The Fixer

Sometimes I need to be nudged in the right direction. My wife is good at nudging.  I mean that in a good way of course.  When I want to shrug my shoulders and walk away from adversity, she stands firm.  Not hand-on-her-hip and nagging firm, but rather she allows me to finish my whining, complaining, kicking, and cursing, and then she picks up where we left off.

Recently, our tenant of two years moved out of my old house that we rent out.  By old house I mean where I used to live and that it was built during the Taft administration.  Lately, I’ve spent weekends, evenings, even lunch breaks sweating it out at that house.  Cleaning, cutting the grass, washing the vinyl siding (and cursing the housing market ), while feeling sorry for myself as I missed time that could be spent with my son.  Poor me.

My wife has cleaned and painted, and basically flipped the inside of the house.  She attacks with a fervor of a HGTV host, she’s relentless. I am not relentless...

While she was painting she found a soft spot in the wood that turned out to be termites. I lost it. And while I groused and complained, she called Orkin. She reminded me that if the old tenant hadn’t moved out, the damage would have been worse. 

She sees the bigger picture.  When I curse the house and the responsibilities that come with it, she’s planning ahead, strapping our son to her chest, grabbing a mop, and getting down to business.  I may act like a child sometimes…a lot of times, but I’m man enough to admit when she’s right. And that I’m better because of her.

Our new tenants move in tomorrow and thanks to her touch the house looks amazing. It shines like new again, the termites are gone (hopefully), and the grass is cut. Now I can cut the grass at my house...

Day Care Looms...

For the first 10 weeks of my son’s life, he has had his mother with him every breath of the way.  Holding him, feeding him, and of course, loving him.  And as the pages of the calandar have flipped like an early animation booklet since his arrival, we've been too preoccupied with the fascinating growth and development of our little guy to think about much else.

It doesn't even have walls!!!

Unfortunately for us, we are not in a position to be supported by my salary alone. I've devised a plan that would slash our budget to mere necessities, and perhaps slash a few of those as well, but I haven’t been able to sell her on it. (How much plasma do I acturally need anyway?). And since I’m not about to start unplying toilet paper, mom will trudge back to the classroom in a week and a half while our son will head to....day care. 

I've been pushing the date from my mind since his birth, pretending that it would never actually come. But time is a stubborn thing, and like an appointment for a root canal, the impending date lurks on that mean old calendar.

We've come up with crazy scenarios, one involving my wife bringing him to school. Just showing up ready to teach with our son strapped to her chest. This may work, until she whips out a breast at lunchtime to feed him while second graders stare, mouths agape while sitting at their desks.

As you can imagine, this will be extremely hard for her.  She is not sure she will be able handle dropping him off.  She is playing the lottery lately, hoping and praying for a miracle. 

I’m sure this is a common issue for all working families, but it sure doesn’t feel very common for uh…her.  She worries that her son will bond with his sitter, forgetting mom and dad all together.  It will be tough for her to let go, she is dreading it.

On the bright side, it will only be for six weeks and then he’ll be home all summer.  But come fall and we'll have to do it again...