Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

May 23, 2003

Dear Rob,

This morning I sent you a box of stuff to give to the local children. Ethel donated a lot of prize items the food companies provide to school lunch programs. Pencils, pencil cases, key rings, change purses, that sort of thing.

My favorites are the “Got Milk?” zipper-pulls. They say “Milk. The All-American Drink!” You gotta love the idea of 100 kids running around Mosul wearing “The All-American Drink” on their zippers. I included two coloring books, some crayons and color pencils for you, and some stuff to read.

Tomorrow we’re leaving for a three day trip to Wisconsin Dells. It’s one of those marketing tour deals. They sell you a cheap vacation at their resort in exchange for getting to try to sell you a unit or cabin, or whatever. Rudy bought it last year and it’s going to expire, so off we go to Wisconsin! Supposedly, all we have to endure is a ninety-minute sales pitch on day two. We shall see. I plan to announce right off that we are no way going to buy anything. I’ll say we are in year 1 of a 10 year scouting mission to select a location for our retirement. Our plan, I will say, is to travel to a different potential location every year for the next ten years, at the end of which we will select the nicest place to spend our golden years. Basically, show me what you’ve got and maybe I’ll call you in 2013.

Dylan is quite excited because he has his own discount card for various Wisconsin Dells attractions. He seems to believe there is some chance we will visit the Wisconsin Dells water park, whereupon we will all gleefully swoosh around on waterslides for endless hours of lively family fun. What I have not told him is that the temperature is forecast to be around 65 degrees.

Thus, even if I were inclined toward such aquatic frolicking (and I am not), it will doubtless be too cold. A good thing, too, because I cannot for the life of me imagine Rudy plunging breathlessly down a water slide. Might be worth the cold to see such a sight, but NOT worth having to engage in such an activity myself!

I tend to avoid doing anything remotely athletic while publicly garbed in less than half a yard of brightly colored Lycra. And I instinctively know that the general public is grateful for my restraint. Thankfully, Rudy seems to share my inhibitions. I have yet to see him cavort about out of doors without a shirt. In fact, I have never seen him do anything outside without a shirt, except lounge around a hotel swimming pool. I’ve never even seen him mow the lawn without a shirt. Remarkable compatibility, considering that both of us are in fairly decent physical condition. We’re just modest. If we lived in Iraq we’d wear matching black tablecloths.

There’s a question. Why don’t the Iraqi ladies ever wear brighter, more fashionable tablecloths? A decorous pinstripe for business wear might be appropriate. Maybe a nice light floral for summer outings. Of course, white is only appropriate after Memorial Day or for KKK meetings. Perhaps I should send you a few JC Penney White Sale catalogs. You could hand them out as a humanitarian gesture and let all the lovely Iraqi ladies know what the fashionable American tables are wearing this season.

Okay, enough of this nonsense! Time to go pack for the Dells. (What the hell is a dell, anyway? I’m sure Papa would be happy to enlighten me.)

TTFN (Take Tons of Fotos Now!)

Much love,
--Mom