My Wife Has Left Us.*

The bad news is my wife has left us*.

















* The good news is it is for only 3 weeks!

Although we have had our share of marital discord, fortunately, we are not at that state of permanent leaving. (At least I hope not!)

My wife took a gig teaching at a new business school in Barcelona Spain for 3 weeks.  The school is Harbour Space , a new European university, and she's teaching her expertise- digital marketing.  It was a great opportunity for her, and I encouraged her to do it.  (As she would encourage me to take a great gig, should it arrive.)

She flew out yesterday and arrived today.

They are so cool they don't have a logo, but a video backdrop!

This will be the longest that she's been apart from us (or me) in 8 years certainly, but maybe all 13 years of our history. ( I may have gone on tour for 3 weeks during one of those years, so maybe I was away longer.  )  It's still a long time to be away.

And it is a long time to be a single dad.

I think it will be either a very quick 3 weeks or a very long 3 weeks, and it all kind of depends on how stuff goes. I don't anticipate many problems, as I do most of the everyday care-giving now.

 But problems happen,  emergencies occur, and sh-t goes down. I am sure there will be some moments when my son will bug me beyond belief, and I'll be wishing for a couple of moments to myself.  Or when I will need her cool-headed advice about some thorny parenting problem.  Or when my son injures himself and cries out for his momma and she isn't there. Or when I haven't gotten all the things done I want to get done, who will I blame?   Or when I need her loving embrace around my throb---  this is a family blog! 

Oh my God, how will I ever survive!

* Please note the asterisk on the title.

I think it will be fine.  When I dropped her off at the airport, he was crying and crying.  But it only lasted about two minutes.  By the time we left the airport, we were over the crying which is exactly where we should have been.  Today, we facetimed from her sweet little apartment on the Barcelona Ramblas, and he was excited for about a minute, and then left to read his book.  I think the boy will be fine! And so will I.

Like anything, it's a step at a time.  We are planning extra play dates, extra time with local family members, some fun movie time, some fun theatre time, and some special dad time. And some time in just doing what we do- it will be an object lesson in how you can't have everything you want whenever you want it.  Because that's the fact of life.  It will work out.  We will survive.

If you've got some extra-special single dad tips, please post them in the comments.

The joys of having a child: Wife's Away Edition.

My wife was out of town for 2 nights this past week (a business trip to lovely San Diego) That left me as a single parent for most of the weekend.  Well, a solo parent.  Single has a different connotation!

We had a very busy time, like most days, I guess, only more so.  While she was out of town, we....

• Dealt with some crying.  He left his lunchbox at school by mistake, and when he got on the bus he was literally crying about it.  I'm sure that wasn't actually it, but just the trigger.  I think that his mom going away for a couple of days had something to do it.  And being hungry.  And being a sensitive bear. Fortunately, we have an alternative lunchbox.  And I had a small package of M&M's that I was holding for just such a circumstance.  Ah, the power of sugar.

• Went to gymnastics.  He has been taking gymnastics twice a week, which he loves, but we are about to cut it down to once a week, because baseball is going to start in May, and you can't be in two places at the same time.

• Ate at his favorite restaurant.  Yes, I succumbed to McDonald's after school.  He loves their nuggets, although I secretly feel he just loves getting a toy with his meal.  Still, he ate 6 nuggets, all of his yogurt, his chocolate milk, and about half of his fries, so that wasn't bad at all for a picky non-eating boy.  I managed to get away with just a mango smoothie, so not so bad.  And on Saturday, he got to have his favorite breakfast (donuts!)  It's possible I am buying my son's love with food.  Is that wrong?

• Practiced piano.  I made a tactical error, and nearly lost his piano time (even so, we are now 30 minutes earlier.) He needs to learn to practice every day. I just have to figure out how I can get him to practice without me having to lead the practice. I don't want to play the piano.  (Well, actually I do, but I don't want to practice either!)

• Went to a play.  I led a group of Dad's to the show Elephant and Piggie's We Are In A Musical! at the Emerald City Theatre.  You can read more about the show here, where I wrote about it last week.  The show was great, although it skewed for slightly younger audiences.  He felt it was a little babyish for him (he loved the opening which involved a number of farce-like entrances and exits and he was enthralled by a lot of the physical comedy.) Most of the kids who came with Dad's were in the 3-5 range (he's 6.)  It was still a lot of fun for everybody, and if you've got a kid under 5 who likes the Mo Willem creations, they will LOVE IT!

• Finished Daredevil.  I have been watching at night, and with my wife away, I got to power-binge watch the shows.  (She is not a big comic book fan.)  They were great!  Very dark, and very true to the spirit of the early 1980's Daredevil comics. I highly recommend it if you like that kind of thing (and you like your hero's gritty and beat up.)

•Ate at one of my favorite restaurants.  Hey, even dad's get to choose sometimes. We went to Bop-n-Grill, which isy a Korean infused hamburger place.  the Umami burger is outstanding.  I showed some self-restraint and did not order the Kim Chee Fries.  Instead I ate his kimchee (which he would never eat, not even if you paid him)

• Got Buddy Every week at school, a kid gets to take the class mascot home with them and have some adventures.  The mascot is Buddy, a very cute stuffed dog animal. Kids take pictures, write stories, make him costumes, and do various other things.  We took Buddy to the theatre, fed him a donut (he didn't eat much, AA had to eat his share too)


• Hung out.  The most delicious thing about having a child is hanging out with them.  We read, we talked about things, about the way the world works, about the upcoming shipment of Disney Infinity figures we were going to get, about his upcoming sleepover with his school friend, about all the inventions he is going to invent and the amazing things they will be able to do and how amazing Minecraft is and a number of other topics that floated to the top of his head as fast as his tongue could speak them.  It's tired-making, having a child, but it's also the best thing I've ever done.  It's simply amazing.

This doesn't count what we did when my wife came home including hosting a sleepover party for two young boys, going to the Chicago Parents Play Date, having dinner with my in-laws, and finding/printing over 30 images of Disney Parks rides for an upcoming school project.