How It Is, it is what it is, and this is how it is. Good, good title, De'on. Eye-catching. I like that.

There are so many names I didn’t get to last night. New York, various military installations, and an assortment of bloggers who’ve become more like friends that live down the street instead of a few states over. Amazing.

I’ve got a couple of projects going for the blog that I’ll get to after I finish this. I just wanted to talk to you a minute.

I’ve been out visiting tonight, at the bloggers’ houses. Funny, I think of them that way, as their homes. But I do, just as I think of Gunz Up as mine. I want its appearance to be pleasing, to say a little something about who I am. And just like in real life, I’m very open at times, but generally, I do a pretty fair job of hiding behind other wars and other heroes.

I’m a little sentimental tonight. I’d planned on heading right into Cop South with LT Rich and the Seabees, but I’m not going to do that just yet. The “story” I’d planned on doing last in the series, is the one I’m going to work on now, so that might take a while. I just wanted you all to know I’m here. I’ll be checking my email, and all the comments get sent there too, which is the reason mine sound crazy at times. Sometimes I see the last first, depending on whichever way my tiny little hammer takes me at the time.

Before I get started on anything though, I had to tell you how much you being in my life these last months have meant to me. I know, some of you probably think I need to get a life. Maybe that’d be right. Maybe my writing will worsen by blogging; there’s that chance. I don’t spend days or weeks on perfecting a post.

But this, you, and all that rest within tonight, are my life.

Lisa and Kayla were over here tonight. Kayla brought us the gifts she’d bought and wrapped for us well before Christmas. The Christmas her Auntie didn’t show up for.

I haven’t made it a secret how un-up for the energy end of Christmas (bad sentence, but for now it stands) I’ve been. Not that it’s been something to worry about, and no one has, really. I didn’t push it, and it shows. I should’ve pushed it for others. This is the first time I’ve not pushed, and it’s no better than pushing.

I am so losing my thread here.

Kayla, tonight, as she looked at me in my comfies on my little couch in front of my computer across from the fire while trusting and snoring animals wait at my feet, said, “I wish I had your life, Auntie,”

“I love my life,” I said. I do.

I love it. And when I go out and visit as I did tonight, I’m always ready to come home. No, nothing bad out there. These people are the greatest. I have hope for the support of our troops since I started blogging. I never even listen to the news on TV anymore. Every place I visit is so red, white and blue it nearly puts my eyes out.

It is the content. The content is all there, it’s all newsy and political and packing boxes, and most of the time, I leave feeling a little bit lonely. Just how I feel when I physically get up and go out in the real world.

I don’t really fit in.

I don’t say that out of pity at all. In many ways, I feel quite fortunate with the role I find myself in currently. I’m just not worried about what most people are worried about.

If things get bad enough, we’ll have a draft. If they get bad enough, we’ll have WWIII. If Iraq hates us or loves us, they will.

I care so deeply. But all of that is future stuff.

Tonight, while I’m here in my physical home, and in the halls of Gunz Up, I want to tell you: this is my life. I’m here and don’t want to leave. I don’t understand it, so no need to ask … just go with it.

I have no clue where everything is going to take us or how we’re going to get there. I learned nearly three years ago, we spend a great deal of time worrying about things that have nothing to do with anything. And tonight, it feels good to be free. To be free as a citizen of the great country my son died for. Yes, he died for those next to him, and he didn’t have a favorite right then. They were all his.

I bet more people come together on the Internet than they do anywhere else. I have no clue; save for a few, of who even reads this blog. But for those of you who’ve let me know, and those of you who just care enough to take the time, it means the absolute world to me to have you in my life.

I just wanted you to know that. On that, I do have an opinion.

Back later.