Right Now

This week/month has been crazy.  Can hardly remember to breath crazy;

thankful that it is a autonomic function.

 

Travis has been home for more than two and a half weeks of his almost three month no travel stint.  It's super fun having him home all the time.  It's also a ton of help.  And all the house and car things that have been slowly breaking down or wearing out over the last 6 months he has been busily repairing.  He has been volunteering in at the school with me and of course he became dad of the year by bringing home 7, yes 7, horny toads (or lizards as the case may be) with him for the kids to have as pets.  I didn't learn about this until they were already en route.  His reasoning, "I knew you wouldn't go for it if I told you ahead of time."  He's right on that.  But he did follow it up with, but I knew you wouldn't really care once they got here.  And he was right again.

 

Right now he is at an appointment with Jay.  So the house it totally mine again.  Kids are in school and no one is home.  I love it.  I really am a girl torn between her total independence and her fierce love of being with her husband all the time.  I didn't even realize how much I missed this kind of quiet solitude until I found it again after almost three weeks of his companionable presence.

 

Everyone keeps asking me are you tired of him yet, do you want him to go back to Wyoming yet.  Which is funny because when he is gone I am constantly being asked do you miss him, how are you doing, and my favorite of all time "do you sometimes just cry".  The answers are yes, fine and no respectively to the second set of questions.  To the first, it's heck no to both. 

 

Because as I am wiping down the counters after the initial morning school rush and breakfast of French toast and accompanying syrup puddles on the table, he gets ready to leave the house with Jay.  And he runs over to me, and because my back is turned, he bites my bum, and says I love you as he prepares to leave.  You see he can't leave or even let me leave the house without a kiss first.  But after 14 years of being together he's learned almost everything about me, including the fact that I am not a fan of being interrupted when I get into work mode.  But with this kind of knowing me, I turn around laughing and smooch his brains out.  Because this guy is perfect and still after 14 years I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have found and married him.  Even if on Sunday he ran over my church bag and purse with the car - damaging and ruining a fair amount of stuff including my digital camera, in the process.

 

So why with all this help is life still crazy - well I have a child's sleepover birthday party at my home in one week, a college alumni party at my house in one week and one day, we are taking a vacation to Texas soon that I am trying to get ready for, trying to conquer the Christmas shopping list - I like to get this all done by the first week in December - I have a child who I am transitioning to live with his biological parent which is highly emotional and physically stressing, I have a child turning 8 who wants to get baptized and I have to plan every detail on that and this is all within three weeks.  Add to that the kids are begging to decorate for Christmas and I agree not only because I love Christmas, but because if we don't do it now I don't know when we will be able to do it.

 

Then add in every day crazy.  We sold our van, bought a car, a cute little Honda Accord - stick so I can feel like Danika Patrick, we had five parent teacher conferences and all the other kid associated activities.  We bought a dog almost two months ago who then almost promptly bit the neighbor boy, made the rough and heart breaking decision to put the dog to sleep. I'm on the board of two civic organizations both of which are planning huge holiday fundraisers that happen to be the same weekend, also within this three week period of craziness. I had book club at my home last night, and a slew of other activities that daily life requires attending to like bill paying, house cleaning, and such.

But I'm no fool.  And despite the almost overwhelming sense of busy"ness", I can't help but feel beyond belief happy.  Because my life isn't what I pictured it would be at all.  It's so much better.  It's busy because it is filled with children and love and experiences that make me feel rich and blessed.  And so even though each day I collapse into bed exhausted, wondering how I did it all, why I do it all - I'm quite confident that when I look back on these years, I'll nostalgically tell the anonymous pregnant girl in the supermarket with another crying toddler and child in tow to cherish these years, because they are the best of her life.