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My four-year-old ran up to the only kid at the park with spanking new sand toys and asked if he could play. "You can play with the truck," the boy cautioned. "But only I can have the shovel."
"Good sharing, Ian," said the kid's dad. I watched as the boys played and the man etched roads and sculpted tunnels and shot a look of sad longing at his kid.
"When do you deploy?" I asked him.
"Three days," he said, leveling the top of a hill. Then he looked up, startled. He had never seen me before in his life. "Wait – how did you know that?"
"Oh, man," I sighed. "Everybody knows it." More
My husband and I had planned to wait about a year before starting a family. Then, about three weeks after the honeymoon, I had a suspicion that God had other plans. I went to the clinic on base and got a call back about an hour later with the words, "Congratulations! You're pregnant!"
We had little time to digest that incredible news. That night I had to be on a plane heading to Quantico for a week-long TAD trip. We went out for a quick celebratory dinner, and then I departed – with the book What to Expect When You're Expecting in hand. In Quantico I was surprisingly able to focus on the conference, despite the thousand questions whirling through my head. I even remembered to pick up a set of maternity cammies at the Cash Sales office, since they're not widely available in Hawaii. More
The other day a chaplain informed me that military couples who fight all the time get divorced. I nodded as if he were sharing a wicked-deep insight. Secretly, I was thinking that military couples who stay together forever fight all the time, too. The difference lies in everything that happens between the fights.
That "everything" is a lot harder to identify. We all know when a fight is occurring. If the raised voices, broad gestures and spittle collecting in the corner of your mouth aren't enough to clue you in, researchers can hook you up to a monitor and show that you have enough brain cells firing to ignite Chicago. More
I was just reviewing the CNO's new Navy Professional Reading Program. The idea here is that reading actual books will foster critical thinking. Critical thinking is supposed to make better leaders and better warfighters. The program includes five 12-book collections with subjects focused on leadership, military heritage, joint warfare, cultural awareness, critical thinking and management.
Funny how a reading list to foster "cultural awareness" doesn't include any books about our own military family culture. I'm not saying that just because I wrote a book. I'm saying it because it's appalling that there isn't a single book about military families on those lists. More
It was the silverware drawer that finally got him. My husband had been home from his trip for less than an hour before he tallied up six things that were wrong with this picture. I pretended that I didn't notice.
Until he discovered all the silverware dumped helter-skelter into the drawer without one of those little organizer thingys. "Whaaaaaa?" he asked, gesturing wildly.
"It's Sam's silverware experiment," I told him, flipping through the mail. "Sam says it's quicker to unload the dishwasher if you don't have to sort the silver. I don't care as long as he's the one unloading the dishwasher." More
Two of our Navy friends got divorced over a laundry basket. The wife thought her aviator husband didn't do enough housework, so she stopped folding his laundry in protest. She tossed the unfolded laundry in a basket on his dresser and waited for him to get folding. He never did. He just plucked what he needed out of the basket.
Suddenly, that basket became the "tell-tale heart" for the wife, thumping away at her from across the room. It was the symbol of her husband's disdain and contempt, his failure to understand her, his immaturity, and …oh, I don’t know what-all. She had a long list. More
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