Domestic Bliss During the Hunt: Day One

So my little 6 month old is usually one Happy Chappy, and then last week rolls around. It started with a sniffly nose, and escalated with crankiness and don’t-you-dare-put-me-down-ness. He still hasn’t cut that first tooth yet, and his mouth was not dissimilar to a drippy glue gun; those drool-strands were getting everywhere. Okay, so the poor kid is teething.

Excellent timing, because the Hubbles had plans to go on a hunting trip, or as I usually call it: Hiking with Guns. But he actually brought home a deer last year, so I think I’m not supposed to call it that anymore. So he spends the last three hours or so of the day telling me how excited he is to go on his vacation, though I’ll share a little secret with y’all: I don’t consider sleeping outside in potentially freezing weather, hiking all day, and pooping in the woods to be much of a vacation. While I was not particularly jealous of his not-quite-a-spa-retreat vacation, I’ve spent the past five minutes trying to remember the last time I spent four days sans children or husband, regardless of whether or not there was excessive quantities of bacon involved, and it’s been long enough that I really don’t know.

Being a responsible adult, or maybe just cognizant of guilt, Hubbles took the trash down to the curb for me before he left. Being ridiculously excited to get going, and kind of ocassionally a freaking bonehead (so we were pretty much made for each other), he left the gate open.

I discovered this later, when it was quite dark, getting cold, and the baby was refusing to sleep even with copious amounts of baby painkillers and snuggles, and suddenly I COULDN’T FIND ONE OF THE DOGS.

Thankfully, it was only Matti, who actually comes reliably when called, even when there’s something! so! exciting! Also thankfully, it was a brief escape  and the black dog in the dark night managed not to get hit by the dumb teens driving their really loud pretend race cars down the street too fast. It took him just long enough to come running down the block for me to have a small heart attack. Had Tank gotten out, the evening could have gone very horrible very fast.

Bear in mind that we were only about two hours into a four day weekend of no husband, two dogs, two small children, and an anxiety disorder. I’m exhausted enough when he gets home from work during the weekend, so all you single parents have my admiration, even if your kids are older. Anyway, this did not bode well for the next few days.

We’ll wrap up day/night one simply by noting that my son doesn’t sleep through the night normally, and he was feeling like crap, so it was a very long night.