You may wonder, just how does a Navy JAG keep her family entertained through the winter months or keep herself amused through a deployment?

Besides knowing Cantonese and Mandarin and having a goofy husband, what ability gives Elysia a special edge over her peers?

The secret lies in her teeth.

One of my goals, and it is not a particularly impressive one, is to come up with Halloween ideas in advance of the holiday instead of after it.  As a kid, I am not sure that my brother and I ever did that, leading to very random costumes comprised of whatever was handy:  Picture lederhosen, Groucho Marx nose and eyebrows, and glasses with the eyeballs hanging out by springs.

As a father, I have an opportunity to do better.  A responsibility.

For Citrus’s first Halloween we got a nice little chicken outfit for her.  I was a box of Tamiflu.  And Elysia was Miss Influenza 2005.  It was a year of SARS, so dressing our daughter as the avian flu seemed like the right thing to do.  As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones.

Elysia googled avian flu Halloween and discovered a guy named Mark Maynard who had contemplated doing the same thing with his daughter that year, only his wife vetoed the idea.  And then it got strange.  

 
Mark’s daughter has the same name as ours, and she is one year older.  Her father is white and her mother is Chinese-American.  It was like finding a parallel universe, and discovering that it was located in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

The following year it was my turn to be vetoed — it was a silent, deadly veto — after I started to mention Mark Karr and JonBenet.  Instead, I was an entomologist and Citrus was a ladybug, which worked out pretty well.

Last year my grand plans failed when Citrus refused to put on her costume.  I was soy sauce, Elysia was going to be frozen vegetables, and Citrus was supposed to wear a white pillow.  We were going to be fried rice. 

Something tells me my ideas will soon lose out to a princess costume.  But just in case, I’m open to your suggestions.

The Navy is testing new service dress khakis, reminiscent of World War II uniforms.  Elysia now has about $4,500 worth of polyester, and apparently more to come.

On the car ride home today, Citrus announced that she was going ”get a pink uniform, with stars and stripes and ribbons, so that I can go to work.”

I think she was referring to this prototype for our Lady Sailors.

Elysia says that the khakis sometimes make her look like a brown paper bag.  Perhaps she would prefer to be sherbet?

It was a long weekend.  We visited Sesame Place, taking advantage of complimentary admission for active duty military.  Citrus was too scared to visit with Grover and Oscar up close, so we obliged instead. 

In addition to a lot of water rides, Sesame Place has several musical shows including a “Rock Around the Block” parade of all the characters.  There was one I had never seen before, a DJ named Jackman Wolf.  I suspect he moonlights at a leather bar.

After two days at the park, we headed to Queens for a birthday party.  Elysia’s grandmother turned 90, so we celebrated at a restaurant in Flushing, complete with a magician to entertain the kids.  He turned out to be pretty good and even the birthday girl was pulled into the act. 

After her friend, Alexandra, grunted at her, Citrus reports

And I said to her, ‘Whatever’.

I spent a good portion of the day at Walter Reed today trying to figure out why Citrus was crying when peeing.  No fever, no ongoing visible signs of anything wrong.  Cheerful all around.  Yesterday I rewarded her with a donut for trying to pee in a cup.  She angled for donut another today, but left empty-handed. 

Sometimes at the doctor’s office you feel embarassed for being healthy.  Other days you feel embarassed because you deserve it.

A few years ago I worked briefly at a public housing authority.  One day we got word that a colleague had been rushed in an ambulance to the hospital. 

That morning he had looked in the mirror and saw that he was ashen, almost blue.  Seeing himself in this condition, he noticed also that his heart was racing.  He was breathing rapidly and it was hard to get enough air.  Fearing a heart attack, he called 911.   A co-worker met him at the hospital.

As they wheeled him in to the hospital on a gurney, a nurse set up an IV.  She wiped his arm with some antiseptic.

The blue came off.

He had gone to sleep the night before on some new blue sheets that he had not washed.  By morning, after tossing and turning throughout the night, he was a shade darker.  Our witness, the co-worker who rushed to the hospital, managed to tell the story without laughing until the end.

From left to right: Sue Hoppin; Sally Pressman (”Roxy” on Army Wives); Mitja Ng-Baumhackl; Tanya Biank (author of Army Wives); Brigid Brannagh (”Pamela” on Army Wives); Nicole Alcorn.  As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with five wives….

This photo and others are posted on the MOAA Spouse Blog.

For the Fourth of July we drove to Annapolis for a special treat, a sunset cruise to watch the fireworks from aboard a 74-foot wooden schooner. 

In previous years we watched the fireworks from a field at the U.S. Naval Academy but most of the events have been moved to the city dock.  They claimed it was for security reasons but I suspect it really was about bringing more money to the waterfront businesses.

There was a torrential downpour and by the end we were about ready to toss overboard the two guys singing sea shanties nearly the entire time.  For some reason I assumed “live entertainment” would mean something like classical guitar, but that’s just because I grew up around some snobby cafes.  This, however, was like being stuck with someone who got lost on their way to Ren Faire.  We kept to the other end of the boat and had a good time.

In August, I am taking sailing classes.  I figure that as long as Elysia is in the Navy, we are likely to be near water.  Maybe next year this could be us!  All we need is a mascot.

Here is our car plastered with magnets in support of military families.  They seem to be breeding on the back of our car. 

Years ago I couldn’t stand the yellow ribbon magnets mainly because they seemed to be prized the most by armchair warriors.  Most of them have disappeared, so I think it is true that for civilians they were proxies of support for the war and had little to do with supporting the troops.  Otherwise, wouldn’t there be even more of them now?  I imagine that some people on the road have us pegged as warmongers. 

In any case, they show up in tote bags at various events and have already improved the world for one person.  Our daughter likes to rearrange them, so that is good enough for me.

General Casey does not watch Army Wives.  Or at least would not admit it to a reporter who was standing next to him.