and so it begins

I'm hoping to be better about regular writing here now that
a) we're done with house stuff and just sitting around in a clean house all the time (yeah right!)
and b) Ryan's taken off and I'll be sitting all by my lonesome every Sunday night thru Friday each week.

Yeah, so Ryan's gone. He headed south this afternoon and starts his new job in the morning.
I will now be single parenting it 80% of the time.

Okay, no. I hate to say single parent because I do still have an other half to at least share -if not in flesh, then at least in relaying my day- this parenting with. A sounding board, a shoulder to cry lean on, a partner to vent to, a second perspective to glean from.
And he'll make an appearance most weekends.

Most true single parents really are on their own, 100% of the time, without anyone to share any of it with. And I honestly can't even begin to imagine that.

And then there are the people who do this all the time... this is normal life to them; the moms who's husbands work out of town regularly all week for weeks, months, years at a time.
And military wives; let's not forget them.

So I know I still have it much better than the different situations lots of moms are in. Heck, I probably have it better than lots of moms who do have husbands around all of the time.

*****

Last week Ryan took the kids both out to Build-a-Bear to pick out a new friend to make. He picked up a couple of the "build-your-own-sound" recorders, hid out in the bathroom and recorded a Goodnight, I Love You message for each of them to be stuffed in their animals. The kids thought that was pretty cool... now they can hear that every night, even when Daddy's not here to tuck them in each night. They've both of course been sleeping with them and are pretty attached to them even during the day.
















I went in to snap a picture of the kids sleeping with their animals just now and found this.

Savannah was really upset at bedtime tonight, crying and talking about how long Daddy was going to be gone, etc. I know it's not just the anticipation of missing her dad, but everything about all these changes all coming to a head tonight, this first phase of how it'll be for awhile. Even with my reassurance and comforting and her new kitty, she still basically cried herself to sleep.
It made me smile just now to see that she had decided to find and sleep with a pic of her daddy and our family alongside her new 'Goodnight Kitty'.


And as anyone familiar with the archives of this blog would guess, in true Ryan Leaves Town style, we have the first inklings of both human sickness and car trouble:

I woke up this morning feeling like crap, thinking it was mostly because I'd had a good bit of neighborly cheer last night (read: enjoyed a few too many adult beverages), but have come to realize throughout the day that no, this definitely feels like plain old sick. My throat hurt a bit the last couple of days and today turned into what feels like trying to swallow glass... I've been tired and achy and wanted to do nothing but crawl back into bed and sleep for the whole day.
Instead I dragged my butt around town; to church and to lunch and to Costco and back to help Ryan pack up and send him off and then to cheerleading practice and to take the girls out to a end of the season celebratory dinner. Did I mention I was tired??

Also, the car. Our perfectly well-behaved, never-in-it's-twelve-year-life-have-any-problems-except-when-Ryan-leaves-town vehicle decides to start leaking again. Ryan took it in for a regular oil change last Monday. Wednesday/Thursday-ish we noticed leaking oil under the car. Hmmm. So Friday he took it back in for them to check it over, I don't remember what they said but they fixed whatever it was (something easy like a loose filter or bad seal or something?). So they supposedly fixed whatever it was and topped everything off and that was Friday morning and the rest of the weekend there was no oil spotting. Until, of course, this afternoon as Ryan pulled out of the driveway to run one last errand, and I notice fresh puddles on the garage floor again. You know, of course less than an hour before he has to head out of town for two weeks. Ugh.
So I'll take it back in tomorrow. And hope it really is something they did/can find/can fix.

And so begins my (psuedo) single-parenting gig.
One night down, only three months to go...