Monkeying around...

The last time for awhile

Jud comes home today from his last ride. The ship should pull in this morning and it will pull in to the yards for maintenance work. It will not go out to sea again before we move! At first I was soooo looking forward to him not having to leave again. Well now that the time has come for him to be home all the time, except for duty nights where he won't come home, this is it! I started getting a little twitchy about this a couple of weeks ago, and now it is eminant. I am glad that he will be home and be involved with the family more now, but there is a part of me that never realized how much I enjoyed the "free-ness (is that a word)" that his being gone provided us!

The kids and I have a whole different way of life when he isn't around. We are very free, and come and go as we please. I may not do laundry for several days in a row and that is okay. We may stay up to the wee hours of the morning and sleep in til noon the next day and we love it.

It's not that I don't want him home because I do, but I am very worried that the freedom we feel when he is gone is gonna die. It is not his fault that he has to get up for work around 4:45 a.m. However, for us that means no more loud late nights playing games, watching t.v., making things, and fast food runs.

He is also the kind of person that can't handle mess and disorganization very well. Me I am in my element when things are disorganized. I always seem to know where stuff is. I like not having to bark cleaning orders to my poor kids to get things clean all the time. It's not like the house is filthy dirty or anything, but I will admit that it is cluttered with toys, books, crayons, markers and paper scattered all ove the place.

I guess where he and I differ is that I look at the scattered stuff everywhere and I see creativity and that I see them return to these same messes throughout the day and pick up where they left off. To me it is also pointless to continuously pick up just to have them drag it right back out again. Even worse if they are forced to clean up constantly, will they not want to play with those things again, because it is so time consuming to clean it up just to pull it back out again?

We do have times, several times where we tidy once or twice a week. The dishes are done everyday, and the trash always goes out. Everything esle though, stays pretty much a mess until the tidy time comes around.

I have no problem with this lifestyle, but Jud can't stand it. He will come home from work (when the ship is in) and start right in on cleaning and yelling at all of us. He was raised in a house that was always perfect and clean. I am sure that it plays a huge part in who he is today.

I was also raised in a perfectly clean house as well. The difference is I had to help in that cleaning and he never had to lift a finger. His grandmother and mother did all the cleaning. I remember the miserable hours of vacuuming and dusting and kitchen chores...etc. and the list goes on. I do ask the kids to help me when it is tidy time and I rarely get any grief about it when I ask. So I don't see a problem with how things go. He on the other hand is probably not ever going to get used to living this way.

We have had the freedom of living this way for the better part of four years now and have come to enjoy it immensely. I am scared that this freedom is going to come to a halt now though! I am hoping to come to some kind of compromise so that we can both be happy with how things run around here! We'll see. If you never hear about this issue again on this blog you will know we found a compromise, if not well, I will be here to rant about it! Cross your fingers for me and the kidlets oh and for Jud too!