hola, isabel

I’ve had the last 4 days off from work. And before that, I had another 4 day weekend. I go back to work tomorrow. I should be enjoying this time off today. But I’m not. I’m dreading tomorrow morning. I know that I won’t get another Holiday until Memorial Day. Which is in MAY. That’s like 5 months away. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it that long working 5 days a week away from home, waking up at 5:00 am, walking to and from Babboo’s school, ironing my work clothes, putting on make-up, wearing heels, and having to talk to real-live adults all day long (let’s not even mention the butt-loads of work that I have to do).

I like my job. I do. I really do. I work with cool people. I’m working on an interesting project right now. I’m learning new things. I just got a (tiny) raise. My commute rocks. (Does a 5 minute walk count as a “commute”?) But still, it’s hard. It’s hard to be away from home all day. It’s hard to only have a few hours with my Sweet Babboo each night. It’s even harder to only see The King for maybe an hour a day. Maybe.

I know I’ve talked about the roles The King and I play in our lives before. I’m sick of talking about how hard we both work. I mean, all of us here work hard. It’s just life.

This weekend I spent some time with my friend Maurn. She has a one year old little boy. She’s a working Mom. We’re a lot alike. She told me this weekend she’s quitting her job. She’s going to stay at home with her little guy. Great. Except that she’s the only one working in her family. Her husband is a full time college student. Maurn is the bread winner. And a good one at that. I don’t get it. How come she doesn’t have to work? Who’s going to pay their bills? And on top of that, she said something to me that made me…think.

Her husband has been remodeling their tiny bathroom since September. So that’s almost 4 months. And she’s not liking it. He never seems to find the time to work on it. She had to pee in the tub for a while. And poop in a bucket that her husband would dispose of in their backyard. It wasn’t pretty. Maurn was telling me how sick of this remodel she is. I think this was the time she realized that we’re doing our own remodel. Except instead of remodeling a tiny bathroom we decided to just tear down an existing house and build an entirely new house from scratch. And not only did we decide to do this, but The King decided to do all the work himself. In his spare time, while working full time at his regular job (which has nothing to do with construction. He’s never worked in any type of construction field). While we live in a one bedroom apartment so we can afford to pay for all of this. Oh, and demo of the old house began the week Babboo was born.

Oh crap, I haven’t even mentioned what Maurn said to me that got me…thinking. She told me that she didn’t know how we were doing all of this. She told me that if it were her and her husband doing our house project, they would have been divorced long ago.

Divorced. Really?

Maurn said that she couldn’t do what we do. But I don’t think that’s true. I mean, this is life. Our life. This is what we do. We deal with things. And it’s only temporary. I mean, I won’t be living in this one bedroom apartment forever. Hopefully not even through another Christmas. By next Christmas I should be living in our brand new house where I will no longer have to wonder where I’m going to put all of our stuff. Instead I’ll be trying to decide which of my 4 bathrooms to pee in.

Four bathrooms!

(You know that when we are living in the new house I’m going to be totally bitching about how I have no free time because all I do is clean my four bathrooms. Geez. I’m so predictable.)

Last night we rocked in the New Year with some other friends of ours. They just moved into a new house and we were anxious to check it out (we hadn’t seen it since before they moved in). They excitedly (and deservedly so) showed us all the improvements they had made to the house. They painted. Yeah. They painted some more. Hooray. They paid someone to paint the outside. Looks good. They were sick of painting. They were happy to be done with the improvements. It was hard work. They were tired. I mean, it took them like a month.

I think my eyes might have glazed over at this point.

They (deservedly so) praised The King for his determination, his dedication, his work ethic. They told him they don’t know how he does it. How he slaves away.

To be fair, The King loves the new house. And he should. He made it. A house. It’s not like when I make a baby hat or something. It’s a house. That he made. Dude, I can’t stress that enough. He did all of this. It’s work that he’s never done. He didn’t spend his summers working in the construction field. He never took a class in college on this. He’s read books and magazine, and talked to people and asked lots of questions.

What am I getting at here?

So while I’m dreading going back to work tomorrow because I’m not through enjoying my days off, The King has spent all of his time off over at the new house. He didn’t get to sleep in late, only to wake up to Babboo gently rubbing my face, telling me “hey Mommy, it’s time to wake up and play!” He didn’t get to hang out with friends during the day and go shopping downtown. He didn’t get to stay in his pajamas until noon, doing laundry and dishes and scrubbing the floors. Nope, he was up before it was light out. He was working in the mud; shoveling dirt until he could no longer feels his arms.

He was building us a house.

So I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself and appreciate that I was able to spend some time with Babboo during my days off. I’m the lucky one.

Thanks baby.