Blogging Again

CaliValleyGirl posted a comment to my last posting from back in June so I have decided to revive this dead blog. Heck, who knew anybody was still reading? As my header states, I am supposed to be chronicling my sons enlistment...well...I did okay for a while. He is due to get out of the Army later this year, so I guess I am still obligated to blog. So here I am again.

Let's see - what excitement have I had in the past few months. Not much really. Thanks to Uncle Sam and the brand new "Stop-Loss" rules that went into effect on January 1st of this year, Sprout has been spared another deployment. His group is set to return to Iraq very soon but he will not be with them. He has already begun his out-processing and as far as I am concerned, he cannot out-process fast enough. Six years of serving your country is nothing to spit at and I continue to tell him how proud he should be. And he is proud of his service. But I worry that he may have some hesitation about not deploying with his unit this time. The Army has a way of making soldiers feel guilty. But he has served his country well, having deployed to Korea for a year and Iraq for more than a year, so I would say he has paid his dues. No one can say that he has not done his required duty. And as I tell him often, he has done a heck of a lot more than most in this country have done. The pride of his service to his country is something he has earned through his own hard work and he will carry that with him always. And rightly so. As this chapter comes to a close, I have learned a new meaning of the word "pride"...this mother's heart swells with it.

IN OTHER NEWS: In the past two weeks, I have had somewhat of a connection to the space program. The sister of a friend that I graduated from high school with is currently on the space shuttle, about to return from spending the last two weeks on the International Space Station. How cool it that? She was part of the mission to install a new room "with a view" on the space station. It's called "Tranquility" and includes the coolest seven-window cupola that now gives the astronauts a totally awesome view of Earth. I have been addicted to NASA tv for the past few nights following all the excitement and I have learned so much about space and the space station and zero-gravity and all kinds of stuff. Did you know astronauts don't wear shoes on the space station, they float around in their socks. Why? I don't know. So they don't accidentally bop each other in the teeth with their shoes, I guess. Anyway, it's worth checking out at the NASA image gallery. Too-o-o cool.