Friday, August 16, 2013

A Silver Lining

My house is empty.  I'm no longer packing pool bags or washing swim suits.  No more picking up or dropping off at friend's homes.  There is no TV blaring with Phineas and Ferb or Good Luck Charlie.  Outside of the 35 minutes of hustle and bustle in the morning, the house is quiet. 

The Hubs upstairs in his office, working away, the dog snoozing on her bed already tuckered out from the morning, and me with my empty calendar.  The first few days like this were blissful.  However, I'm now feeling bored.

Over the summer I had taken the free time to teach the kids some new chores.  Things like emptying the dishwasher, doing laundry, picking up dog poop.  Oh, how they loved it.  While it was nice to have things done by someone other than myself, there were things that would get under my skin.  Just small annoyances.  Things like not being able to find a lid for a Tupperware container.  Or trying to open a drawer, that is usually full of organized cooking utensils, to find that I couldn't open it at all because said utensils were thrown in haphazardly and drawer slammed shut.  Or smelly laundry that should've been taken from the washer and put into the dryer days ago.  Things that happen when kids are just learning how to take care of themselves a little more.  They need gentle correction (and then I would find The Hubs and complain like I had just endured the worst type of injustice.  Don'tkidyourself...He loves it when I do that).

The last few days, though, I have done the dishes.  I'm putting all the utensils away in an orderly fashion.  Lids are put in a place where they are easily found.  Laundry is getting moved into the dryer in a timely fashion.  Okay.  That laundry one was a half-truth.  Whatever.

While my home is empty and quiet for seven hours a day, I'm doing what I can to find a silver lining in missing my kids.


No comments: