It's Like a Vacation

The changes in MM's company are finally hitting home. MM has been moved from the nice, warm, safe office back out to the oil rig. In theory, it's only temporary. Some are saying six weeks, some are saying a few months. They've said they want him back in the office as soon as possible, but who knows. We won't hold our breath.

It's considered a demotion - everyone is being bumped down a few notches, and if you're on one of the lower rungs, you're just plain laid off. The funny thing is, MM actually took a pay cut to take his promotion, so he's going to be making more money now. That's good. The bad part is he'll be back to doing a dangerous job again. Being in danger of heavy machinery tearing you to pieces sucks ass.*

The other good thing is that he's going to be working a camp job. He'll be doing a seven day on, seven day off rotation. I have been trying to persuade him to do this for a few years now. He's always worked a crazy schedule, I thought it'd be nice to have him home for seven days in a row. I thought of all the family things we could do, how much time he could spend with us. MM just didn't want to be gone for a week at a time. He wanted to sleep in his own bed, rather than in a bunkhouse with a bunch of roughnecks. Go figure.

He had some choices on where to go, and he opted to try out the camp job instead of a 12 on/4 off schedule. And me? Well, I'm doing a happy dance.

First of all, for one whole week at a time, I'll sleep in peace. No fighting for pillows or blankets. No getting assaulted in the night by flailing limbs. No complaints about what time I go to bed or what channel I want to watch.

Second, we won't have any junk food in the house for a week at a time. I won't have to exercise nearly as much self-control, because I just won't buy the stuff that's not healthy. This is going to make eating better so much easier for me. And MM can eat whatever the hell he wants while he's gone - no more arguing about whether or not I bought anything 'for him' when I shop. Because, no, apparently he cannot just eat a friggin' piece of fruit. Yes, he will die a thousand horrible deaths if he ingests something green.

And third, the most important reason of all, for two weeks out of every four, my husband will be home with nothing to do. He'll be able to hang out with us, we'll be able to go to movies in the middle of the day, we can go to the drive-in again, we can go to the park, we can go out of town together (if we ever sell our house and have money to travel again), we'll have the time to do more stuff. All those things we hate to do on the weekends when it's crowded - we can go back to doing them again. MM and BW can go golfing or fly RC planes or a million other things that they don't get around to doing over the weekend. We'll have a ton of family time together, and that is priceless.

Some of my friends can't stand the thought of being away from their husbands for any length of time, let alone six months out of the year. I think that's sweet, I really do. But I just don't feel that way. Living with another person can be frustrating and annoying. As much as I love my husband, I sometimes think that owning a duplex would be really, really awesome. Or maybe something with a connecting tunnel? I would totally be down with that. We'd have our own space to keep however we wanted, plus, you know, there would be a tunnel. I've always wanted a house with either a tunnel or a moat. Since we can't afford any of those options (and if we had a moat, the neighbors would think us odd), I think this will work out quite nicely.

Of course, all this is effective immediately, so his birthday, our anniversary? He'll be celebrating them by sleeping with a bunch of guys he's just met. Not very romantic at all, unless you're into gay porn. He may be doing some celebrating in a way that hadn't occurred to me, for all I know....

*My uncle has worked on or around oil rigs most of his adult life. His only words of advice to MM when he started this career were 'don't put your hands anywhere you wouldn't put your pecker'. Considering how many three fingered roughnecks we've met, I'd say that's a pretty sound piece of advice.