In celebration of finishing 97% of a challenging semester on time, Grant is backpacking with two friends in Ventana Wilderness (near Big Sur, California) for a week. Yes, I’m a little jealous since it was a last minute trip that I couldn’t go on because I have this thing I do called work. Yes, it was sad when I showed Esther, the daughter of the friend who invited Grant on the trip but who is actually our age and hopefully will become our friend too, how to use her water filter. Yes it is also sad that my hiking pants, which Esther is borrowing, will have fun without me. But how could I say no? This is the last summer of fun for Grant. Come September, Grant signs the next 12 months of his life away to CPE at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in SF. And then the working scales of our family will be more balanced.

So I’m home alone for the week. Night #1 was very restless for the first 2 hours and I woke up tired. I muscled through a day at school, but was angry and my students felt it. I then did what I was dreaming about doing over the weekend: I called for a substitute so I could take tomorrow off. I’m just exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping well, even when Grant was next to me. My nose has uncontrollable sneezing and mucus flow only at night. Tomorrow will be a much needed day of rest. Looking ahead at the calendar, it is really the only day I can take until the school year is done (15 school days… 17 including staff days)  

What else am I doing with my time alone? Obviously I’m updating my blog. I’m going to clean parts of the apartment including the mold that is starting to grow around the bedroom window (could that be related to my sneezing? Doctor’s appointment scheduled for June 8^th to find out). I’m going to take control of the alarm clock and sleep on my side of the bed. I’m going to a yoga class and a Pilates class. I’ll probably have dinner with friends. I’m going to try that meditation and journaling thing that I’ve been promising myself that I would start doing for months. I’m even going to paint a 2' x 4' section of a wall in the living room. White.    

On the bright and romantic side of all of this, Grant planned ahead and wrote me a love note for every day that I wouldn’t see him. I have specific instructions as to which note to read on each day. So far I’ve been honest and have only read the note for Monday. He also insisted that we make a huge pan of lasagna on Sunday morning before he left so that I wouldn’t be stuck eating macaroni and cheese all week. It is incredibly yummy lasagna, as always, but I’m still going to have mac n cheese at least once this week.