Short, cold blog

I'm too lazy to build a fire and we're out of heating oil. I just took Tula on a walk in the cold -- the snow is gone! -- and my fingers are freezing. Also, I have an incredibly busy day of work ahead of me thanks to meetings that took up all my free time yesterday.

I was hoping President Obama would surprise everybody by saying, "On my way over here, I decided we should just bring all the soldiers home tomorrow and not ever return to Afghanistan or Iraq." Of course, he can't do that. It's no good to see Fort Drum in the list of places the new soldiers will come from, but we're not surprised, obviously. Still no word on when, but at least it will be after Christmas.

It's not that Christmas is a particularly sad time not to have him home, or a poignant time to send him to war. Selfishly, I just can't stand the thought of thinking of an appropriate answer for people who come up to me and say, "How terrible that he's gone at Christmas. You must be so sad." I'm never sad he's gone; he likes to be at war. I'm worried that he may be getting killed or maimed, but that's not the same, and you can't say that to people because they say, "You have to keep positive." Ugh.

It'll be bad enough to go home and have a whole bunch of sad people around saying, "I just don't feel like celebrating Christmas, knowing he's going" or looking at me sadly like I don't realize this may be our last Christmas together on this earth. Ugh, again.

Afghanistan is dangerous. Going there in a TRUCK is really dangerous. But so is driving on ice, and we'll be doing lots of that.

I kind of hope they don't tell us when he's going until after Christmas. Then I hope President Obama really does change his mind and decide to just call the whole thing off. Not likely, I know, but you never can tell.