"Hey, Sis!"

Today I had a "luncheon" with Marybeth. At least if you call chicken nuggets in the McD play area with 4 kids "luncheon", then that's what we did. But we did have a fabulous time talking houses, schooling, and writing. I love that God has so richly blessed me with friends here that are such a big help and fun to hang out with.

Almost as soon as we left McD, my phone rang. The caller ID showed a "+1999" number and my first thought was, "Great, sales call." I answered it and, lo and behold, it was my little brother. Calling from Iraq. Wanting to know if I'd help him and his teammates out with their Eng 101 homework.

You see, several of them are starting an on-line English course in a few weeks. So in between missions where my baby (a broad-shouldered 6'4") brother is riding on top of a humvee shooting at insurgents, they'll be parsing sentences and writing essays.

Surreal.

After assuring him that I'd be helpful while trying not to bleed red ink too badly on their papers (especially since one is his staff sergeant), we had a long chat about his upcoming leave, rank, reports, writing, my girls, jeeps, college, career plans, and who knows what all else. I don't hear from him too often when he's deployed so it was nice to just talk. And then I started thinking...

1 day.

2 conversations.

Same topic of writing, but two such different situations.

Now that's surreal.