A Vacation from the Vacation

That's what I need. Even though I did several loads of laundry on our trip (thank-you, sister dear, for loaning your machine, and, of course, the Embassy Suites free-wine-fiesta is quite amenable to waiting for the laundry to be done!), it has piled up again. Where did it come from? It was all done before we left, and we came back with only the dirty clothes from 2 days of travel. But, here I sit staring at 3 or 4 baskets (now clean) and another two (still to be washed).

Enter Halloween. I thought I had two weeks after we got home from an eight-day trip to California. Nope. Cub Scout party, this Saturday. Happy, happy, joy, joy. My husband e-mailed me from work yesterday to remind me (and, yes, I should have known, since I do the Cub Scout newsletter, so stupid on me). Luckily, or so I thought, I had the stuff already--my son and I bought the materials Sunday when we went on a mall trip. But, then the trouble starts. My husband and son have apparently totally redesigned the costume, against my better wishes. Several dozen e-mails have gone back and forth between yesterday and today, as well as some quite livid in-person conversation last night (which ended with me declaring that, as I was in the process of leaving the house for choir for the evening, they could do what they wanted, but leave me out of it). Then, when I got home, they couldn't find this, and this isn't working, and could I just...sigh. So, more e-mail this morning, and sarcastic words and then nice words. And, we've worked it out.

We started e-mailing each other years ago (the Navy is kind of a hurry-up-and-wait workplace, with massive lulls in between the gotta-do-it-yesterdays, so we'd e-mail to chat back and forth), but, since having the third child and realizing that we either (a) got so busy that we forgot to talk about things in the evening that needed to be discussed or (b) were so tired by the time the kids went to bed that we got nowhere, it's really become a useful tool. My husband is funny, too, because, unlike the stereotypical wife bothering her husband at work with trivialities, most of the time he starts the conversation ("By the way, don't forget that we have_______"...of course, half the time, I didn't know in the first place, but that's another topic!). For two introverts who are of the type to need to think a little bit between volleys, it's helpful, too. Or, sometimes it's as simple as a stream-of-consciousness "Help me remember to talk to you about _______ tonight" (although, I usually send those to his home e-mail, so he sees it when he's checking it while I'm making dinner). And, if there's a sticky issue (money, kid behavior problems, our-parent issues, etc.), we can work it out without the kids around to hear it (particularly with a twelve year old now staying up until 10 pm), which is better for them, too. In the end, even though it's probably an odd way to handle it, I'm glad we've discovered it.

And that's my Silver Lining for today.