I tell ya what, I am not taking my electricity for granted this year. I guess I didn't realize how dependent I am on it. Right now I have my living room light on, my hall lights (my computer's in the hall), and my computer on. The electric heat is keeping the house around 68�, and I made dinner tonight by reheating leftovers in the microwave and steaming some fresh broccoli on my electric range. After dinner I talked to my mom on my cordless phone and watched some tv as I stitched.

So yeah. I'm very electricity-dependent.

I think I would be less so if I just had a wood stove. My friend R thinks I'm insane for not having one. But although the house has a hearth already installed with (I'm assuming) venting through the roof, it would still cost us $1000 for a wood stove and up to $700 to install it.

Money doesn't grow on trees, ya know!

R's house came with a wood stove. Therein lies the difference.

I hear from various people that we're supposed to get more storms soon. What "soon" means, I'm not sure. I can't find any more information on incoming storms in our local newspaper, and I haven't heard from any reliable source that we're supposed to get more. Until I hear it from the newspaper or the tv, I'm not going to worry about it.

What will be, will be.

My bigger problem right now is my in-laws. I do like my in-laws, and I pride myself on having a good relationship with them. I don't have the typical mother-in-law that sees me as a rival for her son's affection; she looks at me as the daughter she didn't have.

But they don't seem to understand the military lifestyle. I'm not always able to drop everything and come visiting to their home. When I live 1500+ miles away, it's not the easiest thing to bring Grace to see them. They seem to expect me to visit for every Christmas and even some time in between.

I must admit it was easier when Grace was an infant, and I simply laid her in my sling where she slept through much of the flight. I also didn't have to pay for her to fly.

So I took advantage of Grace's immobility and the cheapness of Southwest Airline tickets to go visit my in-laws on a whim. Now that Grace is two, however, I have to pay for a ticket for her. I have to schlep her car seat onto the plane and install it in a seat, all while trying to keep control of a very active toddler. I have to make Grace sit through a two-hour car ride to the airport, where before she would just sleep in her infant carrier. I also have to do all this myself.

Kurt's up for orders right now, which means that we need to start picking our next destination. We've pretty much decided on Rhode Island; we just need to wait to see if Kurt's application will go through. My in-laws are very disappointed we're moving so far away, even though it means that I will be much closer to my own parents. They're upset that we'll be so far away from them in Arizona, which means visits will be even less likely.

I myself don't understand all the fuss. Maybe it's because I was raised in a military home, and I didn't see my grandparents much once we moved away from the East Coast. Most of the Christmases I remember were ones that just my parents, my siblings, and I celebrated on our own. My grandparents always wished to see us more, but they seemed to understand the limitations of travel. They too had moved away from the ancestral home in Michigan, all the way to Pennsylvania where my grandfather landed a collegiate teaching job. So not being geographically close to one's parents seems to run in my family.

It doesn't in Kurt's family. When one part of the family relocated to Arizona from Long Island, eventually a good chunk of both families (Kurt's father's and his mother's) made the move as well. As a result, the holidays in Arizona were never just Kurt and his parents and his brothers. It was aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and great-uncles and great-aunts and nieces and nephews and girlfriends and boyfriends and engaged people and people not even related to anyone but invited anyhow because the more the merrier, you know.

I love that Kurt's family is so closely knit. At the same time, I wish they would realize that sometimes it's not always possible for the military members to be home every holiday. And that sometimes, it's good for a family (just the parents and the children) to spend time on their own to strengthen their own family ties.

But hey, at least I know they love us!