News from David and Southern California

We have heard from both David and Fort Lewis that his unit's Welcoming Home ceremony at Lewis will be in mid-October. The Lewis e-mail set a tentative day, but I'm not going to publish it here yet until we are closer because at this point, it's a moving target.

David said he will be in Kuwait three weeks prior to coming home, doing paperwork on equipment, matching numbers on vehicles and equipment to inventory tracking materials, so he may possibly arrive back a little later than the rest of the company. Ah, the glamorous life of an Army lieutenant! But at least he'll be out of harm's way.

I have added a new link: Stryker Brigade News, which appears to be written and/or moderated by someone at Ft. Lewis. No big secrets revealed but does have an inside view of those attached to Lewis, both in Washington and deployed.

The other bit of news which kept me from posting for a while was that my mother has been in the hospital twice in July, once for a fall and then back due to breathing problems. She was returning to my sister's car after a lunch out when she fell and broke a rib, which slightly punctured her lung. Fortunately, my sister rushed her to an emergency room, and the hospital re-inflated her lung. However, she was in ICU for a few days, and then came home, but then had to return for two nights.

Craig was able to stay there almost two weeks, and did a lot to help her, and I visited for three days last week, and was almost useless except to cheer her up. Dusty is staying with her now, but that is only temporary and we are trying to persuade her to allow a helper to come in more often, but she values her independence above her health.

Sometimes this feeling of being stretched one way to concerns about David -- worrying but not being too protective, letting go what is already gone -- being pulled to protect what is fragile and needing more protection but resisting it, such as my mother -- and then stretched by a job that eats time but pays little -- just frays at me until I have little time and energy left. I think that's why I want to crawl into my historic-feminist novels and Harry Potter's world to get away.

Craig has been tremendous; he knows what to ask the doctors, how to set up the home health care, what to ask the nurses and physical therapists. I don't know what I'd do without him.