Independent Woman

“All the women who’re independent, throw your panties at me”
A friend’s version of “Independent Women”

So, husband-dear was away for almost five days this weekend, visiting his grandmother in Indiana. Grandma B, by the way, seems to be “holding her own” to use another age-old euphemism. As Wednesday and the following days progressed, she seemed to actually be making small recoveries each day. It was an extreme relief for everyone in the family.

Anyway, you would think that, once the news came that Grandma B was doing better, I reveled in four days of husband-free me-time, and that I did things like take long baths, blog endlessly, rent girl movies, and drink lots of tea with friends. That’s what I thought I was going to do too. The operational word here is “think”, because what did I do during those four days? I cleaned. Yes, you read that right. I cleaned and scrubbed and scoured, and generally just wore myself out. In fact, I told my husband that had he stayed away for another few days, I would have probably put a good dent in our plans to paint our bedroom, our living room, and our office.

What happened, you may ask. Well, I’m not sure myself. I remember how in years gone by I used to spend those weekends husband-dear was away, playing war in some frost-covered field with all of his GI Joe buddies, or practicing his sandbagging-laying skills, or doing whatever else it is men in uniform do when they’re away from home, and it did not involve anything near a mop or a broom. I used to sleep late, dance around the house to the music only I liked, go out and watch very odd indy films, and manage to eat not one healthy meal the whole weekend. There have been many occasions when I would think back to those wonderful refreshing weekends, and wish for just one more so I could truly unwind. But this past weekend, it was just not the same.

For one thing, I was just plain busy. Instead of having the luxury of having husband-dear do our groceries while I clean up around the house, and on Saturdays having one of us run the kids to their music lesson while the other one takes Zoe to her class at PetSmart, and sharing responsibilities such as the laundry and cooking, I now had to juggle all those things by myself. That’s when you just stop enjoying the business of your weekend, and it becomes all about efficiency and “getting ‘r done”. I have to admit that there were some moments in the DixieChick household this weekend when there was not a whole lot of love going around. On the upside, I don't think Zoe will ever again have the courage to go through our pile of firewood, chew up half a log and then it into our house.

And funny enough, even though I love to gripe about life with a man from time to time (I mean, what is up with leaving socks everywhere?!), it was just no fun without husband-dear around. A painful confession for a semi-feminist who spent years living by herself and was fairly happy about it. I had a hard time thinking of things to do, especially in the evenings. Once you’re used to sharing most of the things you do, what fun is there in doing them by yourself? There was that, and of course the fact that this town I live in, is absolutely not set up for the single young urban professional. There are no independent film houses, no coffeeshops, not even a really good bookstore. So what is a women by herself, who has already gone to Walmart that day, to do? Go to Walmart again? Exactly. And hence the cleaning spree. Whenever I got antsy, I would find something else to clean. And judging by the fact that now even our garage is cobweb-free, I got antsy a lot. The love of my life was pondering if he had joined the army and would have had to go on those horrid 15-months deployments, I would actually resort to painting the outside of the house, or screening in the backporch, and I told him I probably would.

Fortunately, husband-dear returned on Sunday. It was wonderful. And I would love to tell you that it lasted for about a day, but it didn’t. I’m sorry. My days of semi-feminist weekends are apparently over.