Thursday 22 April 2010

Alone Again ....

The week is coming to a close. DH works away all week, in effect making me a single parent most of the time; this is not quite so bad as it might sound - we (the kids and I) have a definite routine, I can eat anti-social foods, I have total power over the TV remote, I don't shave my legs or other places (in the winter at least), I get the bed to myself (6'4'' tall and around 250 lbs takes up a LOT of space - and let's not even mention the chainsaw snoring), and really he doesn't know what I do during the week: I can be as lazy or efficient as I like, as long as by Friday things look as if I've Done Something.







Please don't mistake - it's me that feels the pressure to clean the house manically every Thursday so that DH may actually be conned into believing the house looks this way all the time. My friend Alison has it better - her DH is away for months at a time.

The downsides to this ? I didn't get married to just see him on the weekends, the kids really miss him, he's missing out on them, and I don't eat real food during the week. An odd personal plus was that this way of living enabled me to firstly recognize some of my control issues, and then secondly, allowed me to shed them. I don't care that at the weekends, the routine is shot to hell. I don't care that nothing is where it should be. I can even live with the mess and muck all over the house. I can let it all pass by, even sometimes engage in spontaneity, and yet the sky does not fall on my head. I don't think mellowing so much comes with age, as with a different mindset.

But after a bad day and an alcohol-free cold bath of pathetic self-pity, it's like this ...



3 comments:

  1. Make the youtube thing fit by changing the width of the widget (look at the code - you'll see the width mentioned twice) and change it to about 600 - then it should fit in!

    Re the single parenting thing - I HEAR you! I am exactly the same. Although I can leave the house for nearly 6 wks without bothering to run a hoover or a duster over it.

    In order for these things to work, it is imperative that you have 2 lives. To continue with your life-without-him while he is at home leads to trouble.

    For example - when Willie is away, I do the plug changing and the grass cutting and all that shit. However, when he is home, I must let him do these things.

    My sonshine misses his dad and it does get wearisome doing the good coop/bad cop routine on your own....but there are upsides. For sonshine it is the high of looking forward to seeing someone that he loves enormously.

    For me it is MAC makeup bought at an exotic Duty Free ;-)

    Oh yes - and we eat proper vegetables when dad comes home instead of just pizza and meatballs ;-)

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  2. LOL OK changed it to 400 - thanks :-) no, I do no fixing whatsoever - if it falls off in the week, it stays off til the weekend LOL
    What WAS Miss Dahl DOING last night ?? Tofu ??!! that's not even a food

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  3. I haven't tried the Tofu thing. It gives me wind.

    Ali x

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Thanks ! I love comments :-)