A brick of reality upside the head

Pete is seventeen days away from wearing his uniform for the last time. Well, almost. He'll have to wear it one last time for his retirement ceremony in March, but as of the end of January, he'll have worked his last day as an active duty soldier. We had to attend THE briefing of all briefings today--the one that really drove home the fact that WE ARE GETTING OLD FAST!!! It was the briefing where we had to decide on survivor benefits, talk about life insurance policies, Medicare, and (gulp) burial plots and military funeral honors. ACK!!!!!! By the time we left, I could nearly HEAR my joints creaking. I think I aged fifteen years in two hours.

We can't be "that" age yet, can we?? Pete turns 39 on Saturday; I am still two years behind him. Yet there we sat, with a five-month-old bouncing and making growly noises on my lap, listening to a retirement counselor give us some very ugly news about some things we'd rather not even think about at our ages. Why? Well, we HAVE to.

Unfortunately, military retirement tends to yank our Peter Pan heads out of the proverbial sand in the blink of an eye and introduces us to a WHOLE new life we just aren't ready for yet.

Our eldest daughter came home from work (at Burger King) ranting about the crudeness she puts up with in her fellow burger-flippers. Meanwhile, her dad and I are still reeling from our double dose of reality today. I feel very old right now.