How to get well...

Well, let me tell you...going straight to the soccer park after work, without the benefit of the amoxicillin your doctorbabe called in to the pharmacy for you, and standing out there in the nice damp breeze for an hour and a half doesn't do too much for you. Got home last night afterwards and my throat felt like it was full of angry fire ants. Which made swallowing my pill a bit of a chore, even moreso given the immense size of these babies--each one is about the size of a canteloupe. I have now had two of them, and my throat feels a bit better, and I am, of course, back at work, spewing my filthy germs everywhere. But doggone it, it's payday, and I have to be here to pick up my check.

My prediction about what my lot would have been like had I gone home yesterday was remarkably prescient--while fixing supper, Reba managed to get some dirty water up on the the curtains over the kitchen sink. This required that she remove ALL the curtains (and ALL their niggly little rods) from ALL the windows in the kitchen and put them in the washing machine, and then to add to the confusion she managed to knock a vase full of tulips off the counter and spread glass all over the kitchen floor, requiring the employment of the incredibly loud vacuum cleaner which got up 99.99% of the glass shards, except for one tiny piece that lodged itself into the chubby little foot of Catherine when she got home from school, causing her to limp and whine around the house the rest of the afternoon. Hmmm. Yep, staying at work was a better idea.

After supper, time to get the kiddies scrubbed down, then to bed, and I lay all sprawled on the bed watching the NBC and FOX News reports out of Iraq. I don't know, but it seems like the idea of 'embedding' reporters with the troops is working better than anyone anticipated--I think the biggest reason is that guys are big kids when it comes to blowey-uppy stuff, and the reporters get to act all macho and use words like "klicks" for kilometers. And "Boots on the ground!" Over and over again. PLEASE stop it. Just talk normal, please. You don't have to use jargon. It just makes you sound silly.

And another thing--don't bother the guys while they are WORKING! David Bloom was on the Today show this morning riding on an M-88 across the desert and decided that he would do an impromptu demonstration during a stop to show what the food was like. "Hey, would you hand me one of those MREs over there?" The trooper was very kind and handed it to him, although I'm sure I was thinking "Look, jackhole, I'm busy and you're ***king arms ain't broke." Dave blabbered about how good the MRE is to eat (which I'm sure will endear him to grunts everywhere) and then decided he was going to open the pack. Why? Who knows. He tugged and pulled for a second, and then had the nerve to ask "Hey, do either of you guys have a knife to open this with?"

What a prissy little buffoon. Being a nice man, the patient sergeant who was also on the back of the vehicle stopped what he was doing, dug under his body armor and pulled out a multitool, took the package from him, and neatly sliced it open, and went back to work, again all the while probably comparing Dave to a certain part of the female anatomy. (Find you a knife, Dave baby.) Dave then proceded to pull all the stuff out of the pack and throw it all around him as he sat there describing it. And then worried that he might have lost his sunglasses.

BUT, the one thing is that the reporting itself, not just from Mr. Bloom but from all the dopey reporters, is positive. Having to rely on someone else for your survival tends to do that, I suppose. And it shows that despite what comes out of the mouths of the citizens of Bizarro World, American troops are professional, capable, tough, smart, and compassionate men and women who do what they do not because they were coerced, nor out of psychotic blood lust.

They do it because there still is such a thing as duty and honor.

My thanks to all of you.
posted by Terry at 8:47:00 AM