Things that can ruin a date night.

• Planning a date night usually ruins any possibility of it turning out the way you want.

• Having a headache.

• Being super hungry and therefore unresponsive to conversation unless it's when you're being completely defensive about everything.

• Eating too much because of how hungry you were before you got food.

• A fire call on the way home.

So, I'll cuddle with my cat, instead of my husband, and I'll surf the Internets and I'll drink water and hope the pizza dissolves quickly in my stomach. Then, I'll read some more Vietnam War literature, trying to learn all I can about how PTSD is affecting veterans, and in doing so, I'll get depressed. Eventually, I'll pass out and maybe then Kyle will come home from the fire call.

Do I really want him to have this career? I don't know. If he was actually employed as a firefighter, wouldn't we know when he'd be gone? More predictability would be helpful. Or, perhaps if date nights did not include the fire pager. Maybe that.

So Quick!

Thursday morning, all the baby birds were gone.

I can't believe how quickly that whole being born and developing to full-blown adult happened in their little lives. Makes me grateful we humans take a bit more time to enjoy the stages!

The Things of Summer

Today, while grocery shopping, I realized that I've been coasting along all summer, hardly realizing it was summer based on the things we've been eating. We always get bananas and grapes...but today I found Rainer cherries, a cantaloupe, and some peaches. I was inspired to pick these up by the weekend fare at my mom's. Why do I get stuck in a rut?

There has been one particular thing happen near our home this summer, just recently in fact, that is super fun. We had a sparrow build a nest in a bush just outside our kitchen window. From the walkway up to our front door, you'd never know the nest was there, but from our window we have a clear view. Last Tuesday I saw the momma sitting on some blue speckled eggs. I couldn't count them all, due to the angle of the nest, but I guess there were three. I wanted to show my nieces the nest and eggs on Thursday when they visited, but they'd hatched by that morning. Instead of tiny eggs there were tiny barely-feathered necks with beaks on top--screeching loudly whenever the bush shook at the landing of one of their parents. The babies' eyes weren't open by Thursday, and I left for a long weekend wondering how much they could change in four days. They are HUGE now. The four babies barely fit in the nest now, whereas last week the nest swallowed them up! Their cries for food every three minutes is driving poor Quincy out of his mind. Until they fly away, I've had to give up part of the counter by the window. He's mesmerized by them, as am I, so I can't blame him.

As I was cleaning up my lunch dishes this afternoon, I had a staring contest with the baby on my side of the nest. He is so cute! I wanted to snap a photo, as they are moving around now and I assume they'll be off in a few days, or at least one more week. But I can't get a good shot...from the street-side of the bush, you can't even see the nest, and even traipsing around our landscaping won't get me a good angle. I fear the screen might get in the way of a picture from the kitchen-side, and so I am trying to store all the cuteness up in my mind: a memory, rather than a picture. I'm sure I don't exercise the memory portion of my brain much at all these days. So at least this is an opportunity to try.

Well, this was my study break, so I should return my thoughts to the Vietnam War and PTSD in veterans. I'm in the beginning stages of writing a paper. One and a half pages down, several more to go.

Breaking the Silence

I know it's been a few weeks. I finished up my final paper for the Jane Austen class and began the Vietnam War class. It wasn't an easy transition. And, since I knew so very little about the war in general, I've hit a real learning curve. The only thing is, I don't want to learn this.

We're reading a novel, three memoirs, and two books of poetry, all by people who served the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. We're also watching film clips from documentaries (a Walter Cronkite one first, then tonight in class it was Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam) to Hollywood productions like We Were Soldiers. I also had to read one more book on which to give a "book talk" to the whole class, meaning they won't read it, but will learn about it from my 5-minute presentation. That book was a memoir by an Amerasian boy, born out of this war, trying to survive the Communist regime that took over after the fall of Saigon, and his efforts to escape, hoping to make his way to freedom and America.

Now, I realize that I have a super sensitive empathetic nature. I realize things affect me, my heart, my sensibilities, my mind a lot more than some, perhaps most. But, what I'm learning about this war is horrific. For all sides. I have dreams about what I'm reading in these books; I'm haunted by images described and feelings experienced. Today I learned that the average age of the soldiers in Vietnam was 19. Average?! That those men (and women) who fought for their lives and managed to survive came back changed would be a given as well as an understatement. They were children, barely able to drive, not able to drink, did they even know who they were? I certainly didn't at 19. I thought I owned the world, yet I'd been nowhere and done nothing on my own. Sometimes I imagine what such a harrowing experience would have had on my 19 year old self. It's terrifying.

The psychological trauma of a war with no visible enemy, a war fought in a surreal environment for most of the kids (and I will call them kids because they were): a jungle, a beautiful land that became the enemy as it hid those attacking them and brought disease and sickness.

I've never known much about this war, and I assume this is because those who went never wanted to talk about it. History books give the cold, hard facts. What happened where. How many died, were injured, the end results. They don't give the personal accounts, the pieces that could humanize this totally dehumanizing war.

I hope you don't think I'm ranting. I'm processing as aloud as you'll ever hear me process. I'm trying to wrap my mind around (I hate that phrase, but what else to tell you how much I'm grappling with this?) the chaos, fear, and courage that was the U.S. involvement in SE Asia.

This is why I don't like the class. Because every time I finish a book, or even as I'm reading it, and after every class, I just want to weep. For the innocence lost in the soldiers who stared death and destruction in the face; for the soldiers who had no one to write letters home to, and thus no one to express their fear and uncertainty to; for the kids on the other side, with the VC, who were fighting just a desperately (I don't even know their stories); for the civilians of Vietnam who suffered terribly, who were scared and abused. I want to weep for those who suffered after all the "war" part was over, the tens of thousands of children who were by-products of the American soldiers being in Vietnam, for their suffering at the hands of the Communist Party thereafter.

How do you learn about this stuff, historical events that I could not have changed even if I had lived then; how do you hear this, see it through documentaries and the eyes of those who walked and fought it, how do you take this information and process it...into what? What can I do with it? Wars will always occur, and I will never like them. People die every day from abuse and disease--war related or not, and I can't ever stop that from happening. This course may be opening my eyes, but to what? My own helplessness in a world of hurt and destruction?

Now you know the source of my quietness and my depression. These are the thoughts I fight against every day.

Sometimes it blows up even bigger:

Who am I, in this big, broken world?

But that is a discussion for another day.

True Story

Today was my last day of Jane Austen class. We had to present our final papers, thus read a shortened version of it to the class. It went really well, and I'm all of the sudden extremely grateful for my innumerable public speaking opportunities in my job. It was SO much less scary than my first in-front-of-the-classroom experience 3 1/2 years ago.

Well, on days when I go to class, I typically eat a bagel in the car on the drive down. Today, though, I was distracted by my paper presenting thoughts and wasn't hungry. I left the bagel in the car during the 3-hour class, knowing it would be nice and warm upon my return. What I found, to my great amusement, was that not only was it warmed, but it was slightly toasted, as if I'd put the toaster on level 1. It was delicious, and I cannot believe the combo of the sun and my car actually toasted a bagel over a 3-hour time frame.

Oh, the little things.

Oh, just a few pictures

We think Quincy is great. We really do, and he's lucky he's so precious, too, after this last week of his inadvertent misbehaving (or at least it appears that way to us). I'm sure pet owners deal with these things all the time, but it's just...wow.

We have fun with him, though. He encourages us to do sprints around the house with him during his crazy evening phase, and he will most definitely chase us around, attacking us from behind door jambs, etc. Yesterday, he actually flew at me, from 3 feet in the air, when I walked around the corner. Slammed into my hip, slid down my leg, bit my ankle and ran off. That's how much fun he is. It's awesome.

He got to meet a baby this week. Liz was in town and brought Ada over for a few hours. Quincy wasn't sure about the smells and the noises--boy was she talking up a storm (she's about 5 days older than Jackson, so still very small). She is very precious, though. And, eventually, Quincy got used to her, watching her with a wary eye from across the room.

Just to show you how much personality he has, even when sleeping or relaxing, here are a few of his poses. Soon, I hope to snap a shot of his favorite reclining pose, but every time I see it, I just laugh and forget about photographing it.

He loves to sleep in random spots. A few examples:

Oddly enough, he uses pillows like a person.

Video game kitty.

Look at his bleary eyes from watching too much TV!

(Obviously, I did not train him in this way.)

Burrito kitty. He really is asleep.

Look closely. Yes, that's Quincy holding Kyle's wedding ring,

on a Bible, while sleeping.
Multi-talented kitty.

Very protective of the things that matter.

But you might also call him:

Bible-Thumping Kitty.

Below you can see him using my laptop as an armrest.

He truly does these kind of things on his own.

And this is why we love him.

Currently, his favorite thing in the house is an airplane pillow that I got several years ago. He fights with it -- biting and wrestling it, but also loves sleeping on it, or next to it. It's like a little friend to him, I think.

A true picture of contentment...on his favorite pillow.

Isn't he just beautiful?

Oops, one other thing

I forgot to mention that while we were home last weekend, I woke up early in the morning to my husband punching me in the back with his fist.

It hurt.

He claims he was dreaming that he was saving me from someone and the punch was part of a series of blows that landed on the culprit who was attempting to do us harm.

Really?

After this, and the early-in-our-marriage night terror that he had, in which he woke up yelling and fighting, ripping the covers completely off of myself, and out of my tightly clutching hands, and our bed and pounding them into the ground...

it's a wonder I can sleep in the same bed with him at all.