Ever wondered how many calories you burn cleaning your house? How about a game of lawn darts? Or unicycling?  Or synchronized swimming?

Well. Now you can look it up.

Thanks, Mr. Ed.

I’m off to scrub some floors on my hands and knees.

to T1G:

Thinking about it. Will post later.

Geez. I went to school with this kid’s older brother, whom, incidentally, I had the biggest crush on at the time. I remember going on a camping trip with friends and they were both there. After the trip, as I’m getting ready to go home, Ross looks up at me questioningly and says, “My brother says you’re mousy…” Hah!

He’s now being awarded a Silver Star. I’m sitting here listening to his story knowing my husband went through a similar incident while he was overseas. Only he was the one who was in ops and had to take the call when the guys in his unit were hit. They lost one and another kid lost his leg. I still remember getting that call from my husband and how absolutely devastated he sounded. I’m watching Ross on the video and there’s that same far away look in his eyes that Husband gets.

What do you tell someone when things like this happen? “Hey, congrats on the Silver Star, man!” ….Geezus. Hope he’s hanging in there. My heart goes out to him, his family, his soldiers and their families.

P.S. I probably shouldn’t call him “kid” because a) he’s an officer and b) he earned that title at West Point but I can’t help remembering him as young Ross Pixler, Ryan’s kid brother from back in the day.

A hermit.

Nah, it’s just one of those days.  It’s not a bad day, really, it’s just kind of blah.  It’s overcast, too, but I love it when it’s cloudy which is perhaps due to an early childhood spent living in Oregon.  It’s just a move away and live alone in the woods with no modern conveniences kind of day.

My parents have a great acreage on a lake up in northern Wisconsin that some day, finances provided, Mr Husband and I will be getting a little spot on.  If I have my way, we’ll put a little cabin up there and it won’t have a phone or internet or cable or anything.  Husband would probably go into withdrawals, but if it gets too bad I can always send him over to my parents’ place.  They’ve got all that stuff.  I just can’t imagine going up there “to get away from it all” and spend a summer doing all the same things we do at home.

When we were kids we’d stay at the Big Cabin and it didn’t have things like cable, air conditioning, phones–there was even a time when it didn’t have hot water but that, mercifully, was remedied.  Over the years the Big Cabin has evolved and even grown in size.  It’s now owned by my aunt who takes excellent care of it.

I miss the summer days I spent up there when I was little.  My sister, and later my brother, and I would spend hours playing in the lake or in the woods.  Digging up mud to make clay pots that we would fire in the fire pit.  Fishing.  Hiking and picking berries along the way.  Catching toads.  Building things. Playing cards.  Roasting hot dogs or marshmallows.

And I want that for my daughter, but I don’t see it happening with all the distractions of the modern world.

Man, I gotta get away from all this stuff.

Super Target fits in there somewhere.

I can’t go to this place and not buy something.

Tonight, I went with the intention of buying diapers and two gallons of milk. We go through milk in greater quantities than we do toilet water in this house, and that’s not very much of an exaggeration.

Instead I came home with:

• 2 gallons of milk
• Pampers Swaddlers size 2-3 diapers (I swear they exist, but Husband doesn’t believe me)
• 2 jars of Vermouth-spiked olives
• 6 pack of Guinness (glass bottles, duh)
• 6 pack of Shiner Bock (again with the glass bottles)
• Easter stuff for the girl, most of which Mr. H and I will undoubtedly eat, ourselves
• And last (but possibly worst of all) one chocolate mousse Cheesecake Factory cheesecake

I needed the olives in order to make martinis. I simply cannot have vodka martinis without olives, and I cannot have gin martinis at all (barf).

I’m about half way through one of said martinis (takes the edge off my budget deficit guilt complex) and I’m really feeling it, in case you couldn’t tell. I tend overuse the parenthesis when I’m tipsy.

I can’t believe I’m eating this shit. 1430 calories is my entire daily allotment and I’m eating it because it’s on my desk. Husband brought it home and I didn’t recognize it. I seriously thought he brought home a frozen dinner for me. (Gee, thanks Babe.) Is this just an Army thing? All we got were the plain tan plastic pouches. This thing is in a colorful cardboard box with an applesauce cup, tray of what appears to be meat…stuff, an entire can of juice, and some other assorted high-caloric goodies.

Old habits die hard, though. I’m avoiding the main course like the plague as there are no AF Flybois to pawn it off to (why most of the AF guys I met love these things is beyond me). And there is no way in hell I’d fire up that heater pack; the smell of them still turns my stomach. Although, I suppose that if I got bored enough I could save it to make a heater bomb out in the parking lot.

Moving on… This better not be a continuing trend. I don’t want another cupboard full of MREs that nobody wants to eat.

Lounged back in the cool grass on a warm summer night, gazed into a clear starry sky, and tried to see The End?

And suddenly you become eerily aware of the fact that you are a very small organism with a very large rock stuck to your back, hurtling and spinning round and round through an endless vacuum?

And you think to yourself, “____?”

Maybe it’s just me.

Mood: Small
Listening to: 

My poor husband. He’s in the family room on his laptop and has the television on. I’ll wander in there and sit down on the couch. I figure he’s not really paying attention to what he’s watching (ie: he’s watching basketball and I know he’s not a big basketball fan) so I ask if I can have the tv switcher so I can watch something different.

I’ll then remember something that needed to get done, like the dishes, and I’ll go do that. After the chore of the moment is finished I completely forget about the television and usually end up on the computer, or I’ll go read a book, or take a nap.

And there’s Husband, still in the family room, still watching whatever I forgot I was watching.

Right now he’s stuck watching Unbeatable Banzuke and the clicker is on the other side of the room. I should probably go back in there.

Mr Husband came home from drill recently and asked, “What would you say if I told you I may be going to airborne school?”

“REALLY!?!?  Oh shit I would be SOOOO JEALOUS!”

*puzzled look from Husband*

I don’t think that was the answer he was looking for.  “How would you feel looking over the edge of a 300 foot tower knowing you have to jump while some asshole holds the end of your rope?”

As he’s speaking my eyes get progressively bigger and are positively twinkling by the end of his rant.

*Husband gives up*

He wants to transfer units so that he doesn’t have to drive 3 hours away every time he has a guard drill. But the 88M guys here in Omaha are all required to go to airborne school.

Mr Husband is pensive.

I’m green with envy.

I offered to go in his place, but I don’t think that one would fly.

Actually, I was going to say “that one would go over like a lead balloon” but after last week’s episode of Mythbusters…

*SIGH*

To go to class or not to go to class? That’s the question for tonight. So far the school’s home page is being less than helpful.

In some ways I’m hoping class is NOT canceled. Why? Because I did my homework.  We are tested weekly on vocab, spelling, and pronunciation. I do my homework the night before or the day of class so that I can retain all this info for the test. When it comes to details, my long term memory is fleeting at best and so if we do not have class tonight and have to take this test NEXT week then I will forget everything and do craptastically.

Hey, don’t tell me to study again next week! I have just enough motivation to do my homework once. Doing it twice taxes my paltry moto reserve. Besides, next week I have an oral presentation in psychology on avoidant personality disorder (HAH! How ironic!). It’ll take all I’ve got not to collapse in epileptic seizures in front of the whole class.

I hate public speaking that much.

Update

D’oh! Canceled.