My friend, J, came over this morning and we packed some stuff up for folks in Afghanistan, Africa, Iraq and the States. We laughed and caught up on our week as we pulled from the stockpile and pantries and she asked about how some of my folks were doing.

We got around to one jarhead in particular and phrases like,

"oh he's such a mess."
"Awww he did that? How sweeeet!"
"sigh...he's so good..."
"Did you make sure to tell him what a great job he is doing?"

started flying around.

Incidentally, none of these phrases were out of my mouth. I was too busy ruefully laughing my ass off, shaking my head and uttering a few "OH_MY_GODS!"

Tony, at one point came in to see what was going on, and was relieved to find the aggravation was not aimed at him this time...he just grinned and went on about his business.

There's a law of the universe that gives HUGE smack points for people usually not known for more than lumberjack/ninja type affectations when they do show consideration and thoughtfulness. The Law does not involve phrases like, "well it's about time".

Nope.

Knuckledraggers get the props, man...and mamas like J laughing at mamas like me when I get bent at this gross miscarriage of justice. (Can you hear the facetiousness?)

I could just see this one particular jarhead standing behind J with is thumbs in his ears flapping his fingers and sticking his tongue out at me..."See? he'd say smugly with a grin you'd want to wipe off, "I rock! Here's a box of straws, Hope. Suckitup!"

I have to laugh.

Actually, what I have to do is look into working this guy's incorrigible charm into my routine here, but somehow I don't think it would fly coming from a mama as well as it does him or Tony...yet another totally unfair Law of the Universe. Mama standards on the other hand are grossly high and demanding. WTH, man?

I would like to point out that none of this is much of surprise, I just thought I'd have a minor whine.

Really, as a mother of four children and a wife of a former jarhead, I see this sort of thing all the time around here. I just thought it would be fun to bust J for it. Heehee...