Oh God, I'm selfish.

I have a good friend over here in Germany. She's been stationed around the same places as us since the states. Her husband has decided to switch MOS' and they've been waiting, for what seems like forever, for their new orders so he can go to school back CONUS.

They found out last week that they have a report date of May 15. May 15?! I mean, I knew they'd get these orders eventually but I thought it would be end of summer, early fall at the earliest. The Army, against all odds, has moved faster than the speed of light on this one.

She's so happy about this. She's ready to go back and ready for her husband to try something new. And I mean, deep down I'm sure I'm thrilled that her family is getting what they want and that the Army is treating them right. But I don't want her to go. Not only am I going to lose my friend, but I am also going to lose her teenage daughter, who is Munchkin's favorite babysitter.

I think most of us face deployments with as much of a happy face as we can. We think, it won't be so bad because I can pay off the car, I will finish my dissertation, I can get my kid potty-trained, I have my Mom nearby, I have a reliable babysitter who my kid loves, and I get by with a little help from my friends. You know the drill. So to know that two things I was counting on to help me through -- which is stupid, since they are also military -- are gone is a blow.

I feel so frickin' selfish right now. I'm trying to be really happy for her but all I hear is this nebby little voice in my ear saying, "Do you know how much harder this deployment is going to be without your friend or your babysitter? DO YOU?!"

I promised myself I wouldn't cry when he left.

The last time CPT Dick deployed, we were freshly married. There was no big deployment ceremony, no to-dos or Navy style goodbyes. He was going to join a unit that had already deployed. So I just drove him to the airport.

We had decided the night before that I would just drop him off curbside. It was less than a year after 9/11 and the airports were still crazy. And we thought it would be easier. We'd say our goodbyes at home (complete with some hot monkey sex) and then I'd just let him out at the terminal. No prolonged affair. No mess. I wouldn't even turn off the ignition or undo my seatbelt.

I remember that as he walked away from the car, my heart seized up a bit. I stayed parked illegally until I could no longer see his huge green rucksack walking away from me and then started for home. I only made it half a mile before the enormity of what had just happened descended upon me and I had to pull over for a good cry.

This time, there was all kinds of hurray and hoopla. And you know, it was so drawn out, starting so many weeks before CPT Dick actually had to go, it didn't feel real. I just felt annoying. And so when the time came for him to actually go, we once again stuck to a plan. After all, this time, we had a three-year-old to consider. I figured after all the pomp and circumstance, there's no way I'd be hit as hard. So, the plan was that we'd say our goodbyes at home and then I would drop him off at formation when it was time.

But this time, the tears started as soon as we drove on post. I wasn't sobbing or hysterical but my body was definitely telling me that it knew damn well what lay ahead.

Godspeed, CPT Dick.

Teenage angst come early.

I've been volunteering now and again at our local elementary school. The fourth grade teacher is one of the ladies in our FRG and asked me to come in and talk about writing. So I did and come back every now and again to talk about the craft.

The class' last unit was poetry. Since its elementary school, of course, the theme was spring. The beauty and wonderment of spring. Blech. Poor kids. It's a terrible topic. But I understand why the teacher picked it. I mean, it's not like you can ask your average 10 year old to go Brodski on you. Or can you?

For his assignment, one of the students turned in this ode to spring:

Flowers, I want to burn them all.

Spring is boring.
Laying in the grass
will get bugs on you.

Spring is ugly.
Fresh air makes me
want to barf.

It continues on in the same vein for a few more stanzas. And you know? After reading page after page about beautiful flowers, I thought this one was awesome.

Safety first.

"Why are you so tired?"

"I just didn't really get much sleep. It really bothered me that the hotel room didn't have a second lock on the door."

"You're kidding me."

"No, I'm not. Hotel doors should have second locks."

"That is ridiculous. You cannot for a minute tell me you were actually worried someone was going to break in."

"No, you idiot. I was worried that our son might wake up before us and try to break out."

"And go to the front desk..."

"...to get that candy he loves."

"Shit. I hadn't considered that. And I'm glad I didn't, otherwise I wouldn't have slept well either."

It was the best of signs, it was the worst of signs.

A few weeks ago, we went to Rome for the weekend. As we walked from the hotel down to the Forum area of the city, the Colosseum appeared to guide us. After most of it was visible, my son stopped, looked up and said, "Ooooooooooh, wow!"

CPT Dick and I both smiled. Because you know, the Colosseum is awesome, but it takes a pretty hip kid to get it in toddlerhood. So my husband bent down to explain what it might have looked like half a millenium ago and what the building was used for. We were going to take hold of this yoke of interest and ride it into a Rhodes scholarship in history.

But as my husband talked, my son just looked perplexed. And after a moment, my son looked up at his Dad, smiled, and said, "No, no. Little Einsteins."

And that's how I knew that my son spent most of our trip not oooh-ing and aaaah-ing over the ruins of Rome but waiting for Rocket to show up.

He knows something's up.

We are trying to get Munchkin ready for the deployment.

We've bought our Daddy doll. We've put photos of CPT Dick everywhere we possibly can. We've been doing a lot of videotaping of CPT Dick reading perennial favorites like "Red Fish, Blue Fish" and "Whopper Cake."

And we've started telling him that Daddy is going away. We've read the advice in books (translation: I have and told my husband what to say) and we've been mentioning it casually over the past few months. A bit more now that D-day is coming right up on us.

It's hard enough with a small child to know how much they really understand. And when your child is speech-delayed, it's even more difficult. Most of the time, when we spoke about Daddy going away, he'd either say, "Bye bye!" as if CPT Dick was leaving that moment for a run to the store or something or just make a request to watch the movie "Cars."

But this week, I think we crossed a line. We were wrapping a present for a birthday party and I started to talk about how Daddy wouldn't be back until after his next birthday. Munchkin looked up at me, somewhat alarmed, and said, "No. No bye-bye. Daddy stay. No bye-bye. Daddy stay here."

And since then, though he still goes to bed on his own, at about 1am he sneaks into our room. And usually, when he has a bad dream, he comes over to my side of the bed to be put back down. But these days, he walks over to the other side and crawls into his father's arms.

I think he is just trying to make sure his Daddy is still there. It is both sweet and heartbreaking all at once. And I must admit, I do worry about the night, the night that will come all too soon, when he finds that his Daddy is no longer there.

Did I say I was voting for Hillary?

Crap.

Now I have no idea who to vote for. Frankly, I don't feel that any of the candidates right now could have my total support.

It feels just like 2004.

I'm so sick of politics.

Is the election over yet? No? Then can someone tell me to ignore the news until after November? I swear, I'm just sick of it all and we're still 6 months away from V-day. What makes it worse is that some of my stories this month have jumped into the political fray and, really, they just made me more cranky about the process.

Case in point. I was asked to write a story about one of the presidential candidate's policies. I called the campaign to get a staffer to give me a two minute soundbyte for the piece. Just a quote that could go along with the very favorable policy that the hopeful is touting. I spoke to someone in the media department who told me to go ahead and submit a media request on the website. I did so.

Now do you think it got me my two minute phone call with a staffer? No, of course not. And no amount of calling ended up granting me that honor. But what it did do was put me on the mailing list. In the three weeks, I patiently waited for an appointment to ask a sum total of three questions, I received at least two, sometimes more emails per day. Telling me about change, about how voters who say they don't believe in X really don't believe in me. Frankly, it was annoying stuff. And stuff that I thought this candidate was better than. But hey, a person's gotta advertise. I tried to keep patient.

But after a week of that, I tried to unsubscribe. No luck. In fact, I think it might have signed me up again because I started getting even more emails.

And when I asked a press staffer when I might hear back about my interview request, why I hadn't already even, she had the audacity to tell me that they didn't have my email on file.

Ugh.

I never got my quote. I called every day, I pestered, I may have even stalked. But I apparently wasn't important enough to talk to, even when I opened my schedule totally for this person (and I didn't even want to talk to the candidate -- just a random staffer that could speak for the campaign). My story had to be filed without it.

But I'm still receiving those fucking emails.

The importance of being specific with scientific study.

For one of my freelance gigs, I do a lot of summarizing of newly released medical studies. A very recent one has suggested that folate is just as important to viable sperm as it is to healthy fetuses.

But what keeps cracking me up is that in so many of the articles about this finding, the writer finds it necessary to refer to sperm as "male sperm." Ummm, yeah, we know. Who else might the sperm belong to?

So, I fibbed.

I've been busy with all kinds of pre-deployment nonsense. It's as if the Army can't stand to see any void left unfilled. I mean, why would we, as families of soldiers, want to spend any time one-on-one with our husbands when we could be paraded around to endless ceremonies, balls, luncheons and other mandatory fun events? And what's worse, why on earth would we want to be hanging with our men when we could attend spouse-only coffees, dinners and other ridiculousness? I mean, I totally want to see these women, you know, the ones I'll see every damn day for the next 15 months, as much as I can before the deployment clock starts ticking!

It just don't make a damn lick of sense.

I know, I know. I'm cranky. But it doesn't help that being around so many people this time of year has guaranteed me that pre-spring icky flu.