Last Day of Kindergarten

Today is the last day of school for Nathan. Kindergarten is over and first grade looms just over the horizon. Trevor went to the award ceremony on Tuesday where Nathan received his Kindergarten diploma, art award and an advanced reader award. He was so proud to have his daddy there and Trevor had some interesting stories to tell about the other parents who attended.

Apparently, our town’s white trash population has exploded in recent years. There was one mother there wearing an informational t-shirt that let us know that “If you lick it slow, it will last longer.”

Yes. You read that correctly.

This is the sort of person raising the children with which my son is attending school. Trevor could not believe the way most of these people were dressed. Not everyone can afford name brand clothing (myself included), but as my dad says, everyone can afford soap. You don’t have to have money to be clean and presentable in public. This goes right back to my blog at Easter about how our society has become so informal and casual that people have no clue as to what is appropriate any more.

I long for the seemingly bygone days of straightforward etiquette regarding clothing and behavior that was the norm instead of the exception. Days when flip flops and dirty t-shirts were not acceptable attire for a school awards program. Days when people bathed and wore shoes before going to the grocery store. I realize that I live in a rural community, but come on! Unless you are purchasing snuff at the country store from the movie “Where the Red Fern Grows”, you should be wearing shoes and a shirt when you go out in public.

Any, I digress. After Nathan’s program he and Trevor went back to the classroom where they found a really wonderful laminated booklet that his teacher had put together for each of the kids. It was a compilation of all the major events through the year complete with pictures of Nathan, artwork and handwriting samples. I thought it was a really thoughtful thing to give the parents.

So today I am attending an end of the year family picnic with Nathan. I will stop and get a Happy Meal from McDonald’s and I have a blanket for us to spread out on the ground. He was exciting about the picnic this morning but I think he was more excited that I was going to be there. There are so many events that he has had this past year that I was unable to attend, so it’s always special when one of us can get there.

So, the year comes to a close and I can see such a difference in Nathan. When he started Kindergarten, he was a bit of a discipline problem. He had trouble staying in his seat, following instructions and keeping his hands to himself. But after a year with Mrs. Brown, his behavior is right on par with the other kids and he has learned so much. He is reading on a first grade level, and his writing is legible. I am amazed at how much he did in Kindergarten compared to when Trevor and I were in school, and I am so proud of him.

Praise You In This Storm

In recent weeks I have seen things happening to my family and friends that have been difficult and sometimes tragic. Four women that I know have miscarried early in their pregnancy. A good friend of mine lost his job, a woman in my Sunday School class unexpectedly lost her mother and my grandmother broke her hip. So many situations that are filled with grief, pain and uncertainty. Yet as I watch it all unfold from a distance, I can see God’s glory in it.

It’s difficult to praise God when things seem to be in a downward spiral. We know that as Christians we should, but we are human and we tend to get caught up in the moment and in ourselves. We want to complain and wallow in our pain, asking God over and over again, “why?” Sometimes He reveals the “why” to us, but more often than not we never see the ultimate plan that God has. Sometimes our suffering is for our edification and growth, and sometimes it is for someone else.

I love this song by Casting Crowns called “Praise You In This Storm”. Every time I hear it I am reminded that storms come and go in our lives and all we can do is cling to God and trust that He will take care of us.

I was sure by now
That You would have reached down
And wiped our tears away
Stepped in and saved the day
But once again, I say “Amen”, and it’s still raining

As the thunder rolls I barely hear
Your whisper through the rain “I’m with you”
And as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away

I’ll praise You in this storm
And I will lift my hands
For You are who You are
No matter where I am
Every tear I’ve cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm

I remember when I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry
You raised me up again
My strength is almost gone
How can I carry on
If I can’t find You

As the thunder rolls I barely hear
You whisper through the rain”I’m with you”
And as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away

I lift my eyes unto the hills
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
The Maker of Heaven and Earth

Piano Diagnosis

I am so excited about our “new” piano! Claude came out yesterday morning to take a look at it and his diagnosis was “old but in pretty good shape” (it was built in 1914, after all!). It’s 1/2 step off pitch and he will be coming back to tune it, adjust the action and retune it on the first visit and then he will do another tuning in about 3 months. I was really nervous about his diagnosis and am glad that I didn’t purchase a complete piece of junk. He said that we could realistically expect up to 50 more years of life for basic home use and piano lessons.

I can’t wait to play it once it’s tuned! I’ve been amassing hymnals and music so that I can get back into shape with my playing. On the way to work this morning, I was daydreaming about this Christmas. Ever since Mama and Daddy moved away, the only time we are able to sing around the piano is when we go home. Now we can sing when they come over here and Christmas will really feel like Christmas again!

Several years ago, Patrick and I put together a spiral bound book of favorite hymns for Mama. So many of our favorites are in different hymnals and there were never enough copies to go around. There was also the fact that the print in some of those books must have been intended for sprites or wood elves and the older we all got, the harder it was to read those teeny tiny notes. So anyway, we enlarged the music and had 5 copies of this book bound and that’s what we use to sing around the piano. Patrick is sending me the disc so I can go to Kinko’s and have my own copies bound.

Memorial Day: A History

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow;
I am the softly falling snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain;
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush;
I am in the graceful rush.

Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.

I am the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

– Mary Frye (1932)

A Brief History of Memorial Day
It was 1866 and the United States was recovering from the long and bloody Civil War between the North and the South. Surviving soldiers came home, some with missing limbs, and all with stories to tell. Henry Welles, a drugstore owner in Waterloo, New York, heard the stories and had an idea. He suggested that all the shops in town close for one day to honor the soldiers who were killed in the Civil War and were buried in the Waterloo cemetery. On the morning of May 5, the townspeople placed flowers, wreaths and crosses on the graves of the Northern soldiers in the cemetery. At about the same time, Retired Major General Jonathan A. Logan planned another ceremony, this time for the soldiers who survived the war. He led the veterans through town to the cemetery to decorate their comrades’ graves with flags. It was not a happy celebration, but a memorial. The townspeople called it Decoration Day.

In Retired Major General Logan’s proclamation of Memorial Day, he declared:

“The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country and during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”

The two ceremonies were joined in 1868, and northern states commemorated the day on May 30. The southern states commemorated their war dead on different days. Children read poems and sang civil war songs and veterans came to school wearing their medals and uniforms to tell students about the Civil War. Then the veterans marched through their home towns followed by the townspeople to the cemetery. They decorated graves and took photographs of soldiers next to American flags. Rifles were shot in the air as a salute to the northern soldiers who had given their lives to keep the United States together.

In 1882, the name was changed to Memorial Day and soldiers who had died in previous wars were honored as well. In the northern United States, it was designated a public holiday.

President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Waterloo the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1966, 100 years after the first commemoration. Every May 30, townspeople still walk to the cemeteries and hold memorial services. They decorate the graves with flags and flowers. Then they walk back to the park in the middle of town. In the middle of the park, near a monument dedicated to soldiers, sailors and marines, the Gettysburg address is read, followed by Retired Major General Logan’s Order # 11 designating Decoration Day. The village choirs sing patriotic songs. In the evening, school children take part in a parade.

In 1971, along with other holidays, President Richard Nixon declared Memorial Day a federal holiday on the last Monday in May.

Cities all around the United States hold their own ceremonies on the last Monday in May to pay respect to the men and women who have died in wars or in the service of their country.
The modern celebration of Memorial Day is similar to the original celebration, but today we have expanded upon the original idea. Today, Memorial Day is a time of the year when people come together to honor their close friends or relatives who have died. It is still very much about honoring America’s fallen soldiers, such as in gatherings at places like the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia to visit such moving memorial tributes such as the tomb of the unknown soldier, which represents “everyman” who with bold patriotism laid down their life for this country.

But in addition to this, Memorial Day is about celebrating all people, all of our ancestors and forefathers who have created the world we live in today, who have paved the long road we walk down into the future. It is a day to celebrate and thank all these people who died to create what we have today. Church services, visits to the cemetery, flowers on graves or even silent tribute mark the day with dignity and solemnity. It is a day of reflection.

(Text taken from articles on about.com and dcpages.com)

We Have Tomorrow Off!

The call came at 8 am this morning. Chris found a note on his office door asking if I could teach Sunday School today because Noelle (my co-instructor) wasn’t going to be there. So, the call asking me to teach came an hour and a half before Sunday School started, and I was still asleep in my soft, warm bed. Did I mention that I had not even reviewed the lesson yet?

The ironic thing about it was that Chris and Ali were over for dinner last night and we were discussing what a shame it was that I wasn’t teaching this particular lesson since it was about a subject that I am very passionate about. The theology of election is something that I struggled with for several years before I was finally able to wrap my brain around it. I was glad to have the opportunity to present this point of view to the class.

So, I grabbed my Bible and the teacher’s study guide and spent about 45 min hurriedly studying before I had to get dressed. I made it to church on time, and the lesson went well in large part because most of the class agreed that the bible teaches unconditional election.

After church we came home and had leftover chicken and sausage gumbo and then proceeded to fall into a carbohydrate coma on the couch. The phone roused me just after 2 pm, so I got up and tackled the mountain of laundry that had been accumulating all week. I went between the laundry room and the couch all afternoon until it was time to go to church again at 5 pm. When it’s a holiday weekend, you don’t have that sense of urgency that usually accompanies Sunday afternoon. With the prospect of a whole other day off, you can afford to move slow and not get much accomplished.

Evening worship was really nice because it was a special service where we sang hymns instead of praise music. Nathan enjoyed singing with us and it was good to hear all the old songs. We were so excited about the singing that we came home and sang at the piano for a little while. I use the term “sang” loosely not because we can’t sing, but because my piano playing skills are a bit rusty and I’ve never been good at hymns anyway. The more I play, the better I get (go figure) so some songs were better than others!

Now it’s time to think about going to bed and I am enjoying the anticipation of an extra morning to sleep late, enjoy my coffee out on the deck and just generally be lazy. We’ve invited Trevor’s family over for Memorial Day lunch as well as Chris, Ali, Nate and Calvin. It will be a full house, but lots of fun.

Forgotten Lives

I love books. I love reading them, collecting them, browsing for them and looking through stacks of them at secondhand stores. I found myself at such an establishment yesterday afternoon on the way home from work. I was searching for a hymnal or two and maybe some old sheet music or songbooks to expand my music collection for the piano.

This old store has one row of books and to see them you have have to reach overhead and turn on a dim light. There is minimal air conditioning and the air in this aisle smells of dust and slowly decaying paper. The books are loosely organized by topic, but I still feel compelled to search each shelf just in case a treasure was overlooked and filed in the wrong place.

I must have spent an entire hour poring over one section in hopes of finding what I was looking for. What I found was what I always find when I am looking through old books. Lives. The lives of the people who owned the books before they ended up on a dusty shelf in an antique store. Most of the books have inscriptions and dates…who are these people? Why are their books here instead of on the shelf of a child or other close relative? Were they excited to receive the book for Christmas or their birthday? Was the book read over and over again with passages memorized over time with each reading, or was it pushed to the back of a bookcase and never read?

I found receipts and poems tucked away between the pages. Just the sort of thing I would do…using a scrap piece of paper as a bookmark. But in one of the hymnals, I found a poem taped to the back cover and I almost wept when I read it. It was a poem written not for winning hearts, but for breaking them. It was a poem of goodbyes and sorrow. I wondered about the woman who might have received that poem from her lover. Was her heart broken or was she expecting such an act?

There were so many unanswered questions, and my own mortality got up close and personal with me. What will I leave behind? Will there be someone in a secondhand store 75 years from now looking through my books wondering who I was? In spite of our best efforts, we leave so little behind. Not just in terms of the physical, but also the essence of who we were. Once those who knew us are gone, and there is no one left to remember the sound of our laughter or the smell of our skin, that is when we truly die.

Our life here on earth is too fleeting to waste it on things that won’t matter in eternity. Just a few deep breaths, and we are finished. So I choose to live my life for Christ while I’m here. No reward or incentive in this life can compare with the glory that waits for me in heaven. My heart is in heaven.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21

The Dangerous Book for Boys

I was surfing the net last night and found a book that looked really interesting. I am planning to go to Barnes and Noble this afternoon to purchase it for Nathan.

(Side note: I did indeed get this book and I cannot put it down! It is entertaining and has all the information a boy could want about making bows and arrows, treehouses and things with which to scare a little sister.)

Here is a review from Dr. Albert Mohler:

“What do boys need to know? That question led brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden to write “The Dangerous Book for Boys”, and boys of every age will love it. The book took Britain by storm last year, and arrives this year just in time for summer reading. A boy armed with this book will have a very fun summer indeed.

The book instantly recalls the great Victorian era of books for boys — books about boy heroes, adventurers, soldiers, and naturalists. Those books, often recognizable in their ornate cloth covers, were read and read again by boys as they grew older. “The Dangerous Book for Boys” is a worthy successor to that tradition.

This book will tell a boy how to read cloud formations, make a battery, make a periscope, and construct “the greatest paper airplane in the world.” Boys are told of the essential gear of boyhood — including Band-aids. Young adventurers will also learn of famous battles, the history of artillery, and how to understand girls.

On the subject of girls the authors warn that young females are likely to be “unimpressed by your mastery of a game involving wizards, or your understanding of Morse Code.” Boys are also soberly warned that girls, as a general rule, “do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do.” This is important to know.
On the other hand, boys are told to help girls who need assistance. Take this sage advice, for example:

If you see a girl in need of help–unable to lift something, for example–do not taunt her. Approach the object and greet her with a cheerful smile, while surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can’t, try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation.

That advice will help a middle school boy greatly. It just might help a good many college-age boys, for that matter.

The Iggulden brothers believe that boys need to get away from the computer screen, go outside, and learn to enjoy the world and make their way in it. “Boyhood is all about curiosity,” they advise. Boys need to know how to build a treehouse and how to find north in the dark — and they need to know that they know these things. As the brothers explain:

“How do latitude and longitude work? How do you make secret ink, or send the cipher that Julius Caesar used with his generals? You’ll find the answers inside. It was written by two men who would have given away the cat to get this book when they were young. It wasn’t a particularly nice cat. Why did we write it now? Because these things are important still and we wished we knew them better. There are few things as satisfying as tying a decent bowline knot when someone needs a loop, or simply knowing what happened at Gettysburg and the Alamo. The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.”

Boys are introduced to Shakespeare, coin tricks, spiders, and “Latin phrases every boy should know.” They learn how to waterproof fabric, juggle, and understand rugby.
The book’s runaway sales in Britain surprised the publishers, but not the authors.

Here is how Conn Iggulden explained the book’s success:

“In a word, fathers. I am one myself and I think we’ve become aware that the whole “health and safety” overprotective culture isn’t doing our sons any favors. Boys need to learn about risk. They need to fall off things occasionally, or–and this is the important bit–they’ll take worse risks on their own. If we do away with challenging playgrounds and cancel school trips for fear of being sued, we don’t end up with safer boys–we end up with them walking on train tracks. In the long run, it’s not safe at all to keep our boys in the house with a PlayStation. It’s not good for their health or their safety.”

Expect the book to catch attention fast in this country as well — and for the same reason. Iggulden gets to the heart of the book’s attraction to boys and their dads:
You only have to push a boy on a swing to see how much he enjoys the thrill of danger. It’s hard-wired. Remove any opportunity to test his courage and they’ll find ways to test themselves that will be seriously dangerous for everyone around them. I think of it like playing the lottery–someone has to say “Look, you won’t win–and your children won’t be hurt. Relax. It won’t be you.” I think that’s the core of the book’s success. It isn’t just a collection of things to do. The heroic stories alone are something we haven’t had for too long. It isn’t about climbing Everest, but it is an attitude, a philosophy for fathers and sons. Our institutions are too wrapped up in terror over being sued–so we have to do things with them ourselves. This book isn’t a bad place to start.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, there are now over 400,000 copies of the book in print. The publisher now expects to sell as many as four million copies in the United States. Reporter Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg explains:

“The unapologetic message is that boys need a certain amount of danger and risk in their lives, and that there are certain lessons that need to be passed down from father to son, man to man. The implication is that in contemporary society basic rules of maleness aren’t being handed off as they used to be.”

The book aims to correct that. It does so with a pretelevision, prevideogame sensibility, and also by embracing a view of gender that has been unfashionable in recent decades: that frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails are more than lines in a nursery rhyme, and that boys are by nature hard-wired differently than girls.

But “The Dangerous Book for Boys” is also aimed at boomer dads, who nostalgically yearn for a lost boyhood of fixing lawn mowers and catching snakes with their fathers — even if that didn’t really happen as often as they think it did.

Predictably, the book has detractors as well. Some feminists are unappreciative of its approach, its title, its intended readership, and the fact that the word “boy” is in the title. HarperCollins editor Matthew Benjamin is unmoved. “We initially thought that men nostalgic for their boyhoods would be the buyers, but people are also buying it for 12-year-old boys,” he said. “This book teaches them its OK to play and explore.”

A rival publisher took the book home to his eight-year-old son, who promptly jumped up from in front of the television and talked his dad into testing paper airplanes long after bedtime. “That’s the good news,” the dad said. “The bad news is that he now expects me to build him a treehouse.”

Jane Friedman, Chief Executive at HarperCollins and herself the mother of two sons and two stepsons, is sticking by the book. There is no plan for a girls’ version, she said. “Boys are very different,” she observed.

Yes they are, Ms. Friedman, and that is why books like this are important. Boys want to be taken seriously as boys, and taught how to become men. To reach this goal, they will need far more than the fascinating lessons found in “The Dangerous Book for Boys” — but this is a good place to start.

So put this book in your boy’s hands and turn off the television and the PlayStation. Then get ready to watch the paper airplanes fly and the water bombs burst. And, to be honest, it wouldn’t hurt to keep a few Band-aids handy . . . just in case.”

Shocking News

Trevor called this morning to inform me that he was not going to China until June 1.

Shocker.

While I am glad to postpone his departure for a few more days, I wish that it was pushed back by another week so he could be here for Gracie’s 3rd birthday. We are having her party on June 2, and I hate to see him miss a milestone in her life. The bright side is that Gracie will not remember his absence and she will be so busy with all of her little friends that the day will not be marred for her.

I guess what bothers me about the whole situation is that we will not be sharing the day together. We were both there the day she was born, and to think of him half a world away on the anniversary of that day is a little depressing. Maybe things will change (again) and he won’t have to leave until the following Friday.

Speaking of being bothered (don’t worry…it’s not a rant this time!), the director of the Cancer Center where I work was fired yesterday. She is one of the most competent, respected members of management here and we were all shocked and appalled at the news. I’ve mentioned the take over by Memorial Hermann before, and this is just another chapter in the saga that is our reality these days. People are being fired, reassigned, moved and generally tossed around as the giant gears of the mega-hospital system unyieldingly turn. We will all be glad when the merger is final and the dust finally settles so that we can stop living with that small knot in our stomachs wondering if we are next.

After all, if they got rid of Marilyn, then no one is indispensable. Scary thought.

Education vs. Entertainment

I am mad at our school district. It has nothing to do with the education that Nathan is receiving or with the quality of the teachers that are employed there. It has everything to do with creating opportunities all year long to make working parents feel even more guilty about not being able to spend time with their kids. I have enough self-applied guilt, thank you very much, without having someone else create some for me.

Nathan has field day today, and then the day after Memorial Day he has an awards ceremony. For what?! He’s in Kindergarten for goodness sake! I mean, I’m proud of the progress that he has made this year, but is it really necessary at that age to have a ceremony? I’m one of those people who think Kindergarten graduations are the most ridiculous thing ever. Ughh. What did they accomplish, really? They learned to walk in a line, be quiet in class and (hopefully) the Golden Rule. Is a graduation really in order?? I think not.

All year long I have been amazed at the number of activities the elementary school planned that required parental involvement. There was family picnic day, kite-flying day, Thanksgiving party/activity day, and Christmas party day. For each of these events (and so many more that I do not have the time or energy to list here), a flyer was sent home with pleas for parents to come and be with their child. I took off work to help out with the Christmas party and I sent sandwiches (in the shape of little turkeys) for the Thanksgiving festivities. Trevor took a day of vacation to go on a field trip with Nathan’s class.

But we were unable to take off every time a flyer was sent home requesting our presence. We both work at least 40 minutes (or more) away from home, and to attend a one hour event requires that we take either a half or whole day off from work. If we had actually taken off every time that Nathan had something going on at school, we would have spent all of our vacation days for the year. It’s ridiculous and our absence caused Nathan to feel left out which really made me mad.

For instance, on kite day I asked him if he got to fly his kite. He shook his head and said, “No, I didn’t have anyone to help me.” It broke my heart (and pissed me off) to think of him standing there unable to do it himself, and being excluded from the fun because of our inability to attend. If they are going to have these ridiculous activities, that should have enough staffing so that children are not left out.

And don’t even get me started with the ridiculous “Red Ribbon Week” or the 100th day of school festivities. (Do children in Kindergarten and 1st grade really care what day they are on??)

OK….too late. The Red Ribbon Week was designed to heighten awareness about drug use. This is commendable. I am glad that the school is taking an active interest in educating our children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. However, I do not think it is necessary to require the children to have an activity every day of said week. Let’s see, there was crazy sock day, wear camouflage day…oh I forget all of them, but suffice it to say that it was a pain in my behind and of no educational value at all to the kids.

I think that the school sets itself up for failure when they feel as though they have to give the kids a reason and incentive to come to school. Whatever happened to going to school, sitting at your desk quietly and learning what you were taught? I’m not suggesting that we didn’t do fun, age-appropriate things when I was in school, but those activities were few and far between. I didn’t go to school each week expecting to be entertained. I went to school expecting to learn and to be disciplined when I didn’t live up to my potential.

If kids think that they are entitled to this sort of environment, what are we going to do with them when they are older and the stakes are higher? To what lengths will the school district have to go to keep them interested and engaged at school? I want Nathan to attend school to learn what he needs to know to graduate from high school and then to go on to college. I don’t want him to be entertained…I want him to be educated.

The Art of Compromise

Trevor set up a new itinerary for his trip to China. He will (supposedly) be leaving May 29 and returning on June 8. We’ll see. He has been trying to make this trip since the beginning of the year and I’ve lost track of the number of times it has been cancelled. I’m seriously just ready for it to be over and done with so we can mark it off the list of things to do. It’s hard to plan anything because those discussions always end with, “assuming I’m not in China, of course.”

Confession: I enjoy my time alone when Trevor is in China. I get the remote, I get to choose what is for dinner, I get to read in bed for as long and late as I want to. Most importantly, I get to have the bed to myself. It’s not that Trevor dominates the family when he is home and everything revolves around him. Trevor is actually very laid back and accommodating in most areas. But when you are in a marriage, everything that happens (from the seemingly insignificant to the incredibly important) involves more than one person. Everything on some level is a compromise.

What program are we going to watch on TV tonight? What is for dinner? Am I bothering him with the light on in bed so I can read? I do my best to take his feelings and preferences into account with every decision I make and when he is not home it’s liberating to do everything my way. There is no one else to consider except for the kids, and that’s a whole other issue entirely! When he is gone I make biscuits and gravy for dinner since it is not something that he enjoys. I watch girly movies after the kids have gone to bed and I stay up way past my bedtime curled up with a good book. I chat on the phone with my friends and family for hours and I leave my scrapbooking supplies out on the table for days at a time. And there is the anticipation of going to bed and not having to worry about bothering someone else when I roll over in the night, cough or have too many of the covers.

I could do all of these things when he is home and he would not complain (much), but I would feel bad knowing that there were other options that would make both of us happy. So, when he leaves on the 29th, I’ll console myself with doing things my way for a few weeks. When he comes back on the 8th, I’ll be thankful that I have someone to consider. Except for the bed thing. We seriously need a bigger bed. Seriously.