My guy left for West Virginia yesterday for a farrier clinic on limb length disparity.  He’ll be gone for several days, listening to lectures and…I don’t actually know…but other stuff.

He’s pretty excited about it.  My feelings are somewhat mixed.  I’ll miss him of course.  It’s weird when he’s gone.  It’s especially weird at bedtime when I find myself unsure of where to sleep.  On my side?  On his side?  In the middle?  The bed feels empty, and I always end up staying up too late.  Not sure why…  Also, whenever he goes on long trips like this and doesn’t require the shoeing trailer, he tends to take my fuel-efficient Jetta and leave me the gas guzzling truck.  Totally makes sense, but I will miss my heated seats, fuel efficiency, and ease of parking.

On the other hand, I almost always get more done when he’s not home.  It’s the same for him.  (Last year, I left on business for a week and a half; he had the front of the house completely redone before I got back.)  I have a ton of grading to finish up before student conferences next week.  I suppose I should start packing up the house as well.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hate packing.  I hate it even more knowing that I will barely have our things in place in the guest house before needing to do it all again to move into the big house.

Being married to Jeremiah, I have sort of gotten used to being alone a fair amount.  When we were first married, he was a full-time fire officer.  He almost always worked nights and slept days, and, with my job getting me home after 6:00 most days, we would sometimes go nearly a week without seeing each other.

He left the fire service last year to spend more time focusing on his farrier work and go back to school.  I see him more now, but we still have the sort of relationship that has to work around both of us working two jobs (he works part-time as an aircraft broker and near full-time as a farrier; I work near full-time as an aircraft broker and part-time as an adjunct professor…oh, and he’s back in school).  Sometimes I go on shoeing trips with him.  I hold horses or chat with clients…or sometimes I just sit in the rig and read or grade.

Luckily though, I’m the sort of person who likes being alone occasionally.  When I’m feeling really stressed, which has admittedly been pretty often lately with all that’s going on in our lives, I can usually fix it with a really good book and some time alone.  Llamas help too, as do most of my critters.  The great thing about having animals is that their expectations of you can easily be met.  When I go out in the evenings to take care of the big critters, I walk the pastures, fill water troughs and buckets, throw some hay…and they are content and ask nothing more of me…ok, well, maybe some corn.  Corn is good. 

People aren’t always that simple.

I’m planning to spend the next few days decompressing.  Maybe I’ll get my horses cleaned up and undirtied (yup, that’s a word…), which should last all of three minutes with the mud we’ve had.  Maybe I’ll play with one of the rescue llamas I hope to show this year (more on that later).  Maybe I’ll run or hike with one of my dogs…or maybe I’ll take the advice of agirlandherchickens and go running with one of my horses.  Either way, I think I’ll let the creatures in my life do what they do best.

Hard to not smile just thinking about it…