T minus 28 Days and Counting

By my calculations, the darling children return to school ONE MONTH from today.

This saddens me in a way because it means that summer goes by much too quickly. It means that winter is just around the corner, and don't get me started on the price of LP gas and how I'm probably going to have to go donate an organ or sign up for some beta drug testing program that will make me grow a third nipple to afford to stay warm when the snow flies.

Don't get me wrong. I believe that there's such a thing as too much time that people can spend together. I think we hit that benchmark two weeks after school let out for the summer.

When the children were younger, my husband would load them up to go camping at the nearby State Park for the weekend. Actually, he would hint that he might like to go, and he'd come home to find that I had the truck packed, provisions purchased, and ready to hit the road. This is because I enjoyed those weekends alone during the summer.

He didn't take them last year. Oh, he threatened a time or two to go, but he met great resistance from the youngins' who thought they were way too cool to go camp with their old dad. They haven't gone this year either, and I don't see it happening since the tent got trashed when it was stowed in an area of the garage that is the breeding ground for mold and mildew under a leaky section of the roof. Coincidence? I think not.

I've not had 24 hours alone for well over two years. This is wrong.

Maybe I didn't exactly know what I was getting myself into with this whole motherhood thing. Perhaps I didn't think the whole "stay at home mom" thing through as well as I might have. I'm not saying I wish I didn't have kids. I'm not saying that I regret spending those formative years with my children.

What I am saying, however, is that I've had someone up my butt 24/7 for the past two months. I could get up early for a little alone time, but the oldest child gets up at the buttcrack of dawn. I could stay up late to garner some peace and quiet, except the younger child stays up all hours of the night.

I shouldn't complain, I suppose. But boy howdy, when my husband announced that he was taking a few days off before the 4th of July, I thought okay, I can handle it. I'll somehow manage to survive him in my hair for five days straight.

Except he came home on that Monday evening and announced, "I'm taking tomorrow off too!" I thought I might weep. Six days straight with a holiday thrown in for good measure. Oh be still my beating heart. I was not mentally prepared for it.

So, I'll be counting down those days. Looking forward to my days of quiet where I can hear myself think and not be mentally drained from constant interaction. Sure, I'll enjoy it for a few days, and then I'll be a little lonely, and then I'll get over that, too.

T minus 28 days and counting...