So ummmmm....

Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news???

The good news: Kurt called me tonight!! YAY!! I was totally surprised because I had no idea he was coming back in to port. He'd mentioned the possibility of hitting land in mid-February, but with the way his schedule has been changing, I sort of forgot about it.

I very nearly did not answer the phone either, as the caller ID said, "Quebec Call." Who the heck do I know in Quebec??

Oh wait... doesn't Marn, a fellow old-skool d-lander, live in Quebec? But she wouldn't call me anyhow.

We spent about twenty minutes on the phone at first, then he had to go buy another phone card and get back into line for the phones. I love it when he's in Panama -- phone cards are only $5 for an hour and forty minutes! In between, my friend who is coming to visit me this weekend for my birthday called, and we made some more plans. But then Kurt called again, so I had to let her go.

That phone call was two hours. Oh my goodness, y'all have no idea how good it was talk to him! I know I bitch about Kurt a lot (he's my husband -- what else am I supposed to do??), but he is truly my best friend. I can tell him so many things that go through my head without fear that he'll be angry or stop liking me or whatever. Plus we think alike on so many things that he knows exactly what I'm trying to say.

Now for the bad news: He is not going to Florida.

*sigh*

The funny thing is, he told me this as a rumor during the first phone call. Then as I was on the phone with him during the second phone call, I got an email from the family support group stating that the Florida trip has been completely canceled for the entirety of the deployment.

(What the heck?? I thought "canceled" had two L's! Firefox graciously informs me it has just the one. Sheesh.)

This sucks. It really does. For one thing, a good number of wives/spouses/family members had plane tickets to Florida to be able to spend some time with their sailors. They were going to be there long enough to make it worthwhile, and the ship even had leave periods set up so that everyone wasn't taking leave at the same time. I myself did not have tickets; I can't stomach the idea of a nine-hour trip across the country (there aren't any direct flights from here to there) with an extremely active and loud two-year-old. Not by myself.

But the benefit to his going to Florida was he'd be able to use his cell phone the whole time he was there. He could call me whenever he wanted to and talk for as long as he liked for the whole time they were there. Plus it was a nice break from the deployment. The guys would be back in the States (albeit not in their home port), they could catch up on all the stuff they've been missing the last few months, and then once they left Florida, they would definitely have the sense of being on the way home back to Seattle.

Speaking of being underway, I was listening to my XM on the 90s station tonight when this particular song came on the radio. It was definitely a song that anyone who lived through the 90s would recognize, and I giggled to Kurt that I actually like this song. He didn't recognize the name, so I held the phone to the speakers of my XM for him to listen to it. He had never heard that song before. Why? When it came out, he was deployed.

It's amazing what you miss when you're underway. It's not just birthdays and anniversaries and holidays. You miss the major tv shows, the huge finales, the big songs, the hit movies. There's a lot of cultural stuff you miss being out of the country for six months. It's a weird thing to deal with as a wife. Sometimes I'll say, "you remember when such-and-such happened on this show," or "don't you like this song??" when he gets home, and he'll give me a blank look. He didn't see that episode, or he's never heard that song before.

Tomorrow night is the Halfway Party for the wives' club. I have already RSVP'ed that I am not going. I'll explain that later; suffice it to say that politics have intervened. Not to mention, I'm having company for the weekend starting Saturday. I couldn't go if I wanted to, and I sure don't want to.

But a Halfway Party means it's half over. Already.

*does the happy dance*

This whole "learning to talk" thing for Grace is starting to crack me up.

She stills uses a whole ton of baby talk, but you should see the way she uses it. She doesn't just sit there and babble. She stands there, uses the most expressive facial expressions and hand gestures, and you know you're getting lectured for something you did or didn't do!!

Last night my in-laws called. They wanted to wish Grace a Happy Valentine's Day. So I gave Grace the cordless handset and turned the speakerphone on.

What is it about talking on a phone that makes her talk in the most hushed tones??

Normally Grace is not a quiet child. You can hear her chattering wherever you are in the house. But get her near a phone, and I swear she thinks she's in the Library of Congress with a nasty librarian hushing her at every turn.

"Sssshhhh...."

Side note -- why aren't libraries quiet anymore?? I don't expect it to be silent, but around here it's the librarians who are the worst offenders! It's part of the reason I don't like to go to the library anymore. The librarians spend their day chit-chatting to one another in tones that can be heard in the next town over.

Anyhow, so Grace is yammering away at the grandparents. She refuses, for some reason, to say "Grandpa" and instead repeats "Grandma" over and over again. Of course, this pleases my MIL to no end, but my FIL is less than thrilled. He decides to take Grace out of the spotlight and starts asking me about Kurt.

They always do that. They always ask me, "Have you heard from Kurt lately??" Like Kurt's the type of sailor to not inundate his wife with emails 24/7. I don't know why they ask me if I've heard from him; I hear from him all the time! Silly people.

But back to Grace's talking. She's now learning a zillion new words a day. Now she tells me "Change diaper!" on occasion, and has finally figured out the difference between water and milk. For a while, there, she was calling milk "water" and it was driving me nuts. Now she asks for "MILK!!!" She tells me to "turn light!" on the fish tank when I get her up in the morning or from a nap. She even asks to go to "Wal-Mar." She knows her name, but she always mispronounces it. She can't say "gr" so she says, "Drace!!" Ask her to say, "Hi, Grace!" and she will say, "Hi, Grace!"

"Say goodnight, Gracie..."

"Goodnight, Gracie!"

I know I will miss the baby talk phase because at some point, she'll figure out the right words and the right pronunciations, and I'll lose the amusement factor of the way she talks. But at the same time I cannot wait for her to start talking because I want to know what is going on in her mind. I know she's got some funny stuff going on in there, but I'll just have to wait till she masters more of the English language.