Wow, I haven't posted in a long while

It's been very hectic here, as I'm sure a lot of you know...we jumped straight from a visit with my parents at the end of May into a Connor illness and Exercise RED FLAG-Alaska madness. Poor Connor was afflicted with adenovirus, a particularly nasty little tummy bug making its rounds up here in the junior jet set, and it meant that mommy was mopping up various disgusting liquids for almost 2 weeks. It resulted in his needing to be put on a high fat low lactose diet to help his poor tummy recover and we're finally seeing some real progress toward normal tummy function.

I hate RED FLAG-Alaska with all my heart, soul and being. Charlie is always super busy leading up to a Flag, trying to get everything admin-wise done ahead of time and chivvy his people into being prepared for an onslaught of thousands of people and hundreds of aircraft. And then Flag itself...well, let's just say my husband does not choose to be a slacker and that translates to lonely days and nights for Connor and Erin. He works no less than 14 and sometimes up to 18 or 20 hours a day, and it's pretty exhausting for me alone with a toddler and a seven month pregnant belly. C'est la vie, but I'm not always reasonable enough to accept it with grace. Thank goodness it's over tomorrow. But then Charlie's troops have TWO parties planned on Friday, which means no Charlie that night. He's promising some time off in July. We desperately need it...Charlie hasn't had a "day off" in nearly seven months other than the rare weekend day and he has nearly three weeks of excess leave accumulated that needs to be used or lost before October.

At least Red Flag is always good for some laughs. The one in April was fun because it was still a very much Arctic experience with several inches of snow and temps well below freezing, so all the guys coming from subtropical Okinawa were shivery and unhappy -- i gave more rides than I care to think about to some poor guys huddled in their summer weight uniforms against the cold. This latest was a multinational flag, which means lots of people in foreign uniforms cruising about...I actually had some Japanese gentlemen ask to take pictures of me doing yard work so they could prove to their wives that Americans did their own. Allllrighty, sure. I'm not sure if that meant Americans are supposed to be lazy or they were marveling at our peasant antics. Either way, it probably wasn't all that flattering. Or maybe they want their wives out raking the lawn and needed to prove we did it too. Huh. Some Germans ignored the wildlife briefing and decided to take pictures of themselves petting a moose mama and her calf. That did NOT go well for them, though only one was actually moose stomped. As the survival guys say, "That's 1100 lbs of angry" dancing on your butt. Not a pleasant experience.

I managed to crack two toes a couple nights ago coming back from my endless peregrinations to the bathroom...I tripped over a cat and kicked the bed post, gouging a good bit of flesh from my toes, losing part of a toenail and as I said, cracking them. I felt so badly that I had to wake Charlie up to help bandage my toes, but at 29 weeks pregnant, reaching my toes easily is really a pipe dream. I "wove a tapestry of obscenity" that still hangs over Moose Lake, and have been hobbling around the house trying to do the chores that take me forever anyway. I think every pregnant woman should be automatically issued an able-bodied person to their bidding, or at least pick crap off the floor. Can I tell you how exciting I am that our house is three stories? Woo.

Last but not least, summer solstice is in a few days. That may not mean much in the lower 48, but wow, does it mean something here. Last night the sun set at 1243 am. It came up at 244 am. And it never TRULY goes down...that just means it's ten shades dimmer outside, really. You can read with no artificial light outside at 3 am. That plus some temps in the 70s (which is HOT here) means uncomfortable sleep for the whole Freel clan. Connor has not been wanting to go to sleep til well after 11, and then wants up at 6 am. He's running on fumes. And we have tried everything...closing all the blinds and curtains at 7 or so to help make a transition, taking calming baths, going into the darkened room and reading at a normal time...but if it's hard for me to figure out what time it is, it's doubly hard for a 2 year old. You wake up at 3 am and it's bright as 3 pm outside. And I toss and turn a good bit from pregnancy related woes anyway, so we are not in a good place sleep wise. We're looking forward to the solstice so that we can finally be on the downward trend of sunlight. I'm finding all this sunlight much worse to deal with than all the dark of winter...we're all very tired but unable to sleep.

So that basically is my litany of excuses and complaints for ignoring the blog for so long. Sorry, I'll try to do better soon.