Hey kettle, this is pot... you're black.

I consider myself to be a vigilante on wheels. There are few things in this world that irritate me more than rude drivers. Excessive speeding, not signaling, tailgating... these are just a sampling of things that drivers do all the time that are completely unnecessary and just plain tick me off.

The worse thing about my road rage is that it turns me into someone I am not. I mean, it starts out harmless enough. First I grit my teeth, then I start sighing heavily (as if they can hear the frustration in my breathing),  then I start talking to myself with saying like "people are crazy" and "i just don't understand...".

You know it's starting to get bad when I begin talking to the other drivers. I don't know why we do this, but I think everyone at some point or another has done it. Maybe we're all just a little bit crazy. First I try to reason with them by saying things like, "are you sure you want to try that buddy?" or "see, now wasn't that a stupid decision?" But when I really start to get irritated, that's when the name calling begins.

Luckily, I now have a child which has forced me to clean up my road rage language. On our recent trip to watch my husband's graduation from ODS in Rhode Island, I started yelling at other drivers and my sister turns to me and says, "Hey, since when did you stop calling people a (insert colorful adjective followed by humorous expletive)?" Well, kids will do that to you. Especially when they start repeating things that you say. Anyway, my old phrases have been replaced with words like "jack wagon",  "jerk-face" and "son of a gun".

So I start screaming at the "jack wagons" on the road and then I put forth my own sense of justice. Like speeding up so I can get in front of them and then go to pass a truck and slow down to match the speed of the truck. I usually stay this speed till I see them throw their hands in the air in frustration so i know they have experienced the same feelings they so kindly bestowed upon me. My other favorite is to  pull my car into the middle of the far left lane and the middle lane when drivers are warned to merge right because the left lane is ending. Sorry pal, you need to get over when the sign tells you to rather than cut me off at the last moment because you wanted to pass another car. This is usually followed by my other form of justice so they learn patience.

See, now when I'm on the road, I feel almost like it's my duty to treat other drivers like this. And anyone who's gone on a long car ride with me as the driver usually finds it pretty humorous. But really, I'm just being a jerk. I think I'm so much better than everyone else on the road because I don't consider myself a rude driver. But in trying to teach the rude drivers of this world a lesson, I become even worse than they are. Perhaps I should just be a courteous driver all the time. Even if it doesn't teach the rude drivers a lesson, I'm sure it will teach my children a lesson. And I'm even more convinced it will teach me a lesson.

Amanda versus the loneliness

So my husband has only officially been in the Navy for a few weeks. He's been at officer training school for almost a month and I am slowly figuring out this whole Navy wife life thing. Thus far, this is what I have learned:

#1: It is really hard to be the only parent. I don't know how single parents do this all the time. I'm so glad that I only have to be away from my husband for a short period of time. And even in the future when he will face deployment, I will know that he'll come home at some point. The single parents who do this day in and day out without any respite are my heroes. And I have lots of help too. I have a great church and an amazingly supportive family to help me. So many people don't have that. I'm guessing a lot of military families don't have that. I hope that I can be of help in that arena at some point in this ministry.

#2: Technology is a life saver. My hubby video taped himself reading books and singing songs for our daughter before he left and they have been invaluable! She looks forward to her song from daddy every morning. And the nights he's able to video chat with us makes life more bearable.

#3: Nothing helps me sleep. I wish I could take some magic pills to fall asleep but they kind of frown on that when you're pregnant. As much as I complained about my husband's snoring and kicking, I now find myself unable to fall asleep easily without him beside me. Go figure.

#4: I'm really proud of the man I married. I've made a lot of stupid decisions in my life time. Like that time in 3rd grade when I thought it would be a good idea to get a perm... it wasn't. But one of the best decisions I've ever made was choosing to marry my husband. Despite being away from his family while his wife is in her 3rd trimester and not being able to spend any time with his unbelievably cute daughter, my husband is concerned about the men and women he's with at training. He's been working to build relationships and has encouraged some to make better decisions for their life. And when he sees people making destructive decisions, it breaks his heart. It's the quality that has always made him a good friend and the reason I knew he would be an excellent Chaplain. I love that I married this man. There are not many of his kind around.

#5: And finally, in my lonely, sleepless nights I've learned that the show "Chuck" is one of the best around. Seriously, I'm madly addicted to it. If you haven't watched it yet, you should. Adam Baldwin is my hero. If you're already a "Chuck" fan, you understand my title and we are officially best friends.

Just like mommy.

My daughter got a purse today. Her very own, just her size purse. She thinks she's so cool because she can wear it on her shoulder just like mommy. The other day when I was getting ready in the bathroom after taking a shower, she pulled out one of the hand towels and knotted it into a ball and put it on her head. I guess she thinks I wear a funny hat when I get out of the shower. Again, she just wanted to do whatever mommy was doing.

If mommy eats veggies, she eats veggies. If mommy drinks water, she drinks water. If mommy plays on the computer, she gets out her "computer" and sits to play on hers as well.

It made me think, what else does she watch me do? My guess is: everything. She watches my every move. She mimics every behavior. It's kind of a scary thing, to think that you have that much control over one person, even if that person is only 16 months old. You know why? Because she won't always be 16 months old, but the lessons I teach her now and in the next few years will play a huge role in forming the kind of person she will become. It's pretty heavy stuff.

I hope that she sees things like mommy always buckling her seat belt, mommy giving to people in need, mommy saying a prayer at bed time. But I know that that's not all she'll see. She'll see some of the bad things too. Like the fact that I almost always have chocolate hidden in my purse and will sneak a bite of it after telling someone that I'm not hungry. I'm almost always hungry, and that's not a pregnancy thing. That's an Amanda thing. Most of the time when I refuse food it's because it has some sort of vegetable in it. I know I'm a child. Anyway, she'll see that too. But I hope she doesn't mimic me in that respect.

I guess that's all we can do really. We can try our best to be good examples to our kids. Hopefully it will make us better people in the process. And we have to beg the gods that they don't find out about that time when we stole a pack of gum from the store when we were their age. I hope I can set a good example for her. I hope we all can set good examples for our kids. And I REALLY hope they are better people than us.