Day Four - February 4, 2010

The streets appear to be mainly clear and the girls are back in school today. I’m very happy with our morning routine for the most part – as I continue to experience this deployment, I am finding I really enjoy being a “routine-ish” type person. Things just feel right and calm. Last night was my second consecutive night of a full sleep – I think by ending my day on my knees in prayer and giving the burden to God, that relieves so much. I have been staying up later than I normally would though – my main reason is to ensure the girls are sleeping soundly and all is okay. I’ve also been turning on the inside alarm just in case someone tries to get in or someone tries to get out – just an added level of peace for me.

I was able to talk with my wife last night around 10:30 eastern time. She had just gotten back to the barracks from a long day on the shooting range. Trust me when I say she is girl through-and-through – she said she had never been so dirty in her entire life from her day of crawling and shooting from the prone position. But it sounded as if she had a decent day and was adjusting.

Back to the morning routine. The alarm goes off at 5:00 am. After turning off the alarm I thank God for another day as well as a peaceful night. From there it is off to my desk to read the Bible. I have one of those read through the bible in a year books – some years I’m pretty good at it, other years not so good. I’ve had this particular study since 1985 – the year of my first Navy deployment. After finishing the daily reading, I check e-mails and send out the daily “Make a Difference” reading for the day – a large group of people from various companies and some of my friends get a daily (Monday through Friday) e-mail where we read a book together – actually it is an executive synopsis of a business book. I read these books first and then share them with friends and others. From there it is off to get the 2nd grader up and going. She’s not a problem on school days – she pops out of bed and is ready for the shower. We wash hair and she takes care of the body, then dressed, dry hair and she’s off downstairs. She’ll wake up the dog and get her ready to go outside while I get dressed. Once dressed, it is time to wake the bear – nothing like a grumpy teen ager in the morning!! Once I’m sure her feet are on the floor (usually takes two trips) I’m downstairs – the dog meets me at the door and we go outside so she can do her business and I get the paper from the driveway. By the time we get back inside, the youngest daughter has turned the TV on, poured herself a glass of milk and is at the table waiting to tell me what she wants for breakfast. Today was chocolate chip waffles – I am so thankful they started making those things again! I’m not a coffee drinker so while the waffles heat up, I give the dog a piece of dog bacon (not made from real dogs), get a glass of water and open the paper. At 6am, Phineas & Ferb come on so we enjoy that part of our morning. P&F go to commercial break at about 6:12 or so, I use this as an opportunity to run upstairs to remind the teenager that we need to save some water for the rest of the world!! She is very, very, very slow in the morning! While upstairs I make the bed and sort laundry. Instead of having one big, giant mess of a laundry day I do a little every day – on my way back downstairs to watch the second half of P&F I take a load of clothes to the washer and get them going. By then my daughter is done with her breakfast so we take our vitamin, drink a glass of water and watch the end of the show in the family room. Once P&F go off, we check the daily lunch menu at school to see if she is having hot lunch at school or we are packing a lunch – this is not as obvious of an answer as you would imagine!! She loves pizza but she’s found out so does the rest of the kids at school so if she stands in line for pizza, she doesn’t have time to eat, talk and enjoy – at least she is using her reasoning skills! After the second big food decision of the day, we’re back upstairs to finish her hair and then she flosses/brushes her teeth and makes her bed. Even though we have the school bags packed the night before, we go through it one more time just to make sure library books don’t mysteriously make their way from the book bag to the bed for evening reading! By now the teenager is out of her bathroom and dressed – for some reason she is now able to speak so I ask how she is and how she feels then she trundles off to the bathroom to dry her hair. At the same time, the youngest and the dog have begun their morning fight so once that is broken up, we go back downstairs and get ready for the bus.

About 6:50 the teenager comes downstairs for her breakfast. I’ve already put away the dishes from the dishwasher from last night and checked the dinner menu for tonight – meatloaf tonight so I lay out the meat to start defrosting. The clothes in the washer are ready to go into the dryer and we go outside to wait on the bus.
Thursday is trash day and that was one of my wife’s favorite days – she knew she only had one more day of work to go!! Never saw anyone so happy to see the garbage cans out front as she was! We also have a routine outside before the bus comes – the two of us walk around the house to make sure all is okay with the property, no garbage found its way onto the lot and our trees are doing okay. Of course we can’t really tell about the trees because, well I don’t speak tree! I’m just happy they are still there and relatively straight. We planted 3 japanese maples in our front yard, 2 japanese cherry trees in the backyard and 12 fruit trees in the backyard last fall. The look just like sticks now but I have faith they will be beautiful soon. I also have two buckeye trees planted on the back corner of the lot – if I hadn’t seen the roots on these before I planted them, I would testify the guy had sold me twigs!! I don’t have a lot of faith in those two trees! I do believe the fruit trees have done something to anger the clouds around here for some reason though – three days after I planted them our area had that serious flood from the nor’easter in November and they were covered in water for three days. Then we had a snow storm like the area hasn’t seen in 20 years so they were covered for three more day. If the bad weather keeps up, I’m not that attached to the trees yet that they won’t be pulled up and used for firewood!

Once the bus comes and the youngest one is gone, the dog is waiting at the door. She runs outside and sniffs the ground then finds the perfect spot. I would let her stay outside with us until the bus comes, but that just leads to more problems so this is easier for all concerned! Our youngest is a good kid but if she's going to get in trouble, it is probably dog related! Afterwards, we’re back inside and I sit down with the teenager as she finishes her breakfast. Amazing the things they can talk about!

Breakfast dishes done and I'm back upstairs, getting dressed for a run. The teenager takes care of her room and she is responsible for getting all the trash bags out of the cans upstairs AND replacing the bags. We’ve lived here since June 2009 and every day since we’ve been here, I tell her wouldn’t it be smarter to bring up two or three bags per can and put the extra’s under the bag inside the can? That seems as if it has finally started to make sense to her and making her life easier.

Unlike the youngest daughter, the teenager doesn’t want me to stay out front with her until the bus comes. That I can relate to, I wouldn’t want my parents waiting with me either! Whether a teen ager is cool or not, they still have to pretend like they are - remember those days? So as she leaves, I’m off to the treadmill for my morning run. 30 minutes is about all I can stand running on the treadmill – I’d open the garage door but the temperature right now is too low for that. Won’t be long and I can start running on the streets again! Once I’m done running and do a half-hearted abs and shoulder routine, I’m back inside and the clothes are dry ready to be folded. This allows me to cool off before my shower.

The rest of today was spent preparing for tomorrow night’s Teen Program and taking care of some Navy stuff. Last week’s Friday evening teen program was very good and I enjoyed it very much – I think this week’s will be pretty good as well! Our associate pastor called this morning letting me know his grandsons would be there and that is a great blessing. We are starting to see some real growth in this program and that is something so wonderful. I thought our church in Rockville was a blessing, but this church has really been something special. I still cannot get in touch with the Master Gardener in town to work further on our community garden.

Both girls made it home as they should have. They both ride the same bus, just at different times. Bus 190 brings the 2nd grader home at 2:40pm and the teen ager home at 3:57pm! We live 2 miles from the elementary school and 3.5 miles from the high school. It won’t be long before the teen ager has her driver’s license then I’ll have to decide if she should be able to drive to school or not. She has her learner’s permit right now and has passed all the school requirements. She still scares me too much to let her drive too often. We do need to practice more often though. I will warn you – she has something personal against 7Eleven’s – twice we have done high speed turnoffs into their parking lot – first time I nearly puked! Second time I saw part of my life flash before my eyes and I was convinced we were going to take out the gas pumps! I told her for now on we’d go the BP for gas instead – maybe we won’t die before filling up!

After supper (meat loaf, mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, salad and water) we got to go to Norfolk. Thursday night is the 2nd graders’ dance/singing lessons at Hurrah Players. They have just moved into a historic building next to the Scope and Chrysler Hall in downtown Norfolk. Takes us about 25 minutes to get there and about 15 minutes to get home – we avoid the highways on the way up because the class starts at 6:30 which is still rush hour around here. We have several drawbridges in the area and a few tunnels that go under the water – seems each of these tend to really get plugged up daily during rush hours. Back to the class – my daughter loves the class and I would never dream of taking her out of it – I’ll just say we are totally out of our element in this group of people!! Ever seen that show on TV where the momma’s spend small fortunes on their daughters to win a beauty pageant? Well, acting/dancing/singing lessons is where these momma’s hang out to prepare for pageant season!! They are all about getting their children (boys and girls) noticed – one poor little boy tonight had eye make-up on!! He was maybe 8 or 9 and none too happy about it! Those of you who know our 2nd grader realize she is perhaps one of the most confident children and full of personality kids you’ll ever meet – we thought this would help develop her a little further and keep her busy while her mom was gone. I’m sure it will do that – plus I get free entertainment watching these parents – it is like a little league baseball game on estrogen overload!

I had a chance to talk with my wife twice today and she is settling in and doing better. Tomorrow she gets to use the machine guns so if you’re anywhere in the Pacific northwest, be warned! But she sounded better than she has at previous combat training courses so that is good.

Our high schooler brought me her homework tonight to check it – she’s taking AP Chemistry this semester so once again I’ll be little to no help. I did know one of the answers though – does that make me an uber-geek??

We finished the evening as we always do – the girls’ devotion was “Linnea looks back” and referenced Luke 9:57-62. It was about being homesick so we had a good discussion about all the great stuff mom was missing – the little one even remembered that she loved garbage can day which was good and the teen ager complimented the meat loaf – wow, what can I say to that?! It was good though and will be a great sandwich tomorrow! My devotion tonight was “The overmastering majesty of personal power” and it referenced 2 Corinthians 5:14. It talked about bringing everything to Jesus – quite appropriate!

Not a bad day, looking forward to Day Five!!