So my husband thinks he is retiring soon. Well, I guess he KNOWS he is, since he gave his notice, set up his retirement, and is starting to clean out his office. He might not be calling my bluff after all.
I'm trying to look at the positive, glass-half-full side of this. He's a cleaner, former bakery owner, absolutely wonderful cook and all-around handy-man, which will make my life outside of work soooooooooo much easier. In a sense, I'm getting a wife!
I think back to my years growing-up. My dad came home from work and supper was in the oven, the house was clean, his clothes were pressed, the screen door previously ripped apart by my younger brothers, now repaired by mom as if nothing at all happened during the day. This, THIS was what I'd now be walking in to after work.
Which is what I'd always imagined my grown-up-let's-pretend life to be. Only I was the one at home, not the one walking in the house at dinnertime, pretending total exhaustion. Still... my fairytale (in a sense) was coming true at last!
Yes, sure, we don't have kids at home anymore, there won't be the day-to-day drudgery and exhaustion of endless cleaning up after little ones, stirring a pot of chili with one hand while burping a baby with another and having a toddler hanging from one leg while the other foot is mopping spilled milk from the floor with a paper towel...
And, he won't have the sleep-deprived nights of catapulting yourself out of bed sixteen times each night where you scurry down the hall to try and quiet the screaming baby before it wakes up every animal in the woods within a three mile radius, and then spend each day walking around like Sleepy from Snow White, eyes with bags the size of a shark's jaw, butt dragging like a turtle's tail, and functioning with the memory of a 1979 computer...
More than likely he won't be meeting me at the door with my slippers, newspaper folded up, cracking a beer open for me (if there are any left from his day supply) and hovering over my every-anticipated need from my "hard day at work"...
In fact, there's a good chance he won't even be home when I'm done with work for the day. After all, most of his friends are already retired, which means there are fish needing to be caught, wild game to be hunted, clay pigeons to shoot, cards to be played, vacation spots to "scope out", four-wheelers begging to be ridden...
Um, so yes, okay, maybe a few things could possibly be different than the vision I'm having. But other than that... I'm getting a "wife"!
