My husband slapped his alarm off at 5:30 am and crawled out of bed. I burrowed back under the blankets, exhausted from a night of horrible dreams and apnea-interrupted breathing. At 7:30, I reluctantly gave up trying to sleep and stood balanced on the balls of my feet in the kitchen, dreams about garter snakes loose on the linoleum keeping me leery and unwilling to stand flat-footed for some reason.

Two weeks ago, he was in Rhode Island for business. This week it was Massachusetts and Connecticut. And maybe New Hampshire? In the early days of our marriage, I always knew where he was at any given time. Now, I'm like, see you Thursday? What time does your flight land again?

In between these two trips, we shoehorned our annual camping trip. Next week I'm off to NYC. This weekend, we'll be taking the kids to an amusement park. I know there are people who are constantly on the go like this all the time, to which I say OMG WHY. GO TAKE A NAP.

Anyway, when he travels, I sleep with my cell phone on my bedside table because I figure if there is a problem, he'll call that number instead of the house line to avoid waking the kids. He never does call in the middle of the night, but I like to be prepared.

At 3:30 yesterday morning, a text came in. I woke up, and saw that he was letting me know he was boarding his flight, and it felt like the middle of the night for him. I texted back that it IS the middle of the night and made a few more snarky observations and then went face down on the mattress once again. He did it again at 5:30, and I tried to ignore it, but my phone kept chirping.

I finally got up. No point in sleeping when your man keeps texting just to say "on a plane!"

He got home around 1pm our time, I think. Maybe it was 2pm. I was still tiptoeing into the kitchen, sure I'd see snakes. (No snakes, thank goodness.)

When I knocked off work at 5, we took the kids to the pool for a couple hours, and then hit up a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. The restaurant had the X-Games on, and we discovered that is it just as much fun to
critique skateboarders as it is to be all judgy about olympic divers and gymnasts.

Back at home, we all collapsed in bed early. More crazy dreams last night - my psyche must be pretzel-shaped.