Yes, I DO have a husband!
I write so often about my adventures with my children that I rarely mention that I have a husband. I love him to pieces, and he is a hard worker and great with the kiddos. The reason why I don’t write about him…well…he’s kind of boring and not very interesting to write about.
It is very important that we, as the couple that hold the family together, spend quality time with each other. If we do not put each other first, raising children, especially children with disabilities, would be difficult. We need bonding, relaxing time together, and we manage to get away for at least a night or two every month,
We went away last weekend to a little cabin we have in the woods of New Hampshire last weekend. My dad actually purchased this cabin for us when Steven was only a year old. We knew from his autistic-like behaviors that we were not going to be able to vacation as a family very well at any hotel unless it had padded walls, (which I think I’ve only seen in those motels advertised for sexual adventures!) This cabin is where we have vacationed as a family, swimming in the nearby lake, boating, tubing and water skiing, hiking in the woods, fishing, snowmobiling, making camp fires, and just relaxing as a family. It has served us well through out the years, and my husband and I now use it sometime when we get away. I personally prefer a 5 star hotel, room service and a massage, but that is rarely in our budget…okay the truth is it is NEVER in our budget, so the cabin suffices.
My husband, bless his soul, loves to putter around the place fixing all the little things. Last weekend he cleaned out the crawl space under the house and found lots of dead mice, who ate our mouse poison and didn’t make it out of the basement in time; we need longer acting mouse poison so they can make it home and die in front of their families. My husband also found TERMITES. The house is surrounded by woods with lots of dead trees littering the landscape. WHY would the termites choose our house to eat? It’s not like it is warm in there because there is no heat. Why are they drawn to eat the only thing they shouldn’t eat? I’ve come to the conclusion termites are like children. They won’t eat the huge pile of spaghetti offered to them, but instead want to one by one eat the limited supply of meatballs in the pot. (However,unlike the termites, we won’t kill our children to save the meatballs.)
Without the kiddos with us at the cabin, I was slightly bored! Of course, my husband and I make a lot of time for loving and such, but that still leaves several hours of the day where he is puttering around and I am bored. I am not a good “relaxer”. I usually need to be doing something, (thus the reason I have 5 kids in the first place!) Without cable television, I am forced to…do nothing. I have no hobbies, and I don’t generally like to read books. I have been adverse to reading ever since I started reading a Danielle Steel novel in 1982 and never got to finish it because the kids always needed something and I would have to stop mid-chapter. So, there I was, sitting on the couch, actually feeling a little sorry for myself because I had nothing to do. Then, VOILA! I remember that my youngest daughter had downloaded games on my cell phone! So, there I sat all weekend, playing Scrabble on my phone. It was great! I beat myself 53 times! I was a happy camper!