A Special Guest

(Unrelated picture: Steampunk Ethan, per his special request.)

It's the end of August. That means it's been a whole year since my husband left home to work overseas, and his contract is now officially complete. He's stateside again, finishing his outprocessing/debriefing crapola and will be home soon, soon as in maybe in a few hours, maybe tonight, maybe first thing in the morning, maybe maybe maybe. It sucks not knowing any more than that!

But we persevere, wielding our large cleaning brush and a vacuum-cleaner hose, washing the linens and sweeping the floors so it will look like we've been living in a clean, tidy house the entire time he's been gone. "Yes dear, that's right. I am supermom."

He won't believe it for a second.

What has he missed? Oktoberfest. Home-cooked meals (including lots of tofu and more pizza nights than I can remember). PMS (lucky him). An entire year of school, minus those two weeks in November when he was able to sneak away for just a little vacation and see us. Christmas in Oregon. Ethan's first DS. Mommy's malware incident. THE WORST SPIDER SEASON EVER. Those soba noodles that introduced tiny noodle-eating pests to the pantry and launched a spring-cleaning war.

He's missed poorly-sung karaoke, Super Dance-Moves Mondays, a dozen new CDs and the addition of a stereo to the living room. He's missed Ethan's Jet-Li obsession, his anime obsession, and most of all his obsession with subtitles on every show or movie EVER.

My hair has grown 10 inches longer in his absence. I hope he doesn't mind that I threw out let Ethan use up all the shampoo and bought bar soap instead.

He missed my affairs with LOTRO, doodling, hair care, D&D, Le Creuset, finding a houseplant I can't kill (go go kalanchoe) and real, honest-to-god snow that lasted a whole day.

I know he's missed us a lot. But I'm also pretty sure he wouldn't care if the house looked it'd hosted its own personal hurricane, so long as we're here.

But no. I am going to clean ALL the things!

Catch y'all on the flip side. I'll be sure to tell hubby that my invisible internet people are glad he's home.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We were zombies this year. It was fun! I sure got a lot of strange looks at the Chuck E. Cheese... but I won a ton of tickets for Ethan while he played some bug-zapping video games and ate pizza.

RL: I Rock, and Other Such Things

Just posting 'cause this morning was pretty fun compared to most. I woke Ethan up for school and while I waited for him to get dressed, I watched as much as I could stomach of the tail end of Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas (hint: it wasn't very much). Then a commercial came on (thank god for commercials) advertising a weekend showing of the Wizard of Oz. Well! I turned off the TV and started singing "If I Only Had a Brain". I'm pretty sure Ethan's never seen the movie, but he sure did love the song. Probably because it reminded him of zombies, but I digress. Then we found out he was dangerously low on clean shirts. So I rummaged around in his dresser and found a black t-shirt we got this summer that has a stick figure playing guitar on the front with "I ROCK" printed on it in huge letters.

The scene in the car went something like this:

Me: I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain. With the thoughts I'd be thinkin' I could be another Lincoln--

Ethan, wearing ridiculous I ROCK shirt: IF I ONLY HAD A BRAAAAAIN!

So Ethan went to school giggling and I got a big hug and a kiss for my hammy rendition of the Scarecrow's song. And now I have coffee! It's gonna be a good day, I can tell.