Took spouse to the airport yesterday to depart on her three-week girlfriend's vacation. (She swears she's coming back.) I'm not yet at liberty to disclose her itinerary but that's not as relevant as the purpose for the trip. This is a big step for her because she finds it difficult to give herself permission to travel for personal reasons. After 25 years of traveling for official Navy business or volunteer organizations or college searches or family reunions, this is the first time she's traveling... because she wants to. She finds it difficult to imagine what it'd be like to travel just for fun & shopping, but by the time she returns she should have this empty-nester luxury down pat. Did I already mention that she swears she's coming back?
During the next three weeks I'm supposed to be the CDO and senior supervisory watch stationed for:
- teaching a teenager to drive a stick shift (the second attempt; this time she swears she's going to learn how to do it),
- the senior prom (no drama or angst here!),
- coping with the unsympathetic authoritarian oblivious math teacher (no drama or angst here either),
- studying for the AP exams in physics, English literature, and probability/statistics,
- preps for the "Project Grad" senior party.
I spent the rest of the morning shopping for water heater anode rods. Turns out they're harder to find than I expected, and they were at our local Inter-Island Solar Supply. (It's not just for photovoltaics anymore.) OK, OK, I also bought her Mother's Day gift-- believe it or not, new hubcaps for her 13-year-old car. Yes that's what she wants. Of course there may be an additional gift or two that she didn't know she wanted.
Today I'm looking forward to helping a friend clear their jammed disposal. The electric motor tries to turn the blades but it just hums, and the drain line is clogged nearly solid. These people are not what you would call the most maintenance-aware tenants so this exploratory surgery may be impressive even by submarine-force standards. Big buckets, pipe-cleaning brushes, Ford wrenches, C4, HAZMAT packaging... should be lotsa fun.
Funny thing is...the men teared up and had difficulty speaking...this was something I did not expect.
Maybe there's another woman at the PD who'd be willing to wear your avatar's leather boots?