2014: Year in Review

With a one-year-old, it’s hard to make 2014 about anything else. Truman had a lot of firsts: his first words and his first steps, first swim and first plane ride. But it wasn’t all Truman all the time. As a young parent, your world gets small, but the outside world keeps moving

Speaking of moving, we moved to a new place. Just before summer started we moved to South Deerfield, about five miles from where we were before.

Our place in Sunderland was on a rural highway, surrounded by cornfields, dairies, woods, and mountains. It was nice and quiet, and dark at night. But it was the country, and quiet, and dark. We wanted to live some to someplace where we could go for walks with a stroller and not need a car for every little chore. And as Truman grows, so do his piles of clothes and toys; we needed more space. What really got us looking was a change in ownership at our old apartment.

On a walk near our old apartment. Nature!

April found the place in Sunderland when we first moved to the East Coast in 2009. She lived there for nearly five years. It was inexpensive but nice. The owners were absent for the most part, but for most of the tenants, this wasn’t a bad thing. If something needed to get fixed, it got fixed, but the outside looked a little shabby, the basement flooded every once in a while, and some of the tenants were less than perfect neighbors. You got what you paid for, which wasn’t much, but we didn’t want much.

The building was sold to new owners in the fall of 2013, and their management style was the total opposite of what we were used to from the previous owners. The landlord immediately raised the rent. This was understandable. The rent before was low compared to similar places in the area. But soon started the improvements. Construction, landscaping, tree removal, painting, new laundry room, new stairwell, new parking lot, new mailboxes, new windows. It’s nice to have new things, but it’s also nice not having construction going on all the time. We never had a chance to relax. Soon residents started complaining about the landlord entering their apartments without notice. Every time he spoke with me, the landlord would gossip about the other residents. He’d bring in building managers, but each left within a couple of months.

The thing that drove me over the edge was the new heating system. We had been on baseboard electric heating, but the landlord wanted to switch over to propane. The switchover started in December. A new heater was installed in the kitchen, but we realized after the fact that it was too big (the old baseboard was left in and the new heater installed next to it) and our refrigerator door wouldn’t open all the way. So the old heater was removed, and the new one reinstalled a few inches to the left. Then a gas line had to be installed. This was done in January. But the landlord didn’t want to turn on the gas until the old propane could be removed. So near March, he notifies us the gas will be turned on on the first of the month, and a surcharge of eighty dollars would be added to our already higher rent. So the heat’s turned on as soon the weather starts to warm up. April wrote an email to him about how shitty this was, and he agreed to turn on the gas a few days early. We set the thermostat to “tropical.”

While before we were passively searching for a new place, the apartment hunt now became more urgent. April scoured craigslist and rental websites. We focused on Greenfield. There’s a nice downtown, with a grocery store and a YMCA. I occasionally work at the community college in Greenfield. So it seemed the best fit. But we kept swinging and missing on the applications, either not qualifying for the apartment, or having it get rented out to someone else.

One weekend after Truman’s swimming lesson, we drove down through Deerfield. Going through downtown we saw a For Rent sign in the window of a TV repair shop (yes, they still exist). The owner was in and he showed us the apartment. A few months later we moved in. It took a little while. The apartment needed a paintjob, and our new landlord put in new tile in the kitchen and bathroom.

Downtown South Deerfield

South Deerfield isn’t nearly as large as Greenfield, but has much of what we were looking for. It still feels oddly urban for such a small town. South Deerfield has a diner, two restaurants, two pizza places, Chinese takeout, a Subway, and two bars, all within walking distance. There also two farm stands that operate during the summer and a seasonal roadside burger joint that offers sandwiches and ice cream. Laundry, liquor store, and two places to get your haircut.

As soon as we were settled into our new place we took off on a trip to California. And we somehow made it. After a lot of worrying about getting to the airport by six in the morning, getting through security, finding a decent place to sit—the last row on all four flights—and getting Truman comfortable enough on the plane that he might actually nap, it turned out he was a pretty good flyer. He made eyes at all the women who stood in line for the bathroom. He took a short nap. He ate some gold fish crackers. He didn’t get too cranky. He did a little, but who doesn’t get cranky on cross-country flights? Many of the people who passed our row were surprised to see Truman since he had been so quiet while other babies on board were spending their time yowling.

We had a great time in California. We stayed at my parent’s house. It took a few days before Truman warmed up to his grandma and grandpa, but once he did he was running and dancing just like at home. We took a trip with April’s mom to Santa Barbara to see Truman’s great Aunt and Uncle. We went the zoo there and Truman got to feed a giraffe. During the car trip back to Stockton we stopped at the beach and put our toes in the pacific. Truman got to meet all his Polish relatives at a party hosted by my parents and at a second party met all his Greek relatives at Yia Yia’s house. Even with a strict nap schedule, Truman was able to keep up his social obligations.

Soon after returning home from California April found out she was pregnant. Truman’s going to be a big brother! I don’t think he quite realizes the amount of responsibility that will fall on his shoulders, or even that he’s going to be a big. But he has been poking April’s tummy, so he knows something’s up. And he likes kissing everything, so I think he’ll be alright with a new younger sibling.

2014 was one of our most momentous years, but 2015 will be even bigger. And crazier. And memorable. So here’s to whatever the new year brings.

Truman Unfolds

If you were to ask Truman what was best in life, and he were able to articulate a response, he might answer thusly:

“To destroy your laundry, to see it thrown on the floor, and to hear the lamentations of your parents.”

And it’s not just laundry he’s after.

Truman is fast approaching the toddle stage. He’s not walking on his own, but he’s taking steps (I know, I know) toward that accomplishment. He can now pull himself up to standing on anything that he can get a good grip on. The couch, the storage container disguised as an ottoman, the Poang—a piece of discounted Ikea furniture only purchased as you’re headed toward the checkout. “$50 for a chair? Why the hell not?” Truman targets all as readily climbable pieces of furniture.

At first we were struck with awe. Before, we could safely plop the man down on the carpet in the living room with a few noise-making toys and not worry about him traveling too far. He wasn’t crawling. He wasn’t climbing. He could stand if we pulled him up. But that was it.

Then one day, without us even noticing, he’s standing next to the couch. You turn your back on him for just one second and he’s already standing, trying to remove fur from the cat. (Excuse me while I go listen to some Harry Chapin.) Okay, I’m back. Man, my allergies are bad this year.

We rewarded this feat with lots of clapping and exclamations of “Good job!” He started doing it more. He’d grimace and grunt, pulling more with his hands than pushing with his feet, and once fully erect, he’d look at us with a small smile, then plunk back onto his bum with a thud. Of course we responded to this with “Good falling!” And he’d try again. We didn’t know then what we were in for.

We soon realized that the reward for his climbing wasn’t in the act itself, as one climbs Everest. He was climbing things to get to stuff, as one would climb Olympus in order to enter the realm of the gods and rain fiery bolts of chaos on the land below.

Now he climbs everything he can just to find out if there’s something on top to throw on the floor. Books or magazines on the ottoman? They belong on the floor. Toys in the toy box. On the floor. (He prefers to stand next to the box even though he could just as easily sit next to it and grab the toys inside.) He uses the “Baby Einstein” as a central hub to all the climbable things in the living room. There’s nothing on it to throw on the ground, but he’ll pull himself up next to it and cruise around the edge to get to the couch or Poang.

This is all way more scary than it is fun. Truman likes to scooch over to my rolling office chair and push it back and forth. He tries to pull himself to standing, but the chair rolls away from him and he flops down. Then he scooches over my computer, or a cord, or an outlet. I take my eye off of him for a moment and the lamp is all the sudden rocking back and forth. Today I found him scooching over to Annabelle’s food bowl. (I use the word scooch because he’s not really crawling in the strictest sense of the term. He leans on the outside of his left ankle and pushes with his right, as if he were kneeling on a skateboard.)

He’s also shown an interest in disassembling our furniture. One day I found a bolt on the seat of the Poang. Truman had somehow unscrewed it from the leg of the chair and placed it there. I later caught him absent-mindedly running his thumb over the head of the bolt once I had screwed back in.

So we are excited about Truman toddling and walking, but we were hoping for a little more time to baby proof. We’ll be moving in a few weeks, so all we have to do is make it until then. We can baby proof the new place as we move in. And even better, there will be a room for Truman to have for himself.

Now we just need to teach Truman to sleep in his own crib, in his own room, and make sure he doesn’t wander off in the meantime.  

Truman Eats

At close to eleven months Truman rates at about 90% on the milk baby purity scale. That is, his diet is still mostly breast milk.

April and I subscribe to the “Food until one is just for fun” school of thought on feeding the T-man.  Truman emphasizes the fun, and not so much the food part of the equation.

What food we give him will spend some time in his mouth, but will likely end up on the floor, or in a mushy paste in between his fingers, impervious to wet-wipes.

Sweet red peppers, one of his favorites, Truman will gum until he loses interest. I think he likes the texture more than anything. We slice them long and thin so he can grip them. When he is done, I’ll find most of what we gave him crushed into the seat of his high chair. He also likes cheese, but eating it means me holding a piece in front of his face so he can lean forward and lick it until it’s soft enough to take a bite. I then have to make sure he swallows the bolus of cheese in his mouth before he takes another bite or a waxy glob of goop will end up somewhere on his clothes or on the floor ready to be stepped on by a bare footed April.

Other food he’s experimented with: green beans, crust, both bread and pizza, banana, apple, avocado, carrots, and crackers.

We’ve also tried to give him jarred purees. He liked these for about a day, or rather, he let me feed him jarred baby food for about a day. Not long after, he much preferred feeding himself with the spoon. As soon as the spoon was close enough, he’d grab for it. Yes, yes, good grabbing, what a big boy, but I’d estimate about five percent of what is on the spoon makes it to his mouth, and even less into his stomach. Some will stick to his face, his nose, his eyelids, hair, ears, in his neck creases. (New parents! Make sure you clean those creases, both neck and nether!) The rest ends up on his hands and tray, transformed into baby art, my feeding him devolving from a meal into a session of sensory play with apple sauce.

Like I said, more fun, and not so much food.

We’ve given him some other baby-specific foods. He likes dried yogurt chips. They have the consistency of a communion wafer but come in three different fruit flavors. He also gets Little Yums teething biscuits. He likes to nom on these, but since their prime ingredients are rice flower and sugar (It’s Organic!) what was a tasty biscuit soon disintegrates into a sticky pulp covering his hands and face, and clothes.

We’re not in any rush to get Truman on a solids-centric diet. He seems happy and healthy. But April has become a little weary of being Truman’s primary source of food. So we want to get him on a routine (always with the routine) of eating solids at least once a day, probably in the evening so we can go directly from high chair to bath tub.

[Spoiler Alert! Your appetite may be spoiled by the following poop talk.]

The one thing we haven’t dealt with is the whole “With human food comes human poop” ordeal. Truman’s BMs have remained, for the most part, unchanged in both consistency and frequency. Just a pepper here and a green bean there. Recently, though, he has graced us with some god-awful gas, blasting helter-skelter the apartment with sulfurous clouds.

He’s lucky he’s so cute.

Spring Thaw

We’re starting to thaw out here in Western Massachusetts. This was my second full winter in New England, and it was relentless. Last year’s winter was milder, though we had one huge snow storm. This year we didn’t get any blizzards, and none of the storms dropped more than a foot of snow, but it was crazy cold, with weeks without the mercury rising above freezing and many sub-zero nights. So the snow we did have never melted and each storm dropped a few more inches, adding to the feet already on the ground.

But now spring is upon us, both on the calendar and in the air. The forecast for the first day of spring has temps in the fifties with sunshine. There have been a few warm days in the last couple of weeks, but they were rainy. (Something I’ll never get used to here on the East Coast—when it’s cloudy it is warm and muggy, when it’s sunny, expect cool temperatures and a nice breeze.)

The days are much longer. The piles of plowed snow on the side of the road are melting away. The robins are bouncing around in the puddles, looking for worms.  The squirrels scamper around the hillside behind our apartment. The nights are still cold, dropping below freezing and icing up all the snowmelt, and there’s still a threat of snow, but now it should melt within a day or two.

One of the more grim reminders of spring’s arrival is all the vultures circling around. As the snow melts it reveals all the little creatures that didn’t make it through winter, squirrelsicles and possum-pops. The vultures obligingly clean up what winter has left behind. I saw two floating around on a draft near our apartment, which is expected, since we live between a mountain and a river with lots of green-space for the scavengers to peruse. While in Greenfield yesterday, April and I saw a wake of vultures that numbered at least twenty. (We’re looking to move to Greenfield. I hope this isn’t a bad omen.)

So spring has sprung; birds singing, trees budding, but vultures gliding by remind us of Eliot’s dictum: April is the cruelest month. March can also be pretty bad. 

Truman Sleeps

Well, most of the time.

We’ve tried to keep Truman on a fairly regular sleep schedule. April likes the 2-3-4 nap strategy: Truman’s first nap would start around two hours after waking up in the morning, his next three hours after he wakes from his first nap, then four hours of Truman goodness before going to bed at night, usually around seven. At night, we wanted Truman to get about twelve hours of sleep so he’d wake up around seven in the morning. Getting him down also required a set routine. (Routine, I’ve been told, I’ve read, I’ve absorbed, is the key to all child rearing.) So he gets his bath around six, a book, a light boob snack, then down in bed, not asleep, but nearly there, by seven. Nap time means lying in his rock’n’play as one of us rocks him while staring into a screen of some sort. At all times sleepy we have some type of noise machine running, a track on the phone playing white noise on repeat, or our Dohm noise machine. 

The universe, of course, conspires against us. While Truman is good for one nap a day, that second one can be elusive. And there’s no guarantee that any nap will be a good one. Sometimes Truman will go down for two hours. Sometimes twenty minutes. If we leave the house he’ll usually drop a nap. He will fall asleep in the car, but he won’t stay asleep once we get home. So he’ll doze off during the fifteen minute drive from the grocery store, but as soon as we stop the car, he’s up and he won’t go back to sleep once we get inside.

Outside of Truman’s own finicky sleep habits there are other factors to deal with. We try to get him out of the house, but during the winter we've been restricted to indoor, scheduled activities like Mother Goose on the Loose at the library, Mom and Baby Yoga, and now swimming at the Y. As fun as all these activities are, they will invariably interrupt a nap. So do we expose him to the world and risk throwing his sleep routine into chaos, or do we keep him at home so as soon as he signals his sleepiness we can put him down to bed?

Don’t get the wrong idea. Most of the time our ten-month-old is pretty good about sleeping, or at least not too bad. We the parents are winning the sleep war, but there are some battles, boy, are there some battles. We took some casualties during the switch over to daylight savings time. For the last five months it was pretty much dark by five. But now light seeps in around the curtains during the bedtime routine. Truman can tell something is not quite right. He’s always been a suspicious baby. The biggest casualty was the rock’n’play itself. Truman is just about too big for it and has taken to sitting up in it and rocking himself. While lying in it recently, he sat up, grabbed a piece paper that was hanging off the table, and pulled it toward him. Usually this would garner some praise (good grabbing!), but this piece of paper was acting as a coaster for a glass of orange juice, which tipped over and poured down onto Truman and soaked into the rocker. We may be able to save it. The cover has been washed, but the support underneath may need to be unstitched so some plastic can be removed, then re-stitched once it is cleaned. Truman has been able to nap in bed, so we might be done with the rocker after all. Truman didn't mind at all being drenched with orange juice.

Night time sleep has been shaky as well. With his teeth coming in, he wakes more frequently and won’t self-soothe. He’ll fall back asleep if I lay him on my chest, but the trick is getting back down into bed without waking him back up, which he really doesn't appreciate. Me being able to soothe him back to sleep is a small victory, especially for April, since she doesn't need to nurse him back to sleep as often and can get a good block of mostly uninterrupted sleep.

So the battles continue. We’re starting Truman on some solid foods, and we've heard that this will also help, but I’m skeptical. An update on his eating will be posted soon.

And sorry for my absence during the last month or so. I blame the weather. And True Detective. 

The Future!

While doing some internet research on writing contests I came across this interesting time capsule over at Writers of the Future. If you are a writer of speculative fiction or graphic artist, check out the contest. It looks legit—no entry fee, quarterly contests, known judges.

 In 1987 sci-fi writers were asked to speculate (as they’re wont) what the world would be like in 25 years. We often see pieces like this around the new year. (The LA Times ran this just a few weeks ago.)

The predictions are fun to read, some right (reading books on computers, the decline of American Imperialism, at least economically), most wrong (moon bases! millennial cults! Dow at 8400!). Each writer shows a bit of his bias in his prediction, that is, what he writes about will probably come true.

I find two things interesting about stuff like this. The first is the time itself. The capsule was organized in 1987, two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and Russian Communism. I would have to assume that the Cold War was one of the main cultural influences on the writers participating in the capsule. The Cold War fuels the races both Space and Nuclear, both of which are prime idea incubators for the writers of science fiction. Gene Wolfe predicts the Cold War is still being fought in 2012, but little else is mentioned by the other writers, nothing about its continuation or end, though many start their predictions with "If a nuclear war hasn't wiped us out, then...."

Also present in their predictions is influence of the Cyberpunk genre that was at its apex in the 1980s. Japan has taken over for the US in the roll of world economic power. Sheldon Glashow predicted that many automobiles would be built in America by Japanese-owned companies, which has come to pass. Nano tech is prevalent. Computers are primary tools in all facets of life.

Also in 1987 the writers find themselves at the end of the Regan presidency, a period, looking back, we can label as the end of American Exceptionalism. (Children born at this time, so-called millennials, will be the first generation in many not to expect a better life than that of their parents.)  Asimov blames a world population of 10 billion on Regan. One writer apologizes for the world they’re leaving us, and hopes that computers will liberate us from the debts left for us to pay.

There’s a wide range of speculation on how the world will behave politically in 2012. After Asimov, the most famous writer on the panel is Orson Scott Card, who predicts the world will be in a state of chaos akin to Europe after the fall of Rome. He must have been thinking of the Ender sequels even then, because this is the world he describes in Ender’s Shadow, one where the peace on Earth is maintained only because of the threat from extraterrestrials. Once the war in space is over, old fears and alliances reform on earth and war breaks out.

On the other end of the spectrum some of the writers optimistically predict a world at peace where automation in manufacturing, the office, and at home has led to a quasi-Jetsonian future where we spend most of our time in a state of leisure. They fail to see that the benefactors of such automation would be the capitalists that produce the products, and not a middle class freed from the burden of work.  Frederik Pohl somewhat ironically posits that the world’s problems must have been solved in order for anyone to be alive in 2012 to read the capsule’s contents, because the world’s problems seemed so drastic that to leave them unsolved meant man’s destruction.

The other thing I find interesting about the predictions is that each highlights the given writers’ fears. The largest fear for the writers, and the world at the time, is AIDS. One writer predicts millions of new cases each year. Another fears an airborne mutation. Wolfe predicts that sex will be limited to contractual marriage due to fears caused by “two great plagues,” neither of which is not AIDS, he explains, but I feel the speculation drawn into this scenario is informed by the fear of AIDS at the time. It’s easy to forget the fear we felt at the time, as AIDS isn’t much mentioned anymore outside of Africa and the third world. For me, AIDS was this strange boogey man whose causes, transference, and affliction, were left mainly unexplained to a seven-year-old.

The other fear that these writers exhibit is a fear many writers may have, the fear of not being read. This isn’t to say that they were worried about being forgotten, though deep down this fear most certainly nags at many writers in their darkest thoughts. No, this fear is manifested in the decline of literacy the world will experience over the next 25 years.  Again, Gene Wolfe believes Americans will be considered literate knowing only “a few hundred common words.” He optimistically continues this line of thinking, predicting that the literate class will then be the ones in power, holding positions in government, creating a “literate class” whose goal is to gain more power by further limiting literacy. I want to say this has come partly true, seeing in the classroom the low levels of comprehension students come into college with, that reading is no longer privileged in our daily lives, that we are a computer game, texting snap chat nation, but then again, that might be a “Kids these Days!” type of response on my end.

So what might we say about the next 25 years? I fear to even venture a guess. The writers in the capsule make no mention of the internet or anything about smartphone technology (the former was in existence in 1987 in its nascent form, the latter no one could have seen coming—try convincing someone in the 80s that all the knowledge of the world was accessible by a wireless phone you kept in your pocket, that almost every book could be read on it, every movie streamed, and you used it primarily for games based on arranging candy on a grid and harvesting virtual produce on a virtual farm). At least they didn’t say anything about flying cars. So what could we see in 2038? Water wars? Wars over minerals and natural gas? Maybe. A separation of money and politics? Not likely. I think we can say income inequality will continue to grow. What this leads to is harder to predict. The most hopeful outcome would be a restructuring of economic and political policies, the most drastic all-out cultural revolution. What about cerebral implants that allow us connect directly to the internet? Think of the advertising potential! Will this blog still be read and updated? One can only hope. 

Happy New Year!

All the sleep books say a schedule is the most important thing for the baby, so despite the appeal of battling drunkards on the streets of Northampton in near-zero degree weather, we chose to stay in this year and celebrate 2014 in our little apartment while Truman slept in accordance to his seven o’clock bedtime.

We made some finger foods and watched The Hobbit. April had fun remembering which parts Truman had kicked her during our viewing last Christmas. (We've adopted, and enjoyed, the tradition of Chinese food and a movie for two years now. We did it again this year, but, like New Year’s Eve, we stayed in, ordering takeout.)

This was the first time in a long time we didn't go out for the evening. Every year prior, April and I did something for the New Year, even if it meant watching my parents fall asleep at half past ten.

Ten years ago I was celebrating the arrival of 2004 in Gardez, Afghanistan. In the military, Thanksgiving and Christmas are celebrated in specific ways. The brass get behind the counter and serve the enlisted men and women their holiday meals. This is what we did on the firebase. On Christmas the commander of our firebase, a lieutenant colonel who we didn’t like much, dressed up in a Santa outfit and dished out sizable helpings of ham, turkey, potatoes, and I took a slice of pumpkin pie and a slice cheesecake. For what it is, it’s an enjoyable time.

New Years in Afghanistan lacked any similar planning. No food, no count down, no fireworks (at least none planned). So it was up to us enlisted to plan an impromptu celebration.

It had snowed for most of the week. Enough snow to keep us from doing anything more than taking the main road into town on short missions. We had spent most the time on the firebase. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Humvees don’t do great in the snow. So I think many had a case of cabin fever. Adding to the feeling of being trapped, a weather system had moved in and socked us with low clouds and icy rain. It was like walking through fog spiked with tiny biting pellets of ice. The worst thing about the shitty weather was it kept the supply helicopters  from coming in, which meant no mail, and no mail meant Christmas care packages.

We lacked good weather. We lacked any good mission tempo. We lacked the snack food and sweets our families sent us for the holidays. What we didn’t lack for was a good supply of booze. One of the benefits of being out on a firebase was you could get away with things that wouldn't fly at the larger Air Force Bases in Kandahar and Bagram. Drinking was prohibited by General Order One Alpha, which included prohibition of porn, pets, sex, and entering a mosque. I can safely say none of us entered any mosques. At least not on purpose.

We made regular trips to the capital city of Kabul for booze runs. Despite alcohol being illegal in the country, international soldiers and civilians could drink. There was a liquor store in the international zone outside of the embassy. (I’m pretty sure this is where it was, though my memory of its exact location is hazy, like an icy fog.) My team frequented the establishment, never going overboard, just picking a bottle of Beam for ourselves and any requests made by those who couldn’t make the trip. Usually vodka and wine. On a firebase in rural Afghanistan you had to little to choose from in the way of mixers, so you had to drink your liquor straight or have something versatile enough that you could use what you found in the chow hall (juice boxes) to mix it with.

So most of us had started drinking after chow and collectively managed to find ourselves just outside the gate to our section of the fire base. In Gardez the firebase had two parts, the Provincial Reconstruction Team, headed by Civil Affairs, and the ODB, a company of Special Forces teams and their command element. I was part of the former. Between the two sections was a dirt road with a small wall on one side. It was at this wall where we gathered.

Cold night, frosty fog, lots of boozed up soldiers with loaded weapons. What could go wrong? Well, luckily for us, not much. We shot off a lot of rounds. The intelligence team fired off their M4s, which are fully automatic, emptying entire mags into the night. Someone loaded a flare into the grenade launcher of the M203 tube on their rifle, shooting off the round into the sky with a thunk. He didn’t aim high enough for its parachute to open. It ignited in the field, sputtered, and died. The next one caught the wind, sending an orange orb into the fog. I shot one of the interpreter’s AK 47s. I hadn’t drunk enough to not be rattled by the recoil. Over at the SF base they were shooting Soviet antiaircraft machine guns, the tracers cutting green streaks into the clouds.

The night came to a climax when someone (senior enlisted, from what I recall) in his drunk wisdom decided to attempt to fire an AT4. AT stands for Anti Tank. A bazooka, in other words. When I first arrived at the firebase, I was surprised by how many of these were just lying around, one in our truck, a couple in the room we slept. Just there. Ready to take out a tank. The AT4 has a series of safeties that make it impossible to fire by accident. As it turns out, this also makes it too difficult to fire while inebriated. The two soldiers, after a couple of tries, yelling out “back-blast area clear!” on each attempt, gave up when they got nothing out of the weapon except for a flaccid click.

Needless to say, I left shortly after this, and retreated back to our house in the corner of the firebase. I don’t think there was much of a countdown. There was drinking. There was celebration. (When we went into town the next day the locals were worried that we had been overrun in a big battle.) But no countdown. No kisses. No Auld Lang Syne. Other than the change of the year on the calendar, there wasn’t a whole lot to celebrate.

This year was the best new years I’ve had.  Good food and a good family, a fun movie and, best of all, no hangover the next day. I’m figuring 2024 will be the first year Truman will be able to stay up late enough to celebrate with us. I look forward to it.