Mancation 2008

This weekend is Sam's annual "mancation" event, the activities made all the more unspeakably masculine by the addition of a deep-fryer and the vow to consume only deep-fried foods over their three days together.  When mancation happened last year, I flew to Nashville and lived it up with Clare (oh yeah, we hit all the biggies--Target, Starbucks . . .).  This year, I've got my little buddy in tow, and though I was sorely tempted to get us up to Connecticut to see little Sinjin--who is tied with my new nephew Dominic for cutest boy baby ever--Allison Clare's travel etiquette being what it is these days, we stayed at home.

It's been nice, actually.  Yesterday was a little happy-hour style event on campus, and I toted AC along in her sling. She really loved it--she was bouncing up and down with excitement at seeing everyone.  She's getting more active--and defying my expectations, she appears to be about to crawl after all (she had shown so little interest that I'd expected her to just take off walking one day, since she much prefers standing to tummy time).  In fact, I purposely didn't put her down much for crawling practice today because if she managed it for the first time while he was away, Sam would be so disappointed.  Today we got a ton of errands and chores done in record time, and then went out to get dinner with another friend and her sons, as her husband happens to be on a mancation of his own.

So it's been quiet and productive and relaxing--perfect, and yet it's shown me how accustomed I've become to having Sam around.  Maybe that's totally unremarkable to those of you who have been married for a while, but to me, the process of habituation seems funny.  I'm doing things I would ordinarily consider to be a treat, like pushing all the war movies down the Netflix queue, and ordering all Grey's Anatomy for the weekend.  And making decaf in the coffee pot, and cooking huge amounts of spaghetti (Sam likes a variety of foods, while I would happily eat Italian food every single day), and not finding the sink periodically full of glasses.  And Allison Clare has been very easy these two days, so it hasn't been hard to take care of her. 

But I still miss Sam.  After AC went to bed, it felt weird to have the television all to myself, and not have to sit through the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and the actual news before getting to watch something soap-operatic like Brothers & Sisters.  Even though Sam is often upstairs working while I'm downstairs grading or reading for class or watching TV, just knowing that he wasn't there, the whole house felt so empty and quiet and sort of adrift somehow.  Having a husband is a lot of extra work, but it also makes all of the work worthwhile.