The children are overwhelmingly exhausting! Most of it is due to our delayed reaction to having Sean out of the house full-time. We all Miss Him Terribly, and some of us can sometimes intellectually realize that it is Probably For The Best, Right Now, but mostly we just get all irritated and mad at each other and have little patience. None of us. Not Fun.

Man.

We’re adjusting. You know, it’s a process. We’ll certainly enjoy the ability to meet our monthly expenses, I’ll tell you what! In my dreams, and perhaps it will be reality soon, Sean will only be gone from us for 20 or so hours a week and otherwise work from home, for the same salary that (or, since I’m dreaming, more!) he is making now. He tells me this could happen, so I hope for the future while I cope with the present.

It’s only since the Industrial Revolution that families are split during the day. Before that the norm was for the family as a whole to be engaged in whatever it was that the family did, be it farming, or baking, or printing, or what-have-you. By and large people lived where they worked too, so they were together, more or less, all the time.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I likes me some fruits of the Industrial Revolution! (This device is quite handy, for instance.) But still, there’s gotta be a better way than wake up, get dressed, eat hurried breakfast, shove kids in carpool, take baby to daycare, dad and mom to work at separate places, kids to school then whatever extracurricular activity du jour they have, 9 or 10 hours later everyone home to eat a reheated frozen Now-With-Home-Made-Taste! thing, kids homework, then watch separate TVs and go to bed. About 30 minutes, maybe an hour of togetherness. Again, Not Fun.

Our way is a better way, but we still Miss Sean Terribly. And we’re certainly not swimming in dough (ha! I kill me!), far from it.

I’m just impossible to please! I want it all. That’ s easy, isn’t it?