.
Just got word that the husband's return has been delayed.

Man.....now there's no excuse for not washing the dog or cleaning the carpet.

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I was starting to panic a little that I got nothing constructive done today. And then I did some thinking and decided to throw the list out the window.

I see knitting and Futurama in my future, not vacuums and dog baths.

Posted by: Sarah at 01:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So T linked to my brain love post, and I realized that I have recently said that I only love my husband with my brain and that I don't want babymaking. Lest anyone think that our love is boring and passionless, I thought I'd point out an old post from his last deployment:

Anthology of Goofy Crap I Said to My Husband Back in 2000

We are mushy too, not just cerebral. I love him with my brain and my heart, and though I often quote that we "care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss"...really, I do love him with all those body parts too.

He will be home so soon...and I am thrilled.

Posted by: Sarah at 01:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I've only seen the Terminator movies once before, and I was excited to see T2 again. But...I had forgotten how frustrating it is. I mean, the premise of these movies is great: an unstoppable killing machine. (Though Lileks is right that "the abuse that was once reserved for the Terminator is now doled out to human beings, and they not only arenÂ’t killed instantly, they are capable of acrobatic fistfights while hanging from one hand in a elevator shaft.") And this movie has the absolute greatest villain of all time. Robert Patrick turns my blood cold. He could play Santa Claus and I would be scared to death of him.

But the movie is just so interminably annoying. We're going to change the future and save three billion people from dying, but we can't kill anyone in the process because that's mean. John Connor might die and the world could end, but heaven forbid we kill a rent-a-cop. Enough with the lectures on morality and how evil technology is. Oh, and that speech that Sarah Connor gives about how all men do is destroy but women create because they have wombs blah blah blah. Give me a break.

I have lower standards than just about anyone when it comes to action movies. I will tolerate a lot of crap. But despite having the coolest bad guy of all time, T2 is really preachy. Stop with the voice-overs and get to the terminating already.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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This Stossel article is exactly what I'm scared to death of...
And this Boortz article would be awesome but will never happen...

(Both links via Conservative Grapevine)

Posted by: Sarah at 04:17 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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My husband has moved on, from where he was to where he will be. He is still In Country, but he is making progress towards home.

I keep finding myself doing the opposite of what I did with the tortillas earlier this year: every time I hear a deadline, I rejoice that it's after my husband's return. My husband gets home before our milk expires. He gets home before the movie I rented is due. He gets home soon.

God willing and the Creek don't rise, as they say around here.

(And in answer to the couple of questions I've gotten about what actually constitutes a "single digit midget': less than 10 days.)

Posted by: Sarah at 04:01 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I chuckled out loud:

Unemployment claims jumped to a 7-year high the week after Obama won the election. Not because of the slow economy, but because “Yes I Can” was added to the application as a valid reason.

(link via Amritas)

Posted by: Sarah at 03:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I don't like many modern love stories, but I do like the old ones. I watched Sabrina tonight and took pause at this conversation between the Larabee brothers:

But you've got all the money in the world!

What's money got to do with it? If making money were all there was to business, it'd hardly be worthwhile going to the office. Money is a by-product.

Then what's the main objective? Power?

Bah, that's become a dirty word.

Well then, what's the urge? You're going into plastics now; what will that prove?

Prove? Nothing much. A new product has been found, something of use to the world, so a new industry moves into an undeveloped area, factories go up, machines are brought in, harbors are dug, and you're in business. It's purely coincidental, of course, that people who never saw a dime before suddenly have a dollar, and barefooted kids wear shoes and have their teeth fixed and their faces washed.

That's so Reardon-esque that it made me swoon.

And I wonder...does the 1995 remake have the same speech? I may have to watch someday to find out.

Why do I doubt it though...

Posted by: Sarah at 04:29 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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When my husband is gone, my bedtime creeps later and later. I have begun the process of pushing it back to where it needs to be to match my husband's sleep cycle. So Saturday was my last hurrah and I was going to go to bed early last night.

I let Charlie outside one last time, and I noticed he was spending a suspicious amount of time in the garden. We came back in the house, went upstairs, and he immediately crawled under the bed and barfed.

Had he mathematically calculated, he couldn't have done a better job of finding the middle of our queen sized bed. So I'm squeezed under the bed, my arm stretched as far as it will go, scooping up vomit.

Then I notice that the genius dog has also barfed all over his front paws. So into the bathtub he goes.

Guess who didn't really go to bed early last night?

Sleep shifting starts tonight...

Posted by: Sarah at 03:45 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 I'm LMAO. I'm sorry. I really am. But that's the funniest thing I've read all morning.

Posted by: airforcewife at December 08, 2008 06:53 AM (Fb2PC)

2 I thought my canines had the corner on the doggy brain trust market. I apologize. I'm sure it was because Charlie spent entirely too much time with Henry & Annie this summer. They were a bad influence on his mojo.

Posted by: Guard Wife at December 08, 2008 11:39 AM (N3nNT)

3 Sounds like motherhood

Posted by: Green at December 08, 2008 03:01 PM (6Co0L)

4 Good thing he is so darn cute! I'm not sure it is any sillier than Moo eating a 3-pound bag of Starburst then puking on the bed. He probably just needs an extra tummy rub.

Posted by: Butterfly Wife at December 09, 2008 11:59 AM (H+5RX)

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A couple of you have been freaked out of late by my blog post titles. No, I'm not throwing in the towel anytime soon. You're stuck with me.

By the way, I finally watched The Terminator tonight. And yes, other people on my case, I have gotten the memo that The Wire is good. I plan to watch that with my husband though, not without him. I gotta get my chick flicks in before he gets home...what guy wants to watch Die Hard or The Terminator?

Oh wait...

And while I have your attention: did one of you lovely imaginary people get me one of these fantastic bracelets for Christmas? It came in the mail with no note, and it's not from my mother or husband, so I'm clueless.

Incidentally, my husband said, "Oh, well dang...wish I had thought of it."

Posted by: Sarah at 03:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 LOVE that bracelet! Etsy is so fun. Wish I could say I found that for you, but I'm not that cool apparently.

Posted by: Guard Wife at December 07, 2008 09:21 AM (eb8pN)

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[Cross-posted at SpouseBUZZ]

AWTM has the distinction at SpouseBUZZ, like it or not, of being our resident go-to person on reintegration. And I personally always felt fine letting her have that title, because I didn't really grok her experience. I always assumed that her discomfort with reintegration came from the fact that she had babies while her husband was gone, so they went from being just a couple to being a family. Or I thought it was because her husband came back changed. Or that they were having a hard time getting back in sync as a family when he got home. Since I had not experienced any of those things, I never fully understood AWTM's trepidation about reintegration.

But I wrote before that deployments are like snowflakes. I was talking about my soldier in that case, but I am starting to see that deployments can feel very different from the homefront too.

My husband's first deployment was harder on him than this one has been: tougher mission, less amenities, more danger, longer deployment time. He was out in the thick of things and had some difficult experiences. During that deployment, my life was relatively straightforward. Nothing big happened to me that year, so our focus was on my husband and how he would react coming home.

This time around has been the reverse. My husband's job is easier -- safer, shorter, and relatively cushy -- but my life has been tumultuous. I have gone through some pretty heavy emotional growth in the past eight months. And all of a sudden, we're single digit midgets...and I am starting to think that this reintegration will play out differently.

AWTM called me the other day and asked me how I was doing. I didn't even fully realize that I was so apprehensive until she began to drag it out of me. And then she told me something that I know will be part of my vocabulary for the rest of my life. She told me about an interview with Mike Myers in which he talks about how hard it was to lose his father:

I've always felt I was given these emotional casino chips which had no value until I went home and told my dad about things. My father was like my spiritual cash window. I would tell him about stuff, just to hear his reaction.

AWTM said that she and I and people like us need a "spiritual cash window." We need someone to vent to, to rehash every detail of our day with, to take note of every ebb and flow of our emotional cycle. We need someone to cash our chips in to. And for both of us, that person is our husband. So when our husbands are gone, we stockpile our emotional casino chips.

I seem to have a lot of emotional chips from this deployment.

I have started to realize this past week that I am afraid of overwhelming my husband when he gets home. I am afraid that when he walks in that door, I am going to unload on him like a firehose. I'm afraid I won't be able to pace myself...because I have over seven months of chips in my hands that I am going to dump on him at once.

And I've realized that I am also sad that he hasn't been here for me to cash my chips in to on a daily basis. He hasn't seen me grow moment by moment. He is going to get the insane recap version at the end, where I have to explain every detail of everything that has happened to me lately.

And how do you do that? How do you explain what you were feeling six months ago and still make it relevant? How do you tell someone that, while you are no longer feeling stressed about X, Y, or Z, you used to feel stressed about it and therefore would still like to cash it in?

Poor husband.

My husband does not have emotional casino chips. The last time he was gone, the majority of the fighting and danger he faced happened at the beginning of his deployment. By the time he got home eight months later, that was old news to him. That was over and done with. He didn't need to cash it in. And I remember feeling a tad hurt that he didn't need to do this, like what did he need me for if I wasn't his spiritual cash window? I didn't understand how he could've had these enormous life experiences -- to include watching a man die -- and not need to cash it in.

I just never knew how to put that feeling into words.

I have always known I am this kind of person, but it took AWTM acknowledging it and giving it a name for me to realize how important it is to me and how hesitant I feel about our reintegration this time around.

Because, boy, do I have chips that need cashing.

And all of a sudden, I understood what AWTM has been talking about for years. It clicked for me, and I realized that it wasn't just having her husband underfoot in the house, or that he had a daughter he had never met, or that he might be jumpy or less patient. It was that she held these chips too and didn't know how to cash them in.

I didn't realize that she was this type of person too, and I think we both felt some relief talking about it on the phone and realizing that we're not the only one who holds these emotional chips.

Heck, Mike Myers does too. Maybe he should read SpouseBUZZ...

Posted by: Sarah at 02:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I had my FRG meeting tonight. The ladies were nice. I love our Rear D commander.

And we have a return date.

The end was so much harder for me last time. Last time, my husband was one of the last people home. I watched all my friends and neighbors welcome their husbands home three weeks before I did. That was rough. Last time my husband came home with a whole brigade, so there were ceremonies and fanfare. This time it's just a handful of families, and since all my friends are imaginary, it doesn't matter like it did last time. I honestly haven't been thinking about it. Even when Sis B's husband came home yesterday, it still didn't feel like my turn was coming up.

Even when I heard the dates and started talking about the return process -- where to pick him up, what he will need to do afterwards, when block leave starts -- it didn't really sink in.

But since I was on post, I had decided to make a stop at the Class Six: the husband has put in his booze request. And as I circled the store shopping, I started thinking that soon we would be drinking that booze together.

And then shit just got real: I am a few days away from being a single digit midget.

Couldn't wipe the grin off my face in that Class Six.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:58 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 WOOHOO!!! I am dancing in joy for ya.

Posted by: Reasa at December 05, 2008 06:01 PM (2W7Iu)

2 =).

Posted by: Lucy at December 05, 2008 08:45 PM (nzG0t)

3 Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Terrific news!!

Posted by: Guard Wife at December 06, 2008 04:04 AM (eb8pN)

4 Hey, we're double digit midgets here! Can't wait till he's home again for you! How exciting!

Posted by: Angie at December 06, 2008 06:09 AM (yvfxR)

5 Yay!!! Can't wait for you to have your Hubby home again! What wonderful, happy news!!! :-)

Posted by: kannie at December 06, 2008 06:56 AM (iT8dn)

6 Congrats! And you've already got the booze to celebrate, so you're set!

Posted by: Tootie at December 06, 2008 09:46 AM (xIMg9)

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Frank J: In My World: New National Security Team

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I don't watch American Idol or shows like it, but I happened upon a youtube tonight of the winner of the British version. Paul Potts is a real life Mr. Tanner, only with a happy ending.

This clip of his initial tryout for the show is excellent. You can just see the dread on the judges' faces when he says he's going to sing opera.

It is beautiful.

Why don't we get opera singers winning American Idol?

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I have never heard the expression "That just rips my knitting" -- which apparently is Scottish for "chaps my hide" -- but I totally want to start using it.

Learned here, in an excellent post by Wendy Sullivan at Ladyblog. Which they describe "Like Fight Club, but with better hygiene." Heh.

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