eMail to the Front

by Alyssa Day

  To: Alesia

  From: Judd

  Subject: Good nav vibes

  The check ride went very well. The good nav vibes you sent helped me immensely! I tried to call you but a ship pulled in to port and it is squid central here, so the lines for the phones are very long. We're going to go to the lovely grease pit called the "Dome" and eat some French Toast. We have the Ready tomorrow, so I will e-mail you more then.

  I know how tired you must be. At least we have to have a required number of hours of sleep for flying. Too bad there's not a rule like that for Mommies!

  p.s. Thanks for the cookies! I got TWO boxes from you the other day. Never seen so many jealous looks! I did share some, but ate all the chocolate-chip walnut ones myself.

  To: Judd

  From: Alesia

  Subject: Life is good again—I have discovered Starbucks!

  Coffee and caramel lattes. Life is worth living again. Also, on the way to Connor's gymnastics class, there's a drive-through espresso place that gives me a candy-covered coffee bean with my latte. If you look really pathetic and ask for extras, they give you a little baggie full of five or six candy-covered beans.

  I drove through three times today.

  So, when we got home, I vacuumed the house, dusted the furniture, bathed the kids, put them to sleep, washed the dishes, did a week's worth of laundry, sorted through ten years of accumulated photos and put them in albums, cleaned the oven, polished the hardwood floors, cleaned the bathrooms, and am now bouncing off the ceiling. Somehow—you guessed it—it's 3 a.m. again.

  Maybe I'll cut down on the coffee beans.

  11

  Your Son Discovered His Penis This Week

  July

  To: Judd

  From: Alesia

  Subject: YOU need to explain why girls don't have testicles.

  Your son scared me to death today. He yelled for me at the top of his lungs from the bathroom, "Mommy, come quick, I have little balls in my peeper!" Of course, the first thing I thought, knowing Connor, is that he had somehow jammed the marbles from the Hungry Hippo game inside of his penis.

  I made it to the bathroom in two seconds flat.

  Connor was standing in front of the toilet, pants down around his ankles, looking extremely concerned. He was rolling his testicles around and looking at them. He turned enormous eyes to me:

  "There's balls under here, Mommy."

  "Those are your testicles, Connor, every boy has them." (Picture me holding in a laugh so huge my head starts turning purple.)

  "Does Daddy have them?"

  "Yes, Daddy has them. Daddy's are bigger." (I'm warning you, don't even go there.)

  "Does P.J. have them?"

  "Yes." (No way I'm getting into the concept of dog-neutering right now.)

  "Do you have them?"

  "No, I'm a girl, only boys have them."

  "Does Baby Lauren have them?"

  "No."

  "Grandma?"

  "No."

  "When you grow up to be a Daddy, Mommy, will YOU have tecksickles?"

  "No, I will never be a Daddy. I'm a girl."

  "OK."

  So, thus began genitalia appreciation week. It felt like the Discovery Channel around our house, except there were no water buffaloes mating.

  "Mommy, why don't you have a penis?"

  Well, Freud would say . . .No. Keep it simple.

  "Only boys have penises."

  "What do girls have?"

  "Girls have vaginas."

  "So, no penis AND no tecksickles, huh?" (Always a problem climbing the corporate ladder, too. Who knew it started at age two?)

  "Right."

  This became much more fun when Grandma was around, because I don't think my mother has ever said the word penis in her life. On one of our daily expeditions to Wal-Mart—really, the social hub of the island-Connor ambushed her.

  Picture the tranquil setting of the Wal-Mart bathroom, and your son speaking to Grandma (who's in the next stall) in his usual soft, gentle voice that could out-decibel the average foghorn:

  "Grandma, do you have a VAGINA?" (Sound of much laughter from other people in the bathroom and choking noises as Grandma swallowed her tongue.)

  I stepped in to help, naturally.

  "Yes, Connor, Grandma is a girl."

  "Does she pee standing up?"

  "No, she's a girl, she has to sit down."

  "Because she has a VAGINA?"

  "Yes, Connor." (Wishing the toilet would just open up and flush us through the floor.)

  The bathroom is suddenly full of people. Wal-Mart is announcing a Roll-Back Pricing Special on potty humor in the women's bathroom.

  "Grandma, when you grow up and you're a boy, you can pee standing up like me." (I just gave up completely at that point.)

  "Connor, Daddy will tell you all about it on the phone tonight."

  To: Alesia

  From: Judd

  Subject: I'm sorry you’re mad at me.

  I'm sorry I didn't want to discuss my son's testicles on the phone in the Ready Room, surrounded by 50 guys. Yes, I'm a wimp. I would have been tortured for months. It's just not happening.

  To: Judd

  From: Alesia

  Subject: Peeing standing up is not as easy as you might think.

  O.K., the problem is that the parent with the same equipment needs to be around for the whole demonstration process. I tried "aim at the floating Cheerios." He seems to be getting it.

  To: Alesia

  From: Judd

  Subject: The Cheerios were a great idea.

  I think some of the guys around here could use a few, especially after one too many beers. But that's another story . . .

  12

  Rebellion of the Appliances

  July

  To: Judd

  From: Alesia

  Subject: It's like a Stephen King novel around here.

  The ongoing defection of the loyalty of the machines in this household continues. Yesterday, I was all set to mow, and the mower would not start. I may have told you this already. I'd just filled it with gas, anyway, and checked the oil (it has a cute little dipstick!) and everything looked fine. Grr.

  I don't mean to be paranoid, but I swear they all knew the moment your plane lifted off the runway. The first sign was when the check engine light came on in the truck, as I was driving it home from taking you to the hangar. Don't tell me machines can't think.

  So, I did the responsible, mature thing. I drove it for four more weeks, hoping the light would go off. (It didn't.) Anyway, we are lucky to have advanced computer diagnostics technology at the car dealers these days. It only cost us $300 for them to hook the truck up to a very smart computer, so the computer could tell the mechanic to tell us that the problem was the check engine light.

  The light itself.

  A $2.00 lightbulb.

  The $300 was nonrefundable, of course. I swear I heard a sinister BWA HA HA HA emanating from the diagnostics machine as I drove off, but maybe the mechanic just got a bad burrito for lunch.

  When I got home and tried to e-mail you, I turned on my computer to get one of my all-time favorite computer messages: "Fatal application error in sector #$%@"123 blah blah blah." I have no idea what that means, of course, but it can't be good, with the word FATAL in it. I called the computer company help desk and talked to the 12-year-old kid who runs the service department. He said I could mail it in to their priority service department in Bangladesh, but I'd be better off buying a new one. After all, we bought it seven months ago. It's practically a stone tablet and chisel. (Am using the laptop now.)

  Mom was here for her visit by then, luckily, so she made us a nice roast beef dinner and said she would clean up the kitchen, so I could relax. She is the only human being on the planet who likes to wash dishes by hand, as she has told me 328 times. (I have a deep-seated character flaw because I use a dishwasher. This leads to me experiencing serious remorse for being a great disappointment as a daughter for almost
two whole seconds before I load the dishwasher.) At least she stopped sniffing our refrigerator every time she comes to visit. And what normal person would WANT to eat off the kitchen floor????

  Anyway, dinner wasn't all that relaxing, ultimately, because Mom put the leftover roast down the drain and turned on the garbage disposal.

  Our garbage disposal has had several weeks to become used to my cooking. In other words, almost nothing goes down it but leftover macaroni and cheese. I think the shock of having to digest actual home-cooked food was too much for it. It made a horrible gasping sound like a hippo being suffocated and died a hideous death. Sadly, it had a touch of drama queen and cannoned a fountain of half-garbage-disposed roast beef about three feet in the air.

  Connor thought it was pretty cool. I think he learned a new word when Mommy was cleaning roast beef off the walls, though, so we will certainly hear about it from his preschool teacher. (Rhymes with snit; Connor said it 47 times before bedtime.)

  You'll be glad to know that the plumber actually fixed it (the garbage disposal, not the bad word thing) without having to install a new one. In fact, according to Mom, he was a very nice and cheerful man who turned some latch under the sink, cleaned everything out, and was gone in less than six minutes. For only $98.00. (Snit.)

  No wonder he was cheerful. That's $980 per hour. Our kids are definitely skipping college and going straight to plumbing school. I bought Connor a toy tool belt so he can start practicing now.

  (By the way, I got your e-mail about care and treatment of the septic tank. If you think for one minute I am having anything to do with a septic tank, the desert heat has melted your brain. Don't ever, ever bring it up again.)

  Anyway, back to Stephen King. Remember his story about the industrial washing machine that came to life and ate people in disgusting ways? Well, I think our washing machine has been reading my books and getting ideas, because tonight it started making a horrible banging noise, like WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP. I went running down to the basement to see what was going on and it had moved. I am not kidding. The washing machine was literally about 10 feet across the basement floor from where it was supposed to be, trailing tubes and cords and whatnot. The floor was covered with water.

  It was trying to make a break for it—I know it. No longer content to eat one sock out of every pair I put in it, it was coming upstairs to go directly to the closet and bypass the middleman.

  I was afraid to walk in the water, in case I got electrocuted—you know how I am about electricity— so I got your fishing waders and the broom and advanced to the cord, to pull it out of the wall. (I had your work-in-the-yard gloves on, too.)

  Frankly, I was scared to death.

  So there I was, in red flannel pajamas, rubber hip waders, and huge leather gloves, brandishing a broom. I pulled the plug with the end of the broom and ran out of the room. I'll have to clean the water up tomorrow, in the daylight.

  There's no way I'm going back down there tonight.

  Unfortunately, Connor had come downstairs during all this. He took one look at me and started laughing so hard he forgot he was potty trained. (Did I mention the carpet cleaning guys are coming Thursday?)

  At this rate, it's going to be candlelight and beating our clothes on a rock to wash them, if you don't get back soon.

  I'm almost afraid to write this to you, because I don't want the computer to tell the other appliances what's going on. They know when you fear them. They can smell it.

  I'm not going near the toaster until you come home.

  13

  Staying Fit in Thirty Minutes a Month

  July

  To: Judd

  From: Alesia

  Subject: Exercise and other wishful thinking

  I got your e-mail asking me why I'm planning to join the Y, when I have exercise videos, a treadmill, and a stationary bike at home. The easiest way to answer that is to describe my attempt to exercise yesterday. (Please keep in mind that my Mom is here to help for a few weeks now, so it may be even more interesting when she goes home.) Here are the highlights:

  I spend two hours playing outside with Connor. When he's completely worn out, I say: "Mommy wants to do her exercise tape now."

  Connor: "I'll help, Mommy." Runs to get weights. Drops 5-lb. dumbbell on my bare foot. Much hopping on one foot and loud noises.

  I finally force the shoe on my swollen foot, as it turns black and purple, and insert the exercise tape into the VCR.

  Enter my helpful mother, with a look of disgust on her face: "What are you doing? I'd go crazy if I had to do that kind of thing!"

  I start abdominal exercises.

  Connor puts his hand on my stomach and leans close, pressing all 32 pounds of his body weight into what must be a vital organ: "You're not doing it right, Mommy."

  After much pleading with him to move back, I still almost hit Connor in the face with my elbow on the way up into the third abdominal crunch; his head is two inches from mine. "You need help, Mommy."

  I begin arm exercises. Repeated warnings: "Stay back from Mommy." Almost hit Connor in the head with dumbbells, as he tries to Velcro himself to my exercise clothes.

  Steroid-laden instructor on video begins one-armed triceps push-ups. I lack pharmaceutical enhancements; do two-armed push-ups. Connor and my mother both exclaim: "You're not doing it right."

  My helpful mother adds: "Of course, that instructor weighs much less than you do."

  She leaves the room. Reenters room with bowl of potato chips. Sounds of much crunching.

  Lauren begins howling. I pause the VCR and stop to get her bottle. My Mom tries to give Lauren her bottle and becomes frustrated after many sincere attempts lasting a total of three seconds. I take baby, stop tape, nurse baby.

  Lauren in crib, sleeping.

  Connor ejects exercise tape, inserts Barney tape, throws astonishing fit at being asked to reverse process. Connor banished to bedroom television with tape of annoying purple dinosaur.

  I begin exercise tape again.

  Mom leaves room; reenters with bowl of pistachio nuts. Sounds of much shell cracking and crunching.

  I learn my abs of steel have turned into abs of marshmallow sometime during the past three years and two babies.

  30-minute tape finally ends, only two hours and 45 minutes later. I do cool-down stretches. My helpful mother leaves room; reenters with pan: "Would you like a brownie?"

  Triumphant and unvanquished, I rush to weigh myself. Have gained a pound.

  The problem with exercise and deployment is one of basic unfairness. Our spouses are actually getting paid to maintain good health and physical fitness. They're encouraged to work out daily. They even have periodic fun and fitness days, where they get to run a few miles on the beach in their stylish boots and fit in as many push-ups and sit-ups as they want.

  This is sometimes called boot camp.

  What's more, military exercise facilities boast first-class equipment and all the amenities. And it's free. It's sort of how I imagine Julia Roberts's life, except without the facials.

  We spouses, however, are home trying to find thirty minutes a few times a week to keep our muscles from atrophying into Jell-O. We do have options, though. We can join a health club and pay $40 a month for the privilege of watching people with more time, more money, and better bodies hog the StairMaster.

  Or we can try to find somebody to watch the kids while we take advantage of the free facility at the base. This has its own special reward—the privilege of being the only out-of-shape person in the gym at any given moment.

  I have gone to the base gym at 5 a.m., 10 a.m., 3 p.m., and 10 p.m. I have tried to sneak in behind the janitor as he closed up. I have sacrificed coffee to get there before dawn. It doesn't matter when I go, there will be an announcement over the loudspeaker: "Warning! Warning! Chubby woman walking!"

  When I finally get up the nerve to start exercising post-pregnancy, I find myself in line for the treadmill behind a team of Navy SEALs who just got done with a little
light warm-up, like carrying a submarine across Oregon. On the surface, we have so much in common. Their muscles bulge, my belly bulges. Their abs are ripped, my T-shirt is ripped. Except for the faint aroma of regurgitated breast milk, nobody would ever guess I'm not one of them.

  So, back in the real world, I lurk behind the free weights, trying to look like somebody who's going to bench press three hundred pounds any minute. Then I wait for the SEAL to finish running six-minute miles, so I can do my twenty minutes of power walking at a brisk twenty-seven-minute-per-mile pace.

  Meanwhile, I try to blend in with a lot of sweaty guys who could bench-press my car. (Not that there's much of a downside to watching muscular guys do power squats.)

  Finally, there's option three, otherwise known as reality. We do videos at 5 a.m. before the kids are up, during naptime, or at 11 p.m. after everyone is in bed. We Tae Bo, Tai Chi, and tie our bodies up in knots, because we're going to lose fifty pounds and look like a cross between Cameron Diaz and Angelina Jolie (except without the tattoo thing) by the time he gets back from deployment, by God. That lasts for about three weeks, and then we hit the wall that all serious athletes face: sleep deprivation and serious lack of interest. So, we alter our reality a little bit.

  OK, we lie like a rug.

  If I did nearly as much exercise as I claimed to be doing during deployment, I could run the Boston Marathon in thirty-nine minutes and play a few sets of tennis against the Williams sisters afterward to cool down.

  Both of them. At the same time.

  The happy news is that our spouses won't care at all when they come back, because they miss us and love us, and we look better than any super model or actress to them: we look like home.

  14