Send them to work

We had two dates last weekend.  Friday night Emilie and Skyler came and stayed at the house while we had an amazing super at Market Bistro (http://www.marketbistrobangor.com/) .  Then Saturday Matt and Ange took our kids OVERNIGHT.  It would be impossible to sum up what this time means to us.  Instead I will just say to our wonderful friends: THANK YOU.

I told Sandi today how nice it would be if we could just spend our days like this: take the kids to school, go to the gym/for a run/hike/bike, shower and have lunch together and then spend the afternoon (which would miraculously consist of 5 more uninterrupted hours) working in companionable silence- me writing and her studying. 

We looked at each other for a moment. 

"How would we make money?"  She asked.

"We could send our kids out to work,"  I suggested.

"Hmmmm.... Ella could work as a fashion designer and Maya....we could send her to the circus!"


I don't know if I have mentioned that Sandi is going to be starting graduate school full-time in the fall.  She is (and, consequently so are the rest of us) embarking on a 27 month course in nurse anesthesia.  When she graduates (or when they just tell her she's free to go) she will be a CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) and will be responsible for putting people to "sleep" when they have surgery (and ideally also "waking" them back up.)  It means a better work schedule, less or no holidays and only some on-call weekends, better pay, more autonomy and  less physically taxing work.

As a pre-requisite to starting the program in the fall, she needs to complete a biochemistry course.  So that means in addition to everything else (her three 12-hour shifts a week, my part-time massage practice, my training for a marathon and, oh yeah, the two kids) she needs 10 hours a week to study right now. 

And, yes, it also means that one of us is getting smarter by the day and the other of us is losing brain cells at an alarming rate being at home with kids.  (Can you guess which is which?)

Sandi will be gone three days a week in Portland for school starting the in fall (with 2-3 overnights).  This is not drastically different from her being gone 13-14 hours 3 days a week right now for work but it is overwhelming to think about not having another adult in the house at night in the event of emergency.  She is trying to coerce me into getting a puppy to have a "protection."  She has offered to train the puppy and take it to puppy school so we will be "safe" in her absence.

I told her that the only thing I will need then is a lobotomy.