pants

I have been a bad mother today. It started badly with me yelling, "What part of 'put your coat on NOW' don't you understand?!" to Twin 1 when we were getting ready for the school run this morning. As she is only two-and-a-half, bless her, there is probably quite a lot of that sentence she can't understand as:
a. she has not yet developed any meaningful concept of time, and
b. she can't put her coat on by herself yet
So she burst into tears and I have felt guilty all day.
A day which ended with us having bacon sarnies and Smarties for supper (please don't tell Gillian McFoodfascist, or whatever her name is).
In my defence, Hubby left for Afghanistan at 3am and Twins both have hideous coughs, which kept us awake pretty much until he left.
Yes, he has finally gone, even though I clung to his right leg whilst he was attempting to pack, wailing "Don't go!" (when I did this he reminded me what I said on Saturday morning. But of course I didn't really mean that...)
Whilst hanging onto his calf I did notice that he seemed to be packing an awful lot of pants. Earlier in the day I had even had to do an extra wash load and tumble dry to make sure that each and every single pair were fresh and ready for the journey. Which seemed kind of odd. I'm not sure why, I just assumed that the army would have some kind of rule about this (as they seem to about everything else). For instance, you are only supposed to drink two cans of beer per day when you are on operations, or you are only supposed to use two sheets of toilet roll for wiping your bottom when you are out in the field. (These facts are indisputably true, and I know this because I remember seeing them on Lads Army on the telly a couple of years ago). So I thought he would only be allowed two pairs of pants. I thought there would be a wash one, wear one thing going on. But no, apparently things are very different in today's modern military.
When I mentioned this, he just said, "The more pants the merrier," in an offhand way and began the slow process of prising my fingers from his lower leg.
So now he has gone, and I am not only a bad mother in his absence, but a bad mother who is left with the lasting vision of her husband, lost and alone in terrorist territory, with nothing but his special mug and his band of merry underpants for protection.
I do hope he'll be okay.