Day Thirty - March 2, 2010

A good night's sleep made the start to the day feel so much better! I did talk with my wife last night for a few minutes and she had a good day. She has a busy week ahead of her though.

Today was a good day around here and all went well. We fell right back into our routine and everyone did well. The youngest daughter got up in a good mood and was ready to go back to school. We got her dressed and she made waffles for breakfast with a glass of milk. The teenager was a little tougher to get moving but that is normal. She had three tests today so that didn't help any!

Once the girls were out the door and on the bus, I started on my list for the day. The gutters will be installed Thursday afternoon which is good - it would have been Wednesday but we are preparing for another nor'easter storm. I left a message for the guy who is going to be working in my garage - I hope to get him in here Monday or Tuesday. I talked with the lady at the Girl Scout Council about camp for the youngest daughter - she will be going to the 10 week program they have around the corner - it sounds pretty neat and should be a good time. I talked with the tax preparer about our return and will meet with her Thursday afternoon to take care of the amendment. Made a meal plan for the rest of the week as well as a grocery list and checked coupons.

You know a deployment has officially started when you start going to the post office to mail things overseas. My wife won't be to her ultimate position until mid month but it takes at least two weeks for mail to get from here to there. This morning I mailed her some twin sheets for the bed and a pillow case - I can think of nothing more torturous than military sheets; they scratch you to pieces! I picked these sheets up last week and started washing them daily so they were pretty soft when I put them in the mail - to add a touch of home I stuck a dryer sheet in them as well so they would smell decent by the time they arrive. I have a little experience mailing things overseas but I have much more experience knowing how much I enjoyed receiving stuff in the mail - my goal is to send plenty of care packages to her and I will absolutely send a letter per day. She might not receive them every day, but there will be one day when she might receive 5 or 10, so it all evens out. The important things about letters and boxes, besides the address, is to number them!! I remember one deployment when a guy who worked for me received a letter that said "your Uncle Dave is a little better - we were really worried!" He was frantic thinking his Uncle was really sick - the letters arrived out of sequence and all Uncle Dave had was a headache and some swelling when he got hit in the head by baseball at a little league game!

After I went to the post office, I drove over to the gutter installer's office to sign some paperwork. In Virginia you can buy a vanity plate for an additional $10.00 - some folks really need to think about what they put on these vanity plates and if the $10.00 is really worth all the funny looks they get!! I got behind this guy on I-64 and his car was a smoking and chugging, belching out all kinds of smoke and it looked like it was on its last leg. As I passed him, I noticed his vanity plate said POODOG. Now, I don't know how or why he was or is PooDog but trust me, it didn't fit him! He was 75 or 80 years old, could barely see over the steering wheel, had a toupee on that had slid a little off his head and he had the obligatory old guy tweed jacket on. In the passenger seat was what I suppose was his wife and she was flapping her gums at him about something - I doubt PooDog had his hearing aid on, he was just a smiling and driving that car like it was the Queen Elizabeth on the high seas! After I passed him, I watched as PooDog cut off the next car that tried to pass him - nobody messes with the PooDog!!

I find that I rather enjoy going to the meat market. We have a wonderful butcher shop close by and they have some excellent meat. On the side of the building, the market has a small farm with sheep, goats and a few chickens - after you park the car you can mess with the animals and tell them you're going to go inside to take their uncle home with you - doesn't do any good, animals don't much care about our humor plus they just have the pigeons poop on your car while your inside if you mess with them too much! Once inside, I find I enjoy browsing and just wondering what do people do with some of that stuff like pig's feet, chitlins, back fat and all that. Of course, some people probably wonder why I go in there and order a bologna sandwich so I guess we're even!!! Actually there is a good story why I order a sandwich from the lady at the deli counter - my mother-in-law is a terrific meat cutter in her town and nothing annoys her more than someone to ask her to make a sandwich at the meat counter!! I fully support her by annoying other meat cutters around the world by ordering a thick slice of bologna on white bread with mayo, tomato and thin sliced onion. While that is the story part, the truth is I'm a bologna junkie and I've been doing this long before I met my wife and her mother - we used to walk over to the Little Giant close to St. Joe at lunch and get fresh sandwiches from their meat counter as well. I got the same annoyed look from the meat cutter then as I do now. And no, I've never asked my mother-in-law to make me a sandwich but I'm sure she would without a second thought!

Back to the meat market - I purchased our meat for the rest of the week and took advantage of a sale they were having on ground chuck - got a few extra pounds for the freezer.

When the youngest daughter got home from school, we went to Wal Mart to take care of the rest of our list and load up on stuff to mail to my wife. I know how she is and she refused to eat an MRE so I'll do what I can. Things like those individual peanut butter containers, tuna in a bag, dehydrated banana's and strawberries for cereal and other items to round out her diet. For the first couple of weeks, when I mail something I'll put it in a plastic shoe box container - the critters and bugs in the desert are quite nasty and love to get into food - if you remove their ability to eat, they'll go away and find some other room to hang out in instead of yours.

The nor'easter started just before supper. But it didn't stop us from eating good - we had macaroni & cheese, pork cutlets, green beans and bread. Everyone cleaned their plates so it must have been good!

Tuesday night is the Pastor's Roundtable at church where the men of the church come together to talk, fellowship and pray. As we went in, it was raining - as we came out, about a 1/4 inch of snow/sleet/slush was on the sidewalks and grass - right now the roads are covered with snow and our sidewalk at home was hard to walk on. I did shovel it to lessen the amount of mess on it in the morning (I hope). We are hosting a missionary and his wife at church starting March 13th through March 19th. They will be staying at our home instead of a hotel and we discussed the other folks of the church taking them out to eat supper in the evenings. All-in-all, the meeting is very good and a nice way for the men to get together during the week outside of a church service.

The girls devotion tonight was "Come" referencing John 6:32-40 and "It hurts" referencing 2 Corinthians 1:3-5. The second one was good because the little girl in the story had only one parent in the house so we had a chance to talk about how best to handle the situation - gave me a good chance to see what the girls needed from someone else as well. My devotions were "The impoverished ministry of Jesus" referencing John 4:11 and "do ye now believe" referencing John 16:30-31.

Day Thirty comes to a close for us - my wife will call around 1am my time once she is finished with her exercise - at least we have the chance to still talk so I'll take what I can! While it doesn't appear the weather will allow the girls to go to school tomorrow, I'm still looking forward to Day Thirty-One!