a Beer, a Whine and The Spirit

It's Friday night, Hubs and Chanbe are having a shower, I'm drinking a glass of milk, and all is right with the world. As I mentioned 6 days ago, things were going to be better in 6 days. Today they are better. In fact, things are the best they have been in months. Hubs and I are smiling. And not in the strained "we just need to get through the next few months/weeks/days" way we have been smiling this year. We are happy. We are relaxed. We are (almost) ourselves again. And I really can't express how good that feels.

You see, this week has been pretty sh*t. (Sorry, but it has). Hubs has been away in Shepparton for exams since Sunday afternoon, so I have been solo-parenting this whole week, and after this experience, all I can say is that I have even more admiration for full-time single parents. Oh wow. Seriously. It was hard work. Especially since I hate staying at home on my own. But I've known this week was coming for a long time, so I did a lot of mental preparation. I didn't want to spend the whole week anxious and scared, so I started focussing on the positives, and rationalising to myself that there really was nothing to fear.

And you know what? It worked. Chanbe and I actually had a really great week. I made sure I had things to do each day to keep us occupied (including taking a train down to Kilmore to pick up the car and drive it home - turned out the alternator crapped itself and it didn't cost as much as we were thinking. Woo!) and I just really focussed on keeping positive and realistic about my expectations.

Sunday to Wednesday were quite challenging with Chance waking up every night for an hour or so for no particular reason (he probably missed his Dadda) and not having particularly long naps during the day. Wednesday was my mental "hump day" - if I could get to Wednesday without cracking, I could get to Friday. Wednesday was a really great day, with playgroup in the morning and haircuts in the afternoon - one of the mums in my mothers group is my hairdresser so I go to her house and our boys play together while we cut, colour and chat. I was there for over 2 hours and it was so lovely. By the time we got home, it was just about dinner/bath/bed time which was great.

And each night I had something to look forward to - I watched 5 or 6 episodes of Sex and the City every night. It was very decadent. I decided I was going to do 1 load of washing a day, but as far as other housework went, I was giving myself the week off. No pressure, no guilt, no worries. And it really worked for me. By the time Thursday came around, I was on the home stretch and I really enjoyed myself. I topped the week off with a night out with my mothers group where we went out to dinner, had dessert and laughed so hard we got a stitch. It was so therapeutic.

So after my week off from housework and good sleep, I made up for it today. Chanbe went to childcare at 8:30am, I came home and slept from 9:30-12:30, then did housework til Hubs came home at 3. And the hug I got from him when he walked in the door was one of our best hugs ever. We had made it. We had gotten through the toughest time of our marriage to date, and we were on the other side. Damn it's good to be here :-)

Posted by Renae at 6:30 PM Comments