Friday, May 02, 2008

Our Long National Nightmare is Over

Well, mine is anyway. I suspect that the rest of you are screwed until January 20, 2009.

Reha the Extra Special and Wonderful Spouse of Love comes home today!

For a treat, give yourself a little mental picture of me over here doing the “Happy Joy Dance.”

Generally, when I do the “Happy Joy Dance” I’m only wearing a pair of white tube socks and a stocking cap with fuzzy yellow antlers that stick out at crazy angles, but in this case I’ll give you a pass. I’ll be over here doing The Dance fully clothed and not stinking of sweat and covered in antler fuzz.

I usually do OK when Reha is out of town, but this week just hammered me down to component parts. Carrie got the most horrendous case of strep throat imaginable and her throat would balloon out like a rain forest tree frog whenever she took a breath. We made fun of her and drew funny faces on her expanded throat, but then she threw her penicillin bottle at my head and stabbed me in the face with the broken shards. It stopped being entertaining at that point.

Seriously, she was really sick the whole week and taking her to Instacare and fetching prescriptions and ice cream and rice pudding and EVERY LITTLE THING her heart desired at the drop of a hat (note: not the antler hat), all that stuff took a lot of time.

Toss in the normal “get whiny delightful children to gymnastics, band practice, dance classes; help with homework, book reports and practice spelling words; make dinner and get the little goobers in bed at a decent hour” duties and I was utterly spent.

And plus work stuff was kind of insane this week. Like, “holy crap we are all going to die!” insane.

Anyway. I’m not complaining really. I just want to say that I never want to be a single parent. It’s really hard. Kudos to all of you who make that happen.

Important safety tip! In order to pull off the appearance that you have kept things under control while your spouse is away, implement the following helpful hints. Learn from me, kids, I’m a pro!

1. Dispose of all take out food containers and dirty up some pots and pans and plates so it doesn’t appear to a casual observer that you had take out food every night while she was gone. You don’t want to leave the kitchen a disaster, just enough that it looks like you made “real” food.


2. Bath the children the night before she comes home. Make it a “soaking bath” because magic marker is hard to get off.


3. Pay the cleaning service people in cash so there isn’t a paper trail (you did reserve a cleaning service, didn’t you?)


4. Force the children to sit down and write little notes of affection to the returning spouse. This will distract her from the marker stains on the children’s hands and feet.


5. Bribe the children to keep their traps shut about how things went down during the spouse’s absence. Plan on going to Toys R Us, the bookstore or the video game store while the cleaners are at your house.

Reha comes home today and since everyone in the house has been holding his or her collective breath until she finally shuffles through the front door of the Deal Family Compound, we all look forward to being able to finally and with great relief, exhale.

1. This should be required reading by all dads and moms.  Very sweet. 

   Going to get the image of the Happy dance out of my head now.

   Posted by jenB  on  05/02/08  at  11:21 AM

2. You mean, you can’t just ship them off to someone else when she goes out of town??!

   Dang, I am SO GLAD I never became a parent. You had to take care of them ... feeding, bathing, and EVERYTHING? In sickness AND health?? Crazy.

   Now maybe you’ll understand why cactus don’t last very long at Chez Mit.

   btw - Kudos!

   Posted by MitMoi  on  05/02/08  at  01:42 PM

3. Reha, welcome home. Your husband needs you. I saw him this week and he looked like shit. He could hardly compose a grammatically correct sentence. His clothes didn’t match. His hair wasn’t groomed. I don’t think he was wearing socks.

   I like Jon. He is a decent human being and is a good role model for me of a straight Mormon man. So I’m glad you are back. He might not admit it, but he needs you.

   Posted by Sterkworks  on  05/02/08  at  09:56 PM

4. Definitely yes to #1. On her last two trips out of town I’ve actually snuck in Pizza Hut and McDonald’s and then had to make sure to take them out to the trash HOURS before she got home so that the bags and boxes wouldn’t leave their lingering aromas to clue her in :}

   Posted by Backpacking Dad  on  05/03/08  at  08:51 AM

5. I am going to get some people to read this. Welcome home to Reha. This was a great read. I’ll be back :)

   Posted by MadWomanMeg  on  05/04/08  at  07:40 PM

6. Glad she’s back.  And yes: the rest of us ARE screwed until mid-January of next year.  Thanks for reminding me.

   Posted by Novembrance  on  05/05/08  at  05:30 AM

7. LOL My brother got found out when his wife went out of town last time because on her next trip to the grocery store, my 4 year old niece had a breakdown in the frozen food section when her mom wouldn’t buy her any Kid Cuisine meals. =D oooops.

   Posted by heather  on  05/05/08  at  09:03 AM

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Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

 

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

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