Saudi Arabia has said that if the US-led coalition against Daesh is prepared to engage in ground operations, we will be prepared to participate with special forces. The Russians say their objective is to defeat Daesh, too. If the deployment of ground troops helps in the fight against Daesh, why is that World War III?

Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.

But, surprise - none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.

I was inspired to write Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home when I searched for books to help my 4 year daughter cope with her father deploying to Afghanistan and found nothing that quite fit our situation. My book is not only a great story for kids it has real suggestions for parents on how to keep you family connected during deployments or frequent business travel.

Deploy or die.

Most likely, they were writing the same type of macho bullshit that I wrote, trying to sound tough with their words in case words were all that made it home.

It’s the wide variation of women in our little shared petri dish that makes our lives never boring. Really all that we have in common is we each fell in love with a dude in uniform. The rest of it is a wild card. . . . Each of us trying to get through the day, the deployment, and the time in between.

Somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don’t do it to win anymore; we do it because it’s what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It’s our battle rhythm.

I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now.

Above everything else, beyond the long hardships, one out- come is the most invaluable. The sisterhoods. The lifelong friends and bonds that will never lessen. Years can go by, and I will pick up with each of those sisters as if a single day hasn’t passed. Only we can truly understand one another; not even our husbands can fully grasp what we’ve been through with each other and how ironclad those bonds are.