Had to dash to go to the drawing for our office Secret Santa thing. I drew a guy's name. Now what will I do with all those cutesy things I bought after last Christmas on sale on purpose for this year's exchange? A dilemma.

This morning I awoke to the reports of the two soldiers who died in Afganistan. Folks from my old National Guard unit are on active duty right now, but mostly at the airport doing security. I know other folks who have gone to other places, including my exhusband who came back from six weeks in an "undisclosed" location.

Later on this year, there is a movie coming out based on the book "Black Hawk Down" which is the story of the mission gone wrong in Somalia. Many of you may recall the lowlight of this sorry episode being the bodies of U. S. servicemen being dragged through the streets by rioters.

This isn't the type of story I like to read. I like my books escapist. I started reading Black Hawk Down because I was dating a Special Forces guy and he was installing a new clutch or something in his truck and there was the book on his desk, so I picked it up (being useless around car parts) and started to read it. I ended up having to buy my own copy of it when he went to Ft. Polk on an assignment, just so I could see how it turned out. I mean, I know how the operation turned out overall, but the book is gripping and draws you into it.

And one of its heroes reminded me of the man I was dating -- resilient, intelligent, street smart and take charge.

The other day I was cleaning up Liz's old email for her and found in her sent box an email to a friend of ours from this time frame wherein she said she thought I was falling in love with this guy. I was surprised. I didn't think I was, but maybe, looking back...maybe I was.

If there is such a thing as "Mr. Perfect," he'd have been it (up until I met Rob, of course, which didn't happen till later). He was thoughtful, funny, goofy and also tenderhearted. When is grandmother died, he flew home and arranged the funeral; when he returned he brought back the one thing he wanted while everyone else was arguing over the estate -- her old ice cream scoop because it reminded him of summer at her house.

I met him, the only guy I'd ever met this way, at a club when I'd gone out dancing. Our eyes met across the room and he wandered over to stand near me and Christie. In a lot of ways, he really was perfect -- except that he's twelve years younger than me. To me, that was a gap too large to be spanned and so I wrote off this soldier as someone with whom I enjoyed going dancing or hanging out. There was no future in the relationship, I told myself. It's hard to feel long term about someone who was still in Little League by the time you'd already had a baby. When I mentioned to Chris that I was dating someone who was 26, Chris blinked at me: "You are? Whoa." That only made me more sure that I was in the midst of a fling and not a relationship; how could my children meet and accept someone who isn't that much older than they are?

Now whenever I hear that a solider somewhere has been killed or that Special Forces are involved in something, I wonder where this guy is and if he's okay. Even if he and I weren't meant to be, I hope he's found someone who deserves him.