November ends, at last

In a way, it went pretty fast, with me being NaNoNuts, at least the last half of it went by pretty quick.
Looking back, it has seemed to go by quickly, but when I was IN it, no, it was crawling, time was being passed by snails as if they were on acid. I'm not just talking November anymore, I mean this whole deployment.
Things have changed so much around here, everything from the work/remodeling/new purchases around the house (and in the garage) to things like holy crap, Alex is tall, Comet is enormous and our DVD collection has grown substanially.

One thing I want to be sure you understand honey, BEFORE you come home: there is NO eating downstairs. Not on the pretty new furniture. So dinner time is now a FAMILY event, attendance is MANDATORY. With our kids getting older, soon they will not speak to us, we will cease to be the coolest people they know, and we will be "the idiots who we live with" to them. I want to put this off as long as possible, so I really must insist that this ritual continue, we eat dinner together, everyone at the table. I know you like to eat in front of the TV, I remember, but I am talking about half an hour a night, sitting with your kids and trying to pry information out of them so that we can stay informed on the comings and goings of their lives.

Now I know when you first get back, this probably won't be a problem, you miss them, you want to be around them. I'm thinking of this spring, after you've been home awhile, and things start to settle back to "normal"...THAT is when I expect a little balking from you about it, and quite frankly, I don't give a damn, I do not want to hear it and I especially do not care if the Twins are playinng Boston, we WILL eat dinner together.

Wow, guess I had to get that off my chest, thank goodness it's over with, huh?

So our plans for the weekend are shaping up into something pretty sucky, if you ask me. Emma has a hockey game in Fargo (I do not know where or when, though) PLUS I wanted to take all 3 kids to get haircuts and decent clothes to wear the following weekend when we go down to Mpls. to see Mark in his first performance as a member of the Minneapolis Gay Men's Choir. It's their Christmas concert, titled "Don we now our Gay apparel"... Steven assures me that it is not raunchy or inappropriate for children.
So that's Saturday, hockey, haircuts and clothes shopping.
Sunday is more hockey, in Park Rapids... shit, two away games in one weekend, nothing like driving all over the friggin' state in the bitter cold to sit in a cold arena and watch our girls get stomped... gotta love that.

Oh, yeah, it got cold, forgot to tell you. It has not been over 10 since last weekend, maybe Monday. The windchill word is back... with a vengeance. It was -15 yesterday. We dubbed those kinds of days "Half smoke days" because when we take a break from class and go out to smoke, we can only puff down half of one before we give up and go back in.

I hope it will at least be tolerable when you come home, I don't think that kind of drastic temperature change will be good for you, you'll probably end up getting sick or something.

Mom brought up a good point, with my NaNo, she said I should finish doing the first draft before you come home for leave. She's right, if I let it go, it could easily be another 16 years before I touch it again. That would truly suck, and I don't want that. So I will try to finish it before you get here, and maybe do a quick edit, then give mom a copy of it and hand her a pen (but not a red one!) and let her have at it with suggestions.

I have a paper to write for extra credit for Marcus, and I have some Accounting homework, AND I have a Payroll test tomorrow that I'm pretty sure I'm not ready for. Plus Survivor is on tonight, and I'd like to watch that, so I really should get off my laptop and get to work. Oh, and I need to get the budget stuff figured out tonight since tomorrow I am in class most of the day, except for lunch, which I am doing with Mom, and Dave's daughter, Tammy and her two youngest kids. I get to meet them tomorrow. Things are very cool there, honey, Mom is really happy, and Dave is a great guy, I can't wait for you to meet him. You'll like him... better than Steven. Hell, I even like him better than Steven!

When you come home, ask Mom and I about our newest impression. We are funny, and now, we do impressions. Not of famous people, that is so over done... we do good impressions. Makes my sides hurt from laughing so hard, we are funny.