Methods of Survival...

I've always said that those involved in a deployment get through it anyway they know how. Some spend insane amounts of money...some journal...some turn to other members of the opposite sex other than their spouse, and even some turn to members of the same sex to, well, yeah, I've known those too. August has been a hard month thus far. We celebrated our ninth anniversary (I spent the day cleaning the house), Mike's birthday is tomorrow and Devyn's is Saturday...my parents were here for two weeks, my granddaddy is not doing well, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I could honestly yap all day long, but I'm not going to do that. Instead, I try to focus on means of survival. I've always had three: prayer, coffee, and red wine. Good red wine. Life is much too short to 1)not pray, 2) drink bad coffee and 3) drink bad wine. Of course, the kids help me get through, but those are my little joys I look forward to--the coffee and prayer every day, several times a day, the wine about twice a week. I have a new method of survival. I'm even slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I do have a certain level of pride about the whole thing as well. I now, since yesterday, am the proud owner of one kangaroo Webkinz.

So here's how it happened. I started helping Aiden play the games in order to teach him how to do it and I started thinking that the games would actually relax me and take my mind off things. Before long, I was playing the games with no child in sight. To beat that, I started playing all the"daily activities" on their "pets". The kiddles got annoyed. Told me to "get my own". So I did. Now don't go thinking I sleep with it and make little houses for it and what not. It ain't like that. It's just something easy to do in the evening after my brain is goo. I was asked today when I told someone about this new venture, "With all the games on Yahoo, you actually purchased something so you could play your own games and daily activities? On a four year old's website?" Yes. I did. No apologies. Casper and I are very happy together, thank you very much.

You think that's bad? There's still three months to go. Just wait until November...