Must bite tongue. Must not rant. Must not refer to Bush as a "douche bag."

As a liberal military wife, I'm an oddity. I'm not quite as odd now as I was 5 years ago, though. As we get more wives, especially the younger wives of enlisted men, we tend to get more liberal folks. I almost fell over when the new group of moms (You get folks in waves. A group of your old friends will leave and then another group of new ones appears. It's a cycle) at playgroup passed around something Michael Moore had written. And they weren't doing it in an attempt to paint him as the anti-christ. They actually agreed with him.

Anyway, I have a number of friends who are neither military members/spouses nor liberals. We tend to stick to not discussing politics. Religion is an open topic, but politics is just a glaring blinking beeping hot button of disaster.

When people find out my husband is deployed, though, they're more likely to make political comments. In those cases, I have to try so hard to bite my tongue. Dh and I have VERY strong feelings on politics. For us, political debates are about a life or death situation. We're not just discussing lofty ideals like most people. This is our life. This is about the lives of our friends. We make no attempt to hide the fact that we believe Bush is a douche bag. My kids will tell you, "Bush sucks." At the same time, though, there's a time and a place for everything. I will never lie about my beliefs, but I'm not going to beat anyone over the head with them either.

And so I must refine the art of tongue biting and remind myself that while I find "asshat" and "douche bag" to be acceptable and accurate, they're probably words best left unsaid when in the presence of conservatives (and children because you know full-well they'll pick up those words in an instant and use them repeatedly and LOUDLY).