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My wildly entertaining letters to my son and other American Soldiers suffering in Iraq and elsewhere...posted in no particular chronological order.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Saturday April 12, 2003
Dear Rob,
Today was beautiful and sunny, which means all the homeowners in central Illinois got to work on their yards. Rudy mowed and fertilized the lawn. I am the luckless individual who trimmed the bushes and “edged” the landscape bricks. My rough estimate is that there are about 100 miles of brick edging surrounding our flower beds and shrubbery. I crawled along those 100 miles of brick with a dull kitchen knife cutting back the sod growing over the edge of the bricks. You may be wondering why I don’t go to the store and buy the widely available tool designed specifically for that purpose. Just stubborn, I guess! Actually, the knife works fine and it was nice to be outside, and nice to see everything finally turning green. As soon as the world turns REALLY green I will take and send you some photos.
Dylan is a good helper. Doesn’t complain, although at one point he said “What’s in this for me?” I said “You get to live in a nice house with a nice lawn.” He was okay with that. He pulled his plastic sled around, loading up all the clippings to take to the curb. I play psychological tricks on him to keep him motivated. When he began to lose interest, I told him he does a much better job than Rudy of clearing away the piles of clippings and old mulch. This made him feel very important and kept him working for quite awhile.
When he casually mentioned that he might prefer to be watching TV, I pointed out how many worms I was uncovering in my edging profession. Being a 10 year old boy, he finds worms quite fascinating. He followed along with his sled and gladly took on the additional task of relocating each homeless worm to a more desirable location. He seems to possess quite a bit of interesting (to him) knowledge about worms. For example, he claims that if you cut a worm in half it will not die, but instead will live on happily as two new, improved worms. That bit of information doesn’t seem logical to me. I did not allow him to cut all the worms in half, despite his eager offer to perform that particular service on behalf of wormkind.
When even worms and beetles could no longer hold his interest, I assigned him the ever-important task of riding his bike up and down the street to count how many flags were flying today. (14, including ours, 15 if you count our Airborne flag.)
Please call as soon as you can and let me know that you are okay. I want so much to ask you what you and/or your guys need us to send. Every time I hear of a thing someone over there has requested, I run out and buy it and send it to you. Today it was fly-swatters. Of course, I also buy a bunch of other stuff as long as I’m at it. I hope you have enough baby wipes. I only sent a small pack today because I know they are going into just about every care package being sent. But this afternoon I heard that the care packages are all backed up and you guys might be running out of baby wipes!
You need to understand that to those of us on the homefront, the idea of you running out of baby wipes is tantamount to running out of ammo. There is this very weird, but powerful, baby wipe mania going on in America. It’s almost like the Beenie Baby or Pokemon phenomenon. I guess we feel like we can keep our boys safe by sending more baby wipes. I’m thinking of re-investing my entire 401(k) in companies manufacturing baby wipes.
If you run into CCN’s Ryan Chilcote tell him your mom thinks he is a cutie, even with his hair all grunged up with desert suck filth. A few days ago he did a report with his hair sticking straight up, sort of like Marge Simpson. The next day he made an attempt to comb it down by parting it in the middle and it looked slightly worse. He also put on a polo shirt, trying to look tidy, but the grunge around his neck just showed more. Still, I think he is almost as cute as you.
9:01 PM here now. Time for me to take a Xanax (else I drive Rudy crazy by constantly yelling OH MY GOD, THOSE ASSHOLES ARE SHOOTING AT ROBBY!) and channel surf my way around the world to get a glimpse of what the 101st 3rd Brigade is doing today.
TTFN (Take Time For Negotiatingawaytocallmom)
Much Love,
--Mom
Dear Rob,
Today was beautiful and sunny, which means all the homeowners in central Illinois got to work on their yards. Rudy mowed and fertilized the lawn. I am the luckless individual who trimmed the bushes and “edged” the landscape bricks. My rough estimate is that there are about 100 miles of brick edging surrounding our flower beds and shrubbery. I crawled along those 100 miles of brick with a dull kitchen knife cutting back the sod growing over the edge of the bricks. You may be wondering why I don’t go to the store and buy the widely available tool designed specifically for that purpose. Just stubborn, I guess! Actually, the knife works fine and it was nice to be outside, and nice to see everything finally turning green. As soon as the world turns REALLY green I will take and send you some photos.
Dylan is a good helper. Doesn’t complain, although at one point he said “What’s in this for me?” I said “You get to live in a nice house with a nice lawn.” He was okay with that. He pulled his plastic sled around, loading up all the clippings to take to the curb. I play psychological tricks on him to keep him motivated. When he began to lose interest, I told him he does a much better job than Rudy of clearing away the piles of clippings and old mulch. This made him feel very important and kept him working for quite awhile.
When he casually mentioned that he might prefer to be watching TV, I pointed out how many worms I was uncovering in my edging profession. Being a 10 year old boy, he finds worms quite fascinating. He followed along with his sled and gladly took on the additional task of relocating each homeless worm to a more desirable location. He seems to possess quite a bit of interesting (to him) knowledge about worms. For example, he claims that if you cut a worm in half it will not die, but instead will live on happily as two new, improved worms. That bit of information doesn’t seem logical to me. I did not allow him to cut all the worms in half, despite his eager offer to perform that particular service on behalf of wormkind.
When even worms and beetles could no longer hold his interest, I assigned him the ever-important task of riding his bike up and down the street to count how many flags were flying today. (14, including ours, 15 if you count our Airborne flag.)
Please call as soon as you can and let me know that you are okay. I want so much to ask you what you and/or your guys need us to send. Every time I hear of a thing someone over there has requested, I run out and buy it and send it to you. Today it was fly-swatters. Of course, I also buy a bunch of other stuff as long as I’m at it. I hope you have enough baby wipes. I only sent a small pack today because I know they are going into just about every care package being sent. But this afternoon I heard that the care packages are all backed up and you guys might be running out of baby wipes!
You need to understand that to those of us on the homefront, the idea of you running out of baby wipes is tantamount to running out of ammo. There is this very weird, but powerful, baby wipe mania going on in America. It’s almost like the Beenie Baby or Pokemon phenomenon. I guess we feel like we can keep our boys safe by sending more baby wipes. I’m thinking of re-investing my entire 401(k) in companies manufacturing baby wipes.
If you run into CCN’s Ryan Chilcote tell him your mom thinks he is a cutie, even with his hair all grunged up with desert suck filth. A few days ago he did a report with his hair sticking straight up, sort of like Marge Simpson. The next day he made an attempt to comb it down by parting it in the middle and it looked slightly worse. He also put on a polo shirt, trying to look tidy, but the grunge around his neck just showed more. Still, I think he is almost as cute as you.
9:01 PM here now. Time for me to take a Xanax (else I drive Rudy crazy by constantly yelling OH MY GOD, THOSE ASSHOLES ARE SHOOTING AT ROBBY!) and channel surf my way around the world to get a glimpse of what the 101st 3rd Brigade is doing today.
TTFN (Take Time For Negotiatingawaytocallmom)
Much Love,
--Mom
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