Bittersweet

Monday night and I'm hungry. I worked until seven this evening, and I had exactly two diet pills and a couple of handfuls of cheese crackers to eat today, along with about three gallons of water. Summer time diet! That super cute halter top I bought needs to fit. If I can drop seven pounds off of my lower half and three pounds off of my breasts, I will be good.to.go. And... because of this diet... I am ONE CRANKY BITCH. I am so far gone into the bitchiness and crankiness that my Diet Pepsi Max isn't even working. Kind of like my epidural with the younger daughter. They made me wait for two hours before giving me the epidural, which meant I had been in labor for about four hours, and I missed the fucking window. So I got a needle stuck in my spine for a whole lot of nothing. I've missed the caffeine window today, and this got kind of ugly for the last person that I was seeing at work. Oh well, I guess that's your punishment for waiting all day to come and see me to take care of business.

I didn't get everything accomplished that I wanted to this weekend, which entailed all of the yardwork I wanted to do, get the entire house cleaned, get all of my work caught up from work, get all of my work caught up for the non-profit, make the signs for the athletic association, get all of the bills paid, do all of the laundry and still squeeze in getting laid. Let's see, I got a little bit of yardwork done, cleaned the kitchen twice and the living room once, two hours worth of work done for work, zero hours worth of work done for the non-profit, no signs made for the athletic association, no bills paid, half of the laundry done (and one load twice because some damn child left a candy bar in their pants pocket which then looked like shit smeared all over the inside of the dryer), and maybe something on getting laid, but that was a rush job. I did all that and ran to the younger daughter's gymnastics class, off to buy a birthday present for one of her friends and then off to the birthday party, fixed dinner on Saturday night for the children and Guy #1 that was not up to my standards (but damn it I was tired) and then discovered on Sunday that the older daughter has lice. Oh my god. Are you kidding me with this? Off to the pharmacy to get the prescription filled for the lice cream and then back home to make it happen in her hair. I hate putting these chemicals in her hair but I hate the kid that she got lice from even more. And how does one kid in my house get lice and the other doesn't? How does that happen? They are both bathed at the same frequency. I decided tonight that this is it. I'm not dealing with lice any more. Both children will be getting a once a month vinegar treatment from here on out. It's got to be better than slathering DDT into their hair. It just has to be.

The whole bin Laden thing happened, which caused me to sit up until almost one o'clock this morning watching the news. As a caveat, I've never served in the military and I don't know personally know anyone who was lost in any of his terrorist attacks or while fighting the war on terror. Additionally, I don't know much about Middle East relations other than what I pick up only sporadically in the news. That being said, I was, and still continue to be, struck by the celebrations that erupted around the country last night when the news broke. Yes, the man deserved to be hunted down and removed from this planet, and in doing that, we've ascertained that he will never plan another bombing, but I think it's also pretty certain that another one will step up to fill his shoes. Maybe not with his abilities, but I don't think we can rest easy now. The Department of Homeland Security isn't just going to be absorbed into another agency. Our mass transportation systems are never going to go back to the way they were on September 10, 2001. Nothing will ever be like it was before. No matter what we do, we can never go back to who we were The Day Before It Happened.

It felt very surreal to watch the news last night. Last night, and today, I keep going back to the feeling that we've sacrificed too much to celebrate. We've said goodbye to thousands of people who never should have been lost, and we've sent many more off to look for that bastard and to either come home in a box, or come home with body parts missing, or come home never to be the person they were when they left. So where does this leave us?

Is our planet, our global community, a safer place for the permanent removal of bin Laden? Without a doubt. But no matter who we hunt down and kill, it will never be the same place.

A very bittersweet victory.