Today is the day I transition from being a woman living at home alone with two cats to being a woman living with a husband and two cats. My husband has been gone on a business trip for the past two weeks in Swansea, Wales (his job demands that he travel frequently) and he returns home at 6:00 this evening.
Yes, it’s a big transition, believe it or not. I have a much different life WITH him than what I have when I’m living alone. During the past two weeks, my entire life at home has been conducted in three rooms of this two-story house. I sleep in our bedroom and I use my bathroom. Those are two of the rooms. The other room is is the combination kitchen/breakfast nook area. My laptop computer has been sitting on the kitchen table since my husband left. I get up in the morning, come downstairs, feed the cats, fire up the computer. I check my email and my blog sites while I’m eating my cereal and having a cup of tea. Get ready for work and out the door. I return home at roughly 5:30, feed the cats, turn on the computer, have some supper (if I haven’t stopped for a bite somewhere on the way home) and check my email while I eat my soup. I’ve spent a lot of evenings here at the computer until bedtime, reading blogs, writing entries, sending emails to Husband in Wales, researching this memorial page I want to do and how to do it. Sometimes the radio or CD player has been on in the background. Sometimes not. I don’t watch television.
The whole kitchen/dining nook area is trashed right now, mostly consisting of the piles of mail we get everyday: junk, magazines, catalogs, book club offerings, an occasional bill. (Most of the financial transactions are done online and I’ve gone “paperless” wherever possible.) Everything is scattered around my computer! My cat’s medication bottle is sitting here, two empty glasses, a vitamin bottle, a can of compressed air for cleaning the computer, the tablet where I’m tracking my lottery numbers, AA-size batteries, notes on how to do some HTML tags on LiveJournal, a spoon, a ream of paper that hasn’t yet made it upstairs to the study, and the ubiquitous piles of mail. Over on the kitchen counter, there are used cereal/soup bowls and spoons, and a saucepan and some cat food dishes in the sink. That comprises my dirty dishes for the week.
Upstairs, the bed hasn’t been officially made since my cleaning service was here a week ago Thursday. No one sees the bed but me and Katie, the calico cat who sleeps in it with me. She doesn’t care if the bed is made, and frankly, I don’t either, unless someone else is going to see the house.
That’s been my life the past two weeks. If I actually were a single woman, I would downsize in a heartbeat to a one-bedroom plus den townhouse or condo. I’m not into yardwork and gardening in the spring and summer, and I don’t like the snow removal aspect in the winter. My husband has even agreed with me that if he were to consistently be gone more than 50% of the time, we’d sell this single-family home with all its upkeep and move to a townhouse that would ease what I have to take care of when he’s gone. As it is, though, he’s not gone quite that much usually, so here I am, in a three-bedroom, two-story house on a half-acre lot with a long driveway that needs to be cleared the 80 feet to the street when it snows.
Oh, and did I mention how quiet it’s been here at night since he’s been gone? I haven’t had to put my earplugs in to block out the snoring next to me so I can sleep! I actually sleep very well when he’s gone, better than I do when he ’s home.
That being said, yes, I’m looking forward to having him home tonight, dirty laundry, snoring and all!
