My husband and I have been caring for my mom, who recently passed away, and his daughter, who has a mental illness. This weekend, we were alone together in the house for the first time in 4 years! I am still grieving my loss, but I have to say that it was a breath of fresh air to be alone with my hubby. (Stepdaughter was away for the weekend.) We have been caregivers for so long that we were forgetting what it feels like to be a couple! Just piddling around the house, cooking, organizing, watching a video with him, was so healing! Getting back to where we were when we started! Maybe to put it another way, I can exhale this weekend!

that is so wonderful. sometimes it is the little things that mean so very much on the road back to feeling our best. i hope you grabbed every moment but didn't try to fill it with too much planned activity. i know that here in kansas the weather was hot for a few days but right now it is just right. a peaceful breeze lingers outside my window at this very moment. and the birds have come to lounge at my bubbling pond. nothing beats a quiet afternoon just watching nature....except of course...sharing it with someone you love.
i hope you get many more days together.

How great that you had a weekend together after all the care you have been giving for 4 years. I'm glad you enjoyed each other's company simply by doing the little stuff around the house. You had a taste of the empty nest and it sounds like you made the most of it. Hope the memories of the weekend carry you until the next time it happens.

We were discussing this earlier tonight -- we had children in our life since we've been married -- and my son (the one with schizophrenia) never left home -- so when he died it left us alone for the first time in 23 yrs. We had to learn how to be a two-some for the first time in our life together. It was interesting how lost we felt for quite awhile.

It wasn't until our other son moved back in with us for 2 months that we realized how much we had missed being a three-some and yet how much we loved being a two-some.

so cherish the moments like teenagers on a friday night date

and my hat off to you for being one of the few special people in this world that would choose to take care of someone ELSE over having that freedom of not doing so !!!

This post reminds me of how my life is changing.

Our oldest heads off to college soon and the other 2 teens are busy with their friends.

This has left lots of time for my hubby and I to spend together. I am so grateful we tended to our marriage through the years because I truly enjoy his company.

There was a time when the kids were little that we couldn't even go to the bathroom alone. Now we are finding we have the WHOLE HOUSE to ourselves!

Life is full of stages and it seems as though the next one is shortly upon us.

Just trying to make the most of each stage.

Hope you are doing the same!

I am certainly getting a lot of "alone" time lately. Outside of work, it seems that I am spending a lot of time here at home alone. I'm certainly not complaining, because its something I have wished for years. Don't get me wrong, I love my family more than life itself, but sometimes I feel like I'm living their lives more than my own. My family has depended on me for so long that it is assumed that I will always be there to babysit, run errands, and be there to visit whenever they wish. My time to do my computing, painting, housecleaning, and just rest has become a rarity and a "luxury".
Soon, I will be even more pressed to find "me" time, as I will be in school and homework will be another demand on my time. I'm excited and scared at the same time.
In the mean time, I look forward to time spent with my grandkids and my own kids. I try to ride in the truck with Dennis and we still try to keep our Sunday evening "date for dinner".
I'm not trying to whine about this, I really don't mind having a busy life. Sometimes it can even be a convenient excuse to get out of doing something I really don't want to do..."I'm sorry, I can't chair this committee, I dont have time."..lol. Life is so complicated these days. I don't remember being so rushed when I was a child, or even as a young adult. And its my own doing...

Well...I have to say, becauseful what you wish for.... you just might get it... I had been wishing for more time spent with my husband... and then he broke his wrist... and he can't work at his job on light duty because he needs 2 hands for everything... and now that he's home and has totally unstructured time, all the time, he's cranky... doesn't care for any of my suggestions of how we could make the best use of the time together... doesn't want to do anything useful like taking out the garbage... does me a favor once in a while and straightens up a couple of shelves of our videos... other than that, he doesn't hardly move from the bed or the computer chair... whines about how "disabled" he is (to me, he's still got 3/4 of his body, which is about 10 times better than what I've got to work with... Grrrrrrr, I never thought having hubby underfoot would be a royal pain in the rear, but it sure as heck can be... he won't admit that he's depressed, either....

He won't leave the house, except to go to doctor's appointments or to visit one or two of his friends... he won't run any errands for me... he deliberately aggravates and irritates me, then he wants to get cuddly....

Well, I love him to death, but right now I'd kind of like to throttle him.

Hey, I'd know what to do with a cranky toddler on a rainy day (I still have crayons and colored pencils in the house, believe it or not!), but I can't seem to make things tolerable for the two of us. I've tried cooking extra nice things as I'm able to do so, but he claims he's just not hungry!

I can't wait for that freakin' cast to come off his arm so he can return to his normally moody self!

Anyway, thanks for letting me vent, Ladies!

Love,
Lil, the not-overly-patient

urgg, when does the cast come off?

Well, they change the thing about every two weeks, so his skin gets a bit of a break. His outslook on life has improved somewhat, so he's behaving himself better. One thing that actually seems to help? Playing with our neighbor kids! I don't have nearly as much patience or energy with them...but he just loves hanging out with them. And he's the *last* person I would ever suspect of wanting to babysit! Well, there's a big difference between being friends with a kid and able to send him home, and having a young offspring that you can't get away from!

So on Tuesday, they remove the old cast, X-ray the bone yet again to make sure it's doing what it should be doing, and then they put a slightly shorter, slightly more comfortable cast on him. That always helps his outlook, knowing that his arm is getting better and it's not the same old same old. He will be a couple of step closer to going back to work, too, and that will give him something to look forward to, even though he usually comes home from the dr with an aching arm. So he's getting better... and *we're* getting better together, too!

It's just hard for a person like me, with chronic pain and such, to hear him whine! But we're adujsting, finally, and soon this whole couple of months will be something we look back at and laugh about! Can't hardly wait!

Love,
Lil