A little mush (get your waders)

I recently spent the weekend alone.

Well, not totally alone, I saw some friends, I worked a day of overtime. But the wife was missing. she had gone to see Disney on Ice, and go to Great America with the Girl Scouts (she is always involved in "Helping Girls Grow Strong"). So, this means I was home alone.

Its a funny thing really. There was a time when I relished the quiet time I had to spend alone. Quiet contemplation, a trip to the beach, or simply finding something to blow up via video game console. All of these things were welcome activities that always seemed like a prize that is often sought after but hardly won.

So the wife left me for a sunnier portion of California. And all of a sudden, I realized it was very quiet at home. I had the weekend to do as I pleased, no one to be there coaching me in one direction or another. I could eat, sleep, travel, clean, read, play, sleep, eat, sleep some more; and all of these things could be accomplished in no particular order. At one point it seemed to me I was going to have a pretty darn good weekend. Now don't get me wrong, I had a nice weekend. I just didn't expect a portion of it.

To say things went wrong would be over dramatizing the point. So what it was, I don 't really know. There were, however, a couple things I noticed right away, that were sorely missing. For example, there was no one to comment on my daily antics. I don't claim to be a comedian, nor do I think I have a stellar catalog of jokes. However, I enjoy making my wife laugh. She gets a rather unique grin, that she dons at no other time. So I go out of my way to make sure I see that smile at least once a day. She does not always care for my methods of producing said smile, but i can assure that it does not involve any amount of physical torture.

Also, I realized how much I value her opinion. We talk often, of many subjects. Work issues, politics, money, plans for the future. We discuss these issues, and my opinion is just as important as hers, and hers just as important as mine. And she usually has a way pointing things out to me, that I somehow miss, making my logic seem all the more sound or ludicrous, depending on the conversation at hand. Whatever the conversation, I simply missed the conversation.

I also do the cooking for us. For those who don't know, the Wife doesn't cook. Its not that she doesn't enjoy cooking, but more to the point she doesn't even know how. I, on the other hand, love cooking. I don' think I do anything particularly fancy, but the food is rarely bad. In fact, its quite good. And I had no one cook for. It was a little sad really.

So I jumbled these thoughts around in my head for a little while. Then I came to this conclusion: While I may enjoy the occasional day off by myself, or the semi-regular girls night out which leaves me home alone for the evening, I don't want to be by myself. And I don't want to be with anyone else. I want to be with the Wife.

Often times, when I tell her I love her, she asks me, "Why?" I usually get a little defensive at this point because I can't think of anything to right off the bat. But where she to ask me right now, I would tell her I love her, simply because she is here and all that it entails.

And that's that.