It’s that time of year, folks. *sigh*

Time to clean the van again.

Seriously. Guinevere gets a major overhaul inside and out this time of year. She even gets *dusted*. Yeah, baby. I’m talking serious business!

Flag officially starts Sunday and the Men with Guns will be guarding the gates, checking ID and randomly searching vehicles and just let me tell you that you’ve never lived a life of shame until a stonefaced soldier has rummaged through the take out wrappers and Tim Horton cups on your van floor looking for weapons and then given you the look.

Not that it’s happened to me.

Seriously.

I clean up beforehand.

I have *some* pride, you know. 

For those of you who don’t know what Maple Flag is, below is part of the official blurb from DND.

Exercise MAPLE FLAG is a six-week international air combat exercise held annually at 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta. The exercise, which will be taking place from May 14 to June 23 2006, provides Canadian and allied aircrew with realistic training in a modern simulated air combat environment, and emphasizes air operations involving large package coalition forces.

During the exercise’s three two-week periods, international participants engage in a simulated, 10-day air campaign. Using the vast, unrestricted airspace and more than 640 targets of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR), participants engage in daily missions that involve confronting and dealing with air- and ground-based threats. Exercise participants make use of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR) during MAPLE FLAG. The CLAWR covers 1.17 million hectares (11,600 square km), and is the only tactical bombing range in Canada. Vast, unrestricted airspace with no civilian air traffic and more than 640 targets make it an attractive training area for allied air forces.

More than 5,000 military personnel are expected to participate in Exercise MAPLE FLAG XXXIX.

Maple Flag XXXIX “Blue Air” Allied Forces The following forces are scheduled to participate in this year’s air combat exercise as “Blue Air.” They will deploy to provide conventional ground attack, air superiority, SEAD (suppression of enemy air defence), tactical resupply, reconnaissance, air-to-air refueling, and AWACS (airborne early warning and control):
Canadian Forces, German Air Force, French Air Force, Turkish Air Force, NATO AWACS (airborne early warning and control contingent), Royal Air Force, Royal Netherlands Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force,
Republic of Singapore Air Force, Swedish Air Force, United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps

Maple Flag XXXIX “Red Air” Opposing Forces The following forces are scheduled to participate in this year’s coalition exercise as “Red Air.” They will deploy to provide air and ground threat:
14 CTS (United States Air Force), 64th AGRS (United States Air Force aggressor squadron), 266th Range Squadron (United States Air National Guard), Top Aces

Maple Flag XXXIV Observing Nations The following nations are sending military members who will observe but not participate in the exercise: Brazil, Poland, Greece, Oman, Egypt, Singapore, South Africa

Let’s talk about laundry. Now really, laundry is just a fancy do-dah name for dirty clothes gotten clean, but laundry sounds nicer and isn’t as long as the previous phrase, so we’ll use it.

In our house, we do a great job of creating laundry. Especially the girls. They are excellent examples of profoundly dirty children. Always grubbing in the dirt, wallowing in mud and splashing in puddles, so no problems there. And we have an excellent washing machine and dryer, so issues with that, but now, once the laundry has been washed and dried, we get to the folding part and that combined with putting it away is where a smidgen of trouble begins brewing.

The girls earn their allowance by folding our laundry and then, because they live in this house and must be responsible members of the household, they put away their own clothes. They are good at this, but only if they do it. And therein lies my role of the NAG. I’m good at my job, too, but I try not to do it either (there’s a bit of a trend there, isn’t there? BUT we’re not here to talk about trends, we’re talking about laundry!). So sometimes we have a cranky mom nagging and sometimes we have cranky kids folding laundry, but really, nothing too disturbing.

But my complaint (and it is very valid and very disturbing, so brace yourself) is about our socks. We have an entire laundry basket full of sock singlets. The girls can’t seem to match socks if their life depended on it! And a new phenomenon has been discovered. Socks are missing, because they are stuffed in odd places, gathering dust, never to be seen again, unless the mom of the house (that’s me) gets on her hands and knees and peers into places where moms should not have to peer. You can imagine how upset I was when I found a rather substantial pile of dirty kids’ socks stuffed under my treadmill this morning!

I admit that once every couple of weeks, when we’re all desperate to have some socks in our drawers, I tuck into the laundry basket and match as many as I can. I usually come up with about 30 pairs, but still I’m left with a basket half full. And now I must regularly peer into dark and scary places to search out contraband socks? What is the world coming to?

BUT the point I wanted to make this morning is that my girls need to find a new way to earn their allowance. Their laundry days are over until winter. It’s warm enough to use the laundry line now and I’ve rediscovered the joy of hanging clothes on the line. It’s a perfect opportunity to have a little bit of “me” time…outside, listening to the birds, feeling the breeze on my skin and most importantly, no one whining because one of her sisters had one more gummy bear than she did.

Bliss, I tell you, pure bliss and something I never thought I’d say about the laundry.

When I was a kid, my mom had a T-bird. It was her dream car. Maroon red with a T-Bar sunroof (fitting, don’t you think?) and whenever we were in it, we were always listening to Linda Ronstadt. Needless to say, I’ve been belting out ‘You’re No Good’ since I was about 5 and after all these years of practice, I’m good at it. Just ask me. I’ll tell you. At any rate, Linda and me and my mom are like peas and carrots and corn only in a more musical way.

So, my point today — and I do have one, trust me — is what is your dream car? Or not?

Fairly obvious question if you’re a male, because they seem fixated on all things vehicular (at least my male is), but for females not so much, or so I thought until we were visiting with a dear friend and the conversation shifted to DH’s intentions of buying a truck soon and dear friend belted out that her dream car was black, convertible, a year model and type, this and that and my eyes sort of rolled back in my head in surprise ’cause she *so* knew what it was that she wanted.

That got me to thinking that I hadn’t thought about a dream car in a long time.

We’ve been driving dependable Guinevere, our Ford Windstar for almost 8 years now and she’s done us proud. Granted she did blow her transmission 5 minutes after we left my dad’s funeral, but given that that was the week from hell anyway, it was a good time for it to happen. It just sort of rolled into all the other trauma (and bills) with a laissez-faire shrug of the shoulders.

So anyway, right now Gwinnie is worth more to us than anyone else, so I can see us keeping her “forever” (which is about 4 years, you recall) and then we’ll trade her in for something…different.

If I had my way…different would mean this…a Mini Cooper S Convertible — though we’d have to do some customizing to fit 3 in the back, rather than 2. And honestly, how would I ever fit all my groceries in there if the girls were with me? Or even their piano books for that matter?

And I’ll ignore the fact that my hair would be snarled into a horrible knot after just five minutes of driving because this is the DREAM car. It doesn’t have to be practical. We’re throwing out practical. We’re dreaming.

No budgets, no kids spilling ice cream or slopping french fries, no dogs with muddy paws, no dumps of snow in excess of 1 inch, no nothing, but whatever you want. Add a flashy outfit and a 7 figure publishing contract while you’re at it. Let’s go big, folks!

And don’t think I don’t know that this idealism is a polar opposite of yesterday’s post. It’s okay. We can do this, ’cause we’re not fixated, we’re just having fun. So what’s your dream car? Tell me what you’re thinking Seattle…I’m listening.