Diary of a husbandless housewife

Staving off cabin fever by playing with PhotoBooth.

Jeremy was out of town last week. For the whole week. Saturday to Saturday. IN EGYPT. I swear I wouldn't complain about him being gone and leaving me on my own with the girls except that an absent husband isn't what I signed up for. Some people walk into that kind of thing with their eyes wide open (military wives, for example, and my hat is off to them), but I didn't. So when he's gone, it is rather traumatic for me. Thank goodness it doesn't happen very often. Here's how it all went down.

Day 1. I am already overwhelmed and the week to come is stretching out in front of me without an end in sight. Also, I'm a little bit sick. What a wonderful beginning.

Day 2. The girls both slept in until 8 o'clock. Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

Day 3. The girls woke up at 6.30, after not going to bed until 9pm the night before, and they each threw in a few nighttime interruptions for good measure. THIS WILL BE BAD AFTER ALL.



Day 4. Another day of freezing cold rainy windy weather. What a nice time for us to cuddle up, read books together, and enjoy being inside.

Day 5. More freezing cold rain. We're pretty much just going to stay inside forever and die slow inside deaths inside.

Day 6. The sleep deprivation is getting to me. It's not just that they're waking up during the night and then waking up early. It's that, combined with the fact that I'm staying up extra late to fit in some precious alone/sanity time. Plus, I know as soon as I lie down that if the girls wake up, it's all me. There is no one to spell me.

Day 7. The sun has come out and the weather has warmed up, none too soon. This saves me. However, I am just about out of made-up bedtime stories since I'm telling two each night to make up for Jeremy not being there.

Day 8. I'm patting myself on the back, congratulating myself on a job well done, with two hours to go before we pick up Jeremy at the airport. Then he calls me from the Newark airport security line and tells me he's going to miss his connection. There is no other flight into Ithaca today. I completely fall apart. It's as if my body has steeled itself for a week of Jeremyabsence, but not a minute more. I can go this far, but no further. I pack up the girls and take them to the park so I can wallow in self-pity in relative solitude for a little while.

Then he texts me to tell me he did make his flight after all. They actually re-opened the cabin doors to let him on the plane, which means this is nothing short of an Easter Miracle.

Looking back, the things that kept me sane were reading YA books (Shiver, Fire, When You Reach Me, and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and non-YA The History of Love), eating chocolate-covered almonds, and playing outside. Still, it's a miracle I didn't have some kind of a breakdown. Just imagine every dispute, every poopy diaper, every bath, every fuss, every owie, meal, mess, need, problem - I dealt with it all. Sometimes while going to the bathroom. It reminded me very much of being a PhD widow, actually. How quickly I had forgotten.

Welcome home, Jeremy! Now please never leave again, or if you do, lend me some bedtime stories so I don't run out next time.