I haven't been a very good wife for the past few years.

I was thinking the other day about how miserably I failed for my husband's birthday.  Granted, we still didn't have a mailing address for him, but I was so nonchalant about it.  And this year I didn't get him anything for our anniversary either.  He comes in and says he'd like to give me my present, and I just stared at him.  Then he laughed and said, "You mean I freaked out and ran out to buy you something for no good reason?"  Ha.  The thought really just hadn't crossed my mind.

The first time he was deployed, I mailed him 24 presents for his 24th birthday.  It came so easily to me.

But I have been absentminded since then.  I have been so focused on this whole stupid having a baby thing that I have really been lazy about being a good wife.

And I feel guilty that now I miss him, but in a selfish way.  Like I need him to be here to dote on me, to encourage me, to be Randall to my Dante.  I am bitter that I have to cash my chips via email.

But he is busy and stressed and frustrated with his own issues.  And the poor man can't cash any chips at all.  He alludes to the desire to, but he's not allowed.

Our lives are too complicated right now, in two completely different ways.

I miss the simple days.  Bringing him sack lunch while he was the gold bar recruiter.  Quizzing him for his vehicle identification test at OBC.  Studying for our German driver's license together.  The first deployment, when all I did was brainstorm ways to make him smile.

I was looking at old photos of us the other day, and somehow my husband turned into a man while I wasn't paying attention.  The difference between 19 and 29 is astounding.

I've been too preoccupied to miss him yet...but I miss him this morning.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:02 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 341 words, total size 2 kb.

The next ten books in my 2009 George Bush Reading Challenge.

JULY

30) Anthem (Ayn Rand)
Quick and good, as usual.

29) Hemma hos Martina (Martina Haag)
I try to read occasionally in French and Swedish, since reading is the only way to keep up my skills.  Only until this year, I thought I was doing it a lot more frequently.  It's amazing how few books I can read in a year!  But my friend sent me this book at Christmas and I hadn't gotten around to reading it yet.  And thank heavens, because it was about a pregnant lady.  It might not have been so charming to read a few months ago.  But I got to learn lots of new Swedish words that never come up in regular conversation: moderkaka, förlossning, fostervattnet, mödravÃ¥rdstant, etc.  Because when I lived there ten years ago, I didn't have conversations about placentas and amniotic fluid.

28) Cool It (Bjørn Lomborg)
I loved the article "Get Your Priorities Right" when I read it three years ago, and Cool It is a fleshed-out version of how we would get more bang for our buck solving other problems like malaria and AIDS than global warming. I usually use Lomborg's ideas when debating global warming with believers because, while I am still skeptical, Lomborg definitely believes in anthropogenic global warming...yet he still doesn't think we should make it our top priority. It makes for good middle ground with believers: even if you concede that global warming is real and is caused by man, there is still a debate to be had over whether it is our most pressing global issue. Bjørn Lomborg says no way.

27) The Sandbox (milbloggers)
I still have to review this for SpouseBUZZ.  I will link my review once I write it, hopefully by the end of this week.
Update: Um, it took more than a week, but here it is.

26) Congo (Michael Crichton)
I was halfway through The Sandbox when my husband deployed, and I didn't exactly feel like reading military stories the night he left, so I grabbed a Crichton book instead. It didn't disappoint.

25) Blowback (Brad Thor)
My favorite Brad Thor book so far. But "so far" is definitely a relative term.

24) The 5000 Year Leap (W. Cleon Skousen)
Glenn Beck has been promoting this book, so I picked it up. It was good, but it's kinda...basic for me. I think it would've been much more valuable to read when I was 18 instead of now. There were some more in-depth lessons that I appreciated, such as the one on the origins of separation of powers, but overall I think I already grasped most of the lessons. But I'll hang on to it and hand it to my kid someday.

JUNE

23) My Grandfather's Son (Clarence Thomas)
Back in February, Amy recommended this book. I went back and read her recommendation today, and she was totally right: I got such a jolt when Clarence Thomas first discovered Thomas Sowell! I enjoyed reading this book and was saddened that the only mental association I previously had with this man had to do with a Coke can. To have worked his whole life, up from not having electricity and running water, to have it culminate in that. It's depressing, really.

22) Natural Selection (Dave Freedman)
This novel's premise was Michael Crichton-esque: What if nature made an evolutionary leap and a new predator emerged from the depths of the oceans? The cover proclaimed the book to be a great "beach read," but that would've scared the bejesus out of me. As it stands, I have been wary of my plecostomus ever since...

21) Discover Your Inner Economist (Tyler Cowen)
While there were times when it felt like Cowen was a little too SWPL for me, overall the book was interesting. I especially liked learning about micro-credit, and I immediately went to Kiva.org and donated to a bricklayer in Tajikistan. I begged my husband to let us pick out someone to lend to once a month. I have long felt like I wanted to do more giving, and the idea of "lending to the working poor" immediately appealed to me. I am so motivated to keep this up.

Previous lists:
Book List II
Book List I

Posted by: Sarah at 08:24 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 718 words, total size 6 kb.