I do not write much of my personal life but from time to time I like to share some of those moments in life that make one proud.

I am a fortunate person….my granddaughter lives less than 2 miles from me and I get to spend time with her often.

Last year she made me a video for Veterans Day about my time in Vietnam and in service to my country….her and her mother were putting some of my pics from those days together in a frame for me…..let me say her vid made this old fart a bit teary.

She had asked me about those days….I told her about the mud,  the rain and the heat….I left out some of the more gruesome parts of those days.  Her interest was for the Monsoons and the mud…..she could not believe how much it rained in those times or just how deep the mud could get thanks to all that rain.

I told her that my unit worked mostly in the Mekong delta of Vietnam and even when it was not raining it was deep mud and rice paddies and WET.  She was grossed out by the leeches that seems to attack from all sides.  To use her words…….eeeeeeewwww!

She came by the other day and showed me this report that she saw in the paper…..

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Vietnam’s southern Mekong Delta, the country’s main rice growing region, is experiencing the worst drought and saline intrusion in recent history that has affected more than half a million people, officials said Thursday.

The drought could result in the loss of up to 1 million tons of rice, but is not expected to affect Vietnam’s status as the world’s third largest exporter of grain, said Ma Quang Trung, a department director at the Agriculture Ministry.

The water shortage could drive many farmers into poverty, especially if there are no rains between now and the peak of the dry season in late April, Trung said.

He blamed the drought on the El Nino weather phenomenon and excessive construction of more than 10 hydropower dams on the upper stream of the river.

The level of inland saline intrusion was unprecedented, resulting in damage to some 180,000 hectares (444,780 acres) of paddy fields, Trung said.

This is where she punked me.

She said…..”See if you had waited for 40 years then you would not have had to put up with all that rain and mud.”  “Timing is everything, Popi!”  She laughed out loud and patted herself on the back for being clever.

This tickled her and she went and got a water and some of my cookie stash and returned and grinning from ear to ear for what seemed like hours.

How could I get pissed?  A 12 year old that reads the paper and is clever enough to relate a tale of her grandfather to a situation in the news.

What can I say….she is my girl!