Back to School**, 08/06/2003

The DearHusband returned to work today. His school starts in a week and they have a week of in-service (read: boring meetings) and getting set-up (read: scavenging equipment, supplies and furniture) for the hordes of sweaty, hormonal, mouthy teenagers to come back to this hollowed place of higher learning. This year the DH is going to run the In House Suspension Program. The principal (who looks like a kid to me) called earlier this summer and asked whether the DH would consider running the IHS instead of returning to the regular classroom as a teacher. I suspect the principal has plans for the DH which go beyond the simple keep the 7 or 8 rowdies in line and isolated from their peers so they are motivated to return to the general population and behave. Not bad stuff mind you, just different stuff. Since this is a new charter high school they don't, or didn't last the DH heard, have a vice-principal and I suspect the DH may be in line to fill that void without the commersate raise in pay.

I'm trying to not be a baby about the DearHusband going back to work.

I know that everyday couples kiss good-bye in the driveway. They get into their respective cars, minivans and SUVs, load the kids up and go off to work where they spend 10-12 hours a day toiling at their jobs. I know they do laundry on the weekends and late at night after the children have been fed and done their homework and have had their bath and story. They wash the dirty dinner dishes and sweep the carpets and clean the toilets in the wee hours before falling into a stupor in order to get up the next day and do it all again. I do it too, dammit but these last couple of months have been nice.

I've not run out of clean underwear in weeks. We've not had to run a late night load of laundry because the GirlChild had to have a particular, pick one, shirt, pair of shorts or jumper clean for the next day. The house has stayed reasonably neat so that company could drop by unexpectedly and I wouldn't feel red with shame at the way my house looks. We've gone to the drive-in and stayed up late because we could get to bed early the next night. We've gone to the mall to mall-crawl simply because we could. We've gone to the zoo to eat lunch together because I don't have to run to the Super-Target or the credit union or the grocery store for that item I forgot on my weekend of errand running frenzy which occupies my time when the DearHusband and I both work full time.

I know it's just the way it is, but I wish it wasn't.

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After I started this rant, but before I finished it, I learned we've been given a reprieve, of sorts. The DearHusband will still have to go back to work but will only work this week, then have a week to 10 days off and go back again the week before Labor Day with the students returning 9/2/2003!