A letter to Yvonne, serving a tour in Afghanastan

January 12, 2006

^{Note:this letter has been adjusted from the original for grammar and spelling-sort of which I'm sure she would have appreciated before I sent the original.}

Hey Yvonne;

Well how was the trip out there? Are you dead yet? Did the plane fall apart? Guess not if you are reading this letter and if you are dead then you already know how we are and I don’t need to tell you.

Well since you are in weather that would make a goat sweat, I think I should start by saying that we just had a wonderful two days of snow and icy rain. It got really damp here and the wind was so bad that the icicles are directionally challenged. They are going sideways.

Mr. Squirrel’s favourite resting place, the divider fence, has an ice sculpture of a demented parrot on it. (You know me, for a minute I panicked when I first saw it and thought it was a frozen bird.) Outside, B-r-r-r-r that place I usually avoid like the plague, is so cold that my fingers turn blue and my nose starts running just checking the mail. The Mountain Man had to shovel our driveway twice in one day and he’s taken to parking diagonally across the driveway because the snowplow piled so much snow across the street, he can’t back out without taking off the back bumper. I think our neighbours think he’s taken up drinking.

I couldn’t blame them if they did think that because we found out the neighbour, the single mum is pregnant again and now he feels it’s his duty to shovel her driveway as well! That makes six driveways he shovels everyday; Ours, Crystal’s, Marion's, our neighbour who lets us park the extra car, Joe’s, because Joe just had carpal tunnel syndrome surgery on his wrist and "Big Guys" who has a heart condition and so does his wife and Daniel’s when he can. Daniel’s wife is terminally ill and MM’s worried that the ambulance won’t be able to get to the door in an emergency. Needless to say MM’s back is pretty bad right now.

Caitlin has come down with a wicked cold and she pulled a Mountain Man thing. She came home from school, day before yesterday and in a bright cheery voice told me, "Mum, I was coughing so hard today, I coughed up blood." She shrugged out of her school bag as I dove out of my chair for the thermometer. Being the good paramedic’s daughter that I am I started classifying and listing diseases in my head. "Oh yeah and in gym my hands turned a really neat colour of blue." She added.

“Okay, so we are looking at; blood, cough, possibly asthma which could be anything from a cold to tuberculosis; Lung infection? Pneumonia? I just got over that and it’s contagious. Maybe cold intolerance and asthma attack? No. Must be ear infection, she probably needs another surgery. It’s been six years since her last one and how much do you grow between ages 9 and 15? A lot so that’s it, no need to panic yet.” [This entire paragraph took about 3.4 seconds in my head.]

I grabbed the thermometer and before I could ram it down her throat, (I stopped using the rectal when they were two—I have very dignified kids,) she added, "I’m fine, I just can’t breathe in gym but the rest of the day, I’m fine." Sure enough, the battery was dead in the thermometer but I told myself, just run I’ll just run her over to the doctors and he can give her chest a listen. So I do.

I pack her in the car and she immediately starts complaining. Now you know me, I take more than an hour to get ready to go to the store so she had plenty of time to sort herself out before we left. We weren’t even out of the driveway when the first complaint hit;

Caitlin: "I’m hungry. Can we pick up some instant food?" (Caitlin calls fast food instant food because someone else makes it and that makes it faster than fast.)

MM: "No. We can’t afford it."

Caitlin: *Wail* "But I didn’t eat lunch today and I’m really hungry."

MM: I told you to take a lunch to school. If you’re too lazy to take a lunch then that’s your fault.

(Caitlin rolls her eyes.)

MM: Why didn’t you eat when you got home from school?

Caitlin: I would have but Mom kept trying to put the thermometer in me and besides we don’t have any food.

MM: Caitlin, I just bought groceries yesterday. There’s lots of food in the house.

Caitlin: No there’s not.

MM: Yes there is. I bought fruit too.

Caitlin: That’s all "you-have-to-make-it" food. I want real food.

MM: *To me* Man your daughter is lazy.

Me: *Eyebrow raised* My daughter?

Caitlin: Don’t fight you two, I’ve got a headache and Dad you keep that up and Mum’s going to take your license away.

MM: *in a very patient voice* Caitlin, Your mom can’t take my driver’s license away.

Caitlin: Yes she can—your Marriage License.

Needless to say, we waited two hours at the doctors to find out that Caitlin is fine and she made the MM laugh so hard that he bought her Wendy’s. Did you know that they have a big sign out on the street in front of Wendy’s? It’s for Weight Watchers. Is that mean or what? They must have taken ‘Guilt-trip Marketing 101'.

That reminds me I also have to buy peanut butter.  Yesterday I told Caitlin to make herself a peanut butter sandwich. She told me there was "no way she was eating that peanut butter."

I asked, "Why?" and her answer convinced me we need a new jar of peanut butter.

You know how Mischief has that toy, the Kong? It’s a rubber toy that you put a dog biscuit and peanut butter in the hole on the end and the dog licks it out. Well Mischief gets the biscuit out so fast that Doug shoved a whole one in there and until it disintegrates naturally or breaks down it’s not coming out. The biscuit she has in there now has been there for about three weeks and I keep planning on cutting it out because that really can’t be healthy.

So back to Caitlin.

She complained that, "Dad uses that peanut butter for the dog’s toy."

"Yeah," I answered her patiently, "But he uses a clean knife so don’t worry about it."

"Maybe he does Mother," she answered with just as much sarcastic patience. "But he puts the extra peanut butter back in and he scrapes the knife around the opening of the toy. That means that he’s putting bits of gross dog biscuit and dog slobber back into the jar."

I just stared at her and tried to hold the old gorge down as I realized I’d just had a peanut-butter sandwich for lunch. Being the good mom that I am, I calmly told her, "I’ll get some new peanut butter, have cheese."

Oh yes! I am very excited and I know that you will be too when you hear. When I was at the grocery store the other day I picked up a new product they have out—Chocolate-flavoured Cream Cheese!!!! Yee-haw!!! Snoopy dance of Joy!! It’s made by Lactancia and somebody in marketing finally figured out that "Cheese and Chocolate are food group," they managed to combine them into the perfect food! You only have to add eggs to make a cheese cake or melt it on brownies. Life is good.

I wanted to go to the psychic fair this weekend but Nat’s not going and I can’t seem to interest any other adult to go. It has to be an adult because the Mountain Man won’t let me out of the house unsupervised ever since I decided to walk home from Merivale with a temp of 104. I’m sure one of Breyan’s friends would go with me but I’m old enough to think of taking teenagers anywhere as ‘babysitting’ and they are young enough to think of taking me anywhere as the same thing.

I finally did get to see Rent! It was an awesome movie. I absolutely hated the hated anyway. It also gave me further proof that I might have married the right man.

Caitlin saw it first and warned me to bring whole box of Kleenex because people are dying. So I packed my pockets with Kleenex and off the Mountain Man and I went to the movies. He had that martyred indulgent look on him but he was being a sport so I was just grateful he was driving.

The proof of proper mate choosing came during the movie. I was on my seventeenth or eighteenth Kleenex and was running out of pockets to shove them in. What does my redneck guy do? He takes out a grocery bag and calmly makes it into a little wastebasket. That way when I left I only had to dump the bag into the garbage and didn’t go home with pockets stuffed with snotty tissue. You got like a guy who thinks like that.

It was really funny when the guy from Law and Order and Angel kissed on the screen. The Mountain Man hid his eyes. I told him he was being homophobic and silly, especially so since the Angel character made such a gorgeous girl when in drag.  What was hubby’s answer? "Law and Order is my favourite show and he plays a tough cop. It would ruin the show for me.”  Isn’t my guy so manly-man?
Well I really should stop writing you now. This letter is getting so long I’ll have to pay shipping costs. I should make dinner but I’m terminally lazy and it could be dangerous to my family's health. I just picked up a copy of Elizabeth Moon’s new book which means, obviously, I will make dinner and read while I do dinner which also means that Caitlin can probably talk MM into buying her Harvey’s?

Oh yeah, one more thing. I’ve been trying to convince Breyan to vote. Being a good parent I want him to take his responsibilities as a voter seriously. I’ve got all the candidates pamphlets; I’ve made sure he knows which party is which historically, what their standard politics are and what they are most likely to do as our countries leaders. I’ve made him watch the news and two serious discussions on PBS about what the economists and university professors think of the leaders competing in the election campaign. I was a little stuttered by the guy from Quebec who came out openly and basically stated:

"The only firearms problems we have in Canada are immigrants. Take a look at Toronto and Vancouver. It’s not the average Joe Canadian with his dads hunting rifle shooting each other in the streets. It’s the Tong, [Chinese Mafia] and the Somaliland gangs [killing each other on the streets.] We need to clamp down on immigration and send the criminals back."

Unfortunately he’s Bloc so we can’t vote for him but I seriously considered it.

Anyway, I’m really trying to educate Breyan on the issues so that he can make responsible, informed choices at the voting booth---which of course means he has to vote PC for Alan Cutter like his dad told him to.

Well I guess I should let you get back to counting tanks and trying to figure out how to stay cool in shirt sleeves and relish jars. Or did you get beige kit over there?

Hey think about it. It’s much easier to convert beige uniforms to something, "Smart and Pretty for Civvy Street*." I’ve picked up some really nice embroidery patches that could turn that extra jacket into something very chic for the redneck bar when you get home. They have cows on them. (Snorkel....)

So please, again be careful over there. I worry about you but not enough to lose sleep so that’s fine. Did you bring a case of Immodium? Do you need it? If so, I guess that would make you popular. I’ve included the new IKEA flyer so you can vicariously shop or would that just make you feel bad? Let me know or I’ll send the new magazine when it comes in.

Lots of love and big, big hugs. Love ya!

Kimberley and family.

^{*the Canadian War Museum has a copy of pamphlet published in 1945 entitled, “Change your Uniform to Smart and Pretty for Civvy Street!”  I think that’s the name of the pamphlet but as a costumer, I want a copy.}