Here's what happens when you leave a Maren alone for 9 days, family-less, stay-cationing in her own home. She gets lonely at times, and becomes a power-homemaker at other times. Oh, and she eats out some and rewatches her favorite movies: the Matrix trilogy, Terminator 2 (all clean-flicked, thank you very much), What About Bob?, the list goes on... Here is the long & short of it, some of them projected outcomes.
Day 1: see family off to Michigan, lots of kisses all around, prayers for safety (and sanity of Daddy). Then walk into quiet, empty house and wonder where to start...
Day 2: Skips church (to keep my cover of stay-cationing), and listen to 5 hours of the Mormon Channel on lds.org. Listen to Music & the Spoken Word for the first time EVER!
Day 3: Finish brother's mission scrapbooks & mail to him. A year after he came home, to the month.
Day 4: Start Domba's quilt while listening to hours of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me on NPR.
Day 5: The solitude and lack of noses & booties to wipe has worn my procrastination down and I'm half-way through my list of ideal things to get done. Checked off are: Spray grass, pull weeds in back, make cousin Brigham's baptism blanket, finish Lynn's bday present (pic to come), remember to put the garbage out, Costco, get white car an oil change, vacuum, mop, clean bathrooms, wash walls, and clean kitchen.
Day 8: Finish Domba's quilt (Trisha, I know, you are in total shock here), general clean-up, spray some organic fertilizer if no rain, replace DVD drive in stupid computer (that was quoted word for word from my To Do list)...
Day 9: Family returns and I regret any wasted quiet time during the week.
Bliss
Remembering how much I adore Gordon Lightfoot and other non-Kidsong songs.
Miss
Remember how much I adore my kids (most of the time) and missing the noise.
Bliss
Getting some food prepped and frozen for post-baby, post-grandma time.
Miss
Misjudging the health of my yeast and getting out of the shower to find my poolish has exploded all over leaving the heavy scent of baking bread for several days.
Bliss
Watching the Matrix trilogy at odd hours of the day (like late afternoon, etc)
Miss
Not watching Arrested Development because I'm so nice and am waiting for Dh to get back...
Bliss
Going to Barnes & Noble in the middle of the day and leisurely looking at books for 3 hours.
Miss
Going home to find that our primeval library system has half of the books on order (that came out months ago) and no intention of buying the rest. We're talking bestsellers here, people.
Bliss
Noting that the vacuum lines are still present three days later and the floor still clean.
Miss
Noting that the vacuum lines are still present and no cute little shoes strewn about the upper floor.
And for the curious, yes, Derek is nuts for driving the 9+ hours (each way) to Michigan by himself w/four hormonal little girls. And yes, I stayed behind because I was having some major contractions after our last trip. Some decisions are harder than others, but when God recommends you stay home, you generally tend to be obedient in that arena. Especially since you don't want to deliver a baby on the side of the road in the Alleghenies...
2 comments:
What'll we do when we're empty nesters? The drive there went surprisingly well. Return trip was much better due to Julie's trip gifts, but much harder given everyone's exhaustion. The high point was when Domba couldn't hold it any longer and resorted to going in a pullup (which I learned after stopping was actually Mini Me's swim diaper). Unfortunately, it didn't have much of a carrying capacity and we ended up with some fairly severe collateral damage strewn across the backseat and floor. I wonder if the nice older man who mentioned that he'd seen us in Ohio eating lunch 6 hours before noticed that one of the 4 matching dresses had been mysteriously transformed into shorts and a t-shirt.
Amen on the vacuum lines. I don't think they last longer than a millisecond with kids around.
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