What the DIs Giveth, They Can Taketh Awayeth

TB was going to have a pass for this weekend, and I was going to head to Ft. Flat to spend some time with him. After all, it IS Veteran's Day weekend. My good and excellent friend there in town has opened her home to me and to TB, and even on short notice such as this (TB text messaged me last night asking if I wanted to visit, right then. Plan much?). Anyway, now thanks to some folks who were using their cell phones after lights out, and a lovely little stomach virus that has hit TB pretty hard, I now have two extra days for homework. Yay. Not that I don't need them, HELLO, I have so much stuff due that I frequently sit paralyzed before my laptop, with a growing list of things that I can't decide which one should be first. So eventually I give up and watch TV, fretting all the while about all the stuff I really should be doing. So then I really give up and go to bed.

I'm really sad about not getting to see TB this weekend - I am looking at every chance that I get to see him as one that I have to take, whether it is convenient or not, because more likely than not, next semester I won't have this luxury. It's not likely that I'll really be in the neighborhood of where he's going to be stationed then, and plus, I don't think I really have the style of clothing that's required for the women where he'll be.

I'm going to go pick up stuff for a "stay healthy" basket for him - I did that for The Girl when she moved out: vitamins, tea, oranges, hand sanitizer, all that great germ killing crap. With TB living in the barracks, I know there's germs everywhere. Do I really think these guys wash their hands after they go to the latrine? OH HELL NO. I'm naive, but not that naive. Hells bells, he may be hung over, not sick. What do I know? Here I am, crying and worrying about him and he may just have the brown bottle flu.

It's so hard to see him as an adult, not because of the dumb stuff he did (and still does) but because the only way I have seen him, ever, is as my child who needs me to take care of him.

Well, I was hoping that writing this would get me in gear for working on my thesis (Cindy Sheehan isn't going to write it for me, and those Thesis Fairies that I've employed seem to have gone one strike, dammit), but unfortunately, all it's done was make me cry more. Lovely. I think I'll go stare helplessly at my to do list.

Edited to add:
In looking for a suitable graphic to add to this post (a weeping person behind a stack of books, perhaps), I rediscovered the humor that is the comic strip "Piled Higher & Deeper." Thank God for procrastination via the archives. (Click on the strip for a larger, more legible view)