When You're Gone

I think I've posted about almost every trip away from me and the kids that Mike has ever taken. It's a fairly monumental thing around here because he does not travel much at all (praise be!), and I become a bit of an emotional basket-case leading up to the time that he is leaving. I've learned to cope with the actual time that he is gone much better than the very first trip that he took, during which I think I cried 75% of the time and called him telling him how awful everything was the other 25%, I tried to keep things balanced at least.

But seriously I DO NOT know how you wives of frequently traveling husbands do it, and I truly- truly- stand in complete awe of you. I also pray that I am never in your shoes because I am fairly certain I would completely lose it.

I promise I'm not just playing the role of poor, helpless housewife, there is more too it than that-- I don't even get super worried about doing bedtime by myself anymore! I didn't even take any extra precautions against potential intruders this time other than dead bolting all the doors (I'm preeeeetty sure I slept with a butcher knife by my bed that first time. Seriously, I was crazy incarnate). It's just that I really like Mike, he is my very best friend and I get really excited to get to talk to him everyday, and NOT just because he is virtually the only adult I speak to most days. I get all sappy, sentimental and sad, and not just for alliterations' sake. It is truly pathetic and I'm working on it.

Anyways, he left Friday and came back Sunday and in the hours leading up to him leaving on Friday you would have thought that somebody killed my puppy, if I liked dogs. It didn't help that Bernadette woke up throwing up that morning and I had spent the entirety of the day mentally convincing myself that all the other children were sure to be vomiting all day Saturday, because of course (!) that would happen to martyr-Ana. At some point closer to the moment of his departure I realized what a 'B' I was being, and shaped up in time to give him a proper, non-melodramatic goodbye, because little Ana is growing up!

In the end no one else threw up, and we kept the days ultra-packed so that my mind wouldn't dwell too much on the death of my puppy, or um sorry, the extremely temporary absence of my husband. We hit up my new favorite doughnut place in town.

And while the children convinced themselves it was for them, it was really just to console doughnut-loving Ana's sad little heart. It worked, a little.

I figured that since it had been a solid 5 weeks since the last time I cleaned my bathrooms- and I am not even close to joking about that-- it was probably time for a little scrub-down. There were enough crumbs in my carpet to assemble a sizable pioneer crumb-colony, so I vacuumed too! It was a veritable house cleaning party over here.

Then there was a little sewing project that made its way into the day on Sunday while the kids played in the tropical weather that came our way.

I really resisted actually hanging this thing on our front door, but the girls were begging me to make some sort of Valentine's Day craft with the fabric and fell in love with the result so much so that I conceded, knowing that it will be coming promptly after the 14th. Also, I am guessing that "welcome home, dad!" signs lose their novelty once the hubs is traveling frequently (is that the case? I could be totally wrong), but I feel like the overflowing excitement over Mike's return after 1.5 days and 2 nights just goes to show what rookies we are in that department. And by "rookies" I mean "wimps".

Either way, I survived the separation and as the saying goes, absence made the heart grow even fonder.