Absence makes the house grow cleaner...

"Could you possibly put your socks IN the hamper?"

"Can you stop leaving bags of garbage on the decl fo the dog to eat?"

"I emptied the dishwasher last."

"You forgot to take out the recycling AGAIN."

Sadly, these are the types of interactions that have been peppering H's and my interactions over the ast few months. I know this is pretty standard fare in the married world, but it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. This winter had been especially brutal. Not weather-wise, but illness and house-as-disaster-area wise, and H and I were a little worn out. Then he went to Brazil for 6 days.

I had six days of no bickering over chores or childcare. True, that's because I was solely responsible for every single thing in the house from childcare to waste management, but it was two days in when I realized how liberating it was to not feel annoyed. Exhausted, but not annoyed, at least not with any adults I was living with. And when I really thought about it, what the hell were we so annoyed about all the time anyway?

H's work travel is a hassle, and exhausting, bit it also gives us an unexpected gift - perspective. Being in the trenches of mariage and child-rearing can generate a closeness of the not-so-good kind. Where you get tied up in all the minutiae of this life, and forgetting to load the coffeemaker can turn into a heated debate on par with the Darwinists vs. Creationists*, and result in a slow-burning, moral-destroying resentment. With H being away, I see how ridiculously small these issues are in the grand scheme of things, and rather than cursing him for the trail of detritus he leaves in his wake, when he's gone, I get to miss H, the person he is, and how much he brings to my life. And he gets to miss my rigid, control-freak self as well.

Now I'm not saying, upon his return, that all the little shit that usually bothers me magically stopped bothering me, but I've begun stopping to ask myself, "Is this really worth getting worked up about?", and remembering the calm of that week when I wasn't going from zero to sixty on the rage-o-meter over lost dry cleaning tickets.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I say, absence makes the heart more forgiving. Because coupled with that rapier-like wit, is H's inability to see household clutter, and to enjoy one, I must have, and accept the other.

But DAMN is my house neat as a pin when he's gone.

*I think the hardest H has ever made me laugh is when, in a fit of self-flagellation, I was contemplating home schooling the kids and I said there were many websites I could get info from. His reply, "Sure, here's a sample lecture, 'And the Jesus said to the dinosaurs...."