making do

Ah, Christmas. It only happens once a year, but it takes months to prepare for it and a good while to recover from it, too. I have today and tomorrow off of work, and I hardly know where to start. At least I don't have a tree to take down.

I had a low-key day on Saturday, spending time at my friend A's house watching movies, decorating gingerbread cookies, and enjoying a huge dinner. I don't know what we were thinking making so much food--I must have a week's worth of leftovers!

There was only one moment that made both of us almost lose it, when her daughter K got upset and started wailing about missing her daddy. It's nearly impossible to keep a lid on our emotions when the little ones let theirs out, but we managed, and the moment passed. I'll tell you, though, I have to steel myself when K's bottom lip starts to wobble because I know what's coming. It's heartbreaking, and she's not even my kid.

Jason seems to have had a decent day, and the care packages I sent to him arrived just in the nick of time (as part of a nearly 60,000-pound cargo drop), according to his daily e-mail:

Merry Christmas! I hope you are enjoying your necklace. I received both of the packages that you sent.

...

With all of the packages I’ll be receiving, everyone in my shop will be jealous! Ha! It’s nice to feel loved, supported and appreciated.

...

We did get to have a special Christmas dinner. It was mashed potatoes, corn, string beans, steak and ham. They also had sugar cookies that looked like gingerbread men and cake. On top of that, [an admiral] and all of the chiefs were the ones serving the food. It was awfully nice for an admiral to take time out of his day to serve us. I shared the brownies with the guys on my shift, and they all really liked them.

And here's what he told my mom:

As a ship, we're "making do" with what we have for Christmas. We're still working and training, but there are still little things going on to help lighten the mood. It doesn't work for everyone, though. Some people would rather not be reminded that it's Christmas. It can be depressing for some. The way I look at it is this: you can't help the fact that you're deployed, so you might as well make the best of it. There's no sense in bringing everyone around you down. Our enemies don't care that it's Christmas. They wish it didn't exist. Someone has to make these sacrifices to protect our nation. As luck would have it, I'm one of the 5,000 people chosen to make this sacrifice.

Deep thoughts, man, deep thoughts.

But let's not get too serious. As it turns out, the admiral isn't the only one who put in some face time. They had a visit from an even bigger VIP:

It looks like I won't be hibernating after all.

Last week I was preparing to hibernate until spring when suddenly the doorbell rang. It was A, my neighbor from two doors down, and her adorable daughters. She had come to say hello and introduce herself because her husband is also deployed on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson. Although they've lived on our street for more than two months, we had only said hello in passing a few times--they, like us, keep to themselves in order to avoid the drama llamas.

Since then, we've spent time together twice, including dinner out and little girl Christmas dress shopping over the weekend. It was fabulous, and I am pretty darn excited to have a friend within arm's reach who is in the same boat as I am. Plus, she has the same phone as me. We were obviously meant to be friends.

Not only do I like A, but her little girls (K, 3, and H, 10 months) are seriously making me want to dust off the old uterus. Especially if it means that I'd get to buy what A did the other night.

Seriously, the cuteness!
It looks like I won't be hibernating after all.

To breed or not to breed, that is the question.

Yesterday evening we were unloading groceries from the car when our next door neighbor walked up with two itsy-bitsy little blond girls in tow. He introduced himself--he's in the Australian Air Force and is here until August for training. He said that his wife and daughters had just arrived for a month-long visit.

The girls are ADORABLE. They remind me of me and my sister when we were small, and appear to have a similar age gap. The older girl is five or so, and was wearing one of those Disney store Cinderella dresses. The younger is two or three. They had been down to the pond in the middle of our complex to see the ducks, and had come back to get some bread so the girls could feed them.

When I see lovely, well-behaved children like them, I think to myself that those are the kind of kids I would want, if we were to have kids. Most of the time, though, the children I see in public are so ill-behaved that I swear to myself that we are never reproducing. When we lived in Massachusetts, the kids we saw most often were Jason's nephews. I will simply say that the two of them do not inspire me to attempt motherhood.

I'm so torn on the subject. So ambivalent. I know that I have plenty of time left to have kids, so we're not sweating it. Jason is firmly in the "maybe someday, but not now" camp. It's nice to be on the same page in this regard. And so far both of our families have kept the "when are you going to have kids" badgering to a minimum. I'm the second youngest grandchild on my mom's side of the family (my sister is the youngest), so most of my cousins have already squeezed out kids. I'm the oldest grandchild on my dad's side, but my cousin is pregnant and has a stepson. And Jason's sister has two boys to keep his parents busy. I know my mother is anxious for grandbabies (and has names in mind), but now that my sister is engaged I am totally putting that on her. She, after all, definitely wants kids someday. We've mostly avoided the firing squad from both wings of the family thus far.

Actually, the people who are the most inappropriate about it are Navy people. When they find out that Jason is married, they always ask if we have kids (which is a fine question in and of itself). But when he says that we do not, they inevitably follow up with "why not?" I find this question offensive on multiple levels and if it were posed to me, I would feel compelled to respond rudely, because A) it's not your business, and B) why the hell do you HAVE kids?

There are so many things that we want to do and continue doing in our lives that do not accommodate children. For example, I can't imagine going to Six Flags with a child and still enjoying it. I can't imagine enjoying a lazy Sunday with children. I can't imagine having any sort of adult fun with a child around--and I am not ready to give up my adult fun. I am not ready to give up drinking swearing like a sailor's wife. I am not ready to give up the ability to hop in the Corvette and go wherever the road takes us. I am not ready to put myself second. I don't know if I ever will be.

There are plenty of bloggers around who are parents and seem to still enjoy such grownup pursuits. Frankly, I don't know how you ladies do it.

Maybe I was born without the "mothering" gene. I find the thought of being pregnant and giving birth utterly undesirable. Everything about having children sounds so inconvenient and annoying (far more so than having cats).

So I want to hear from you, readers, about your thoughts on children. Have them? Want them? Fear them? Hate them? I know my readership is a mixed bag, so some of you are in the same place in life as me, and some of you are already or are soon to be parents. Am I alone in my thinking? Am I completely normal? Will I ever stop being a self-absorbed cat lady who prefers booze to breastmilk? Are Ashlynne and Evelynne babies in my future, or should I adopt of couple of rabbit sisters and use those names on them? Please, weigh in--I'd especially like to hear from new readers. If you've never commented before, now's the time!

For the moment, I enjoy my self-indulgent existence and rarely worry about whether or not I am wearing pants, let alone whether or not my spawn is.