Oh, how I wish I were talking about a beer. Sadly, not. I woke up this morning to frost on the pumpkins…and the grass and the turned over garden and my car. Winter is walking around way too early this year. I’m not a huge fan of Winter to start with, so having the heat turn on and the frost gilding the leaves is just…too soon. It’s bad enough that I’m nesting because K. is leaving, but now I feel like hibernating too. I was hoping to have a few mild days here and there before the snow drifts in, but there’s already chances of snow for the rest of the week. It’s not right, but at least it is pretty.
So, what do I do to ignore the injustices of Mother Nature? I clean of course! Actually today is “Chore Day” so that I can have time over the weekend for other and more scintillating things to do besides vacuum and fold laundry. You noticed that “chore” and “bore” and “snore” rhyme, right? Well, I had a productive day in spite of the cold and the mundane. The house is vacuumed and dusted and de-doggie haired, the laundry is done and put away, the dishes clean, the bathrooms sparkling, and the garbage gone. Tomorrow is fun with foodshopping. Exciting!
I did have some fun though to balance the work and finished up the 8th Sookie Stackhouse book and am going to embark on the latest book in the series and will be all caught up at that point. Can’t wait. Getting into these fits of obsessive reading makes me feel like a kid again. I read constantly growing up. I really only took a break to get the kids through their infant and toddler phases and now I have more time to read again. It is such a joy too. I hadn’t realized how dumb I was starting to feel all those years of not reading. And it’s no coincidence that my increased reading appetite and my renewed love of writing happened at about the same time. Greasing the wheels is always a good thing to do.
Right now the kids are bathed and asleep and I’m drinking tea and snuggling up with my youngest pooch, Zoe (named after Zoe from Firefly). She’s the best foot warmer in town and she had a busy day of chasing squirrels and wrestling with her big furry brother, CaseyJones outside in the crisp Fall day. She loves to be out in the cold when she’s not passed out asleep somewhere or stealing my shoes to pass out on top of. K. is away again tonight (he was last night too), staying over at the armory deep in the packing phase of preparations. He’s pretty swamped with getting last minute things squared away for the guys and himself, and honestly, I’d rather he stay there and get his work done than come home and be mentally elsewhere.
K.’s gear packed up in the barn a couple of weeks ago. GI Joe would sell his Kung Fu grip for all the stuff K. has stashed away in there!
The closer he gets to leaving, the weirder things get between us. I’m no stranger to being alone with the kids and the three of us have built a regular “Daddy’s not here” routine over the years and we seem to be able to slide right into it with little effort now. It is not that K. isn’t missed, it’s just a necessary evil to this life. I’m thinking it’s better we are a self sufficient little subset of the family than a needy mess. Still though, I think it’s hard for him sometimes to hear that we are fine without him and I’m never quite sure how to deal with that. It’s not easy to balance keeping him involved and letting him go at the same time. I try not to make him feel like I’m shoving him out the door, but I’m not perfect by a long shot and I get single-minded in my preparations and my sensitivity goes right out the door. This Army life that separates families so regularly can be so complicated and contradictory. It puts couples in awkward situations constantly and it’s quite the workout to remember that you are supposed to be one unit when you are always thinking and functioning separately. It is especially awkward when you are not actually separate quite yet. After all these years together though, I think we are more forgiving if not accepting of this mindset. I really don’t mind that he is away unscheduled this week to get his stuff in order. We have to get used to him being gone again anyway. He needs to be clear-headed so he can be safe and come home again. There’s always some trade-off. You just always have to keep that in mind.
And now I’m going to go cap off this quiet night with some more reading and a whole lot of sleep and look forward to the weekend ahead when K. is home with us.
