Practicing Empty Nesting

Cinderella made it to camp.  Her fever broke, and since she had been fever free for more than 24 hours, we decided to let her go.  Her leaders promised to make her take it easy and that they would take good care of her, and since it has been 24 hours since they all left, we are pretty sure all is well.  So glad she was able to go.

And now, we are premature empty-nesters and we are not sure we like it.  Last night we were driving around looking at tile options for our kitchen backsplash.  (Oh, the options!  So many.  And so many we love that don't really match.  And so many we think are good but we're not sure.  How do we decide if we want the tile to "pop" or just blend in so the cabinets can "pop", or if we want the tile to be neutral or colorful?  Wow.)  As we left one store, we decided we needed to eat.  What to do?  Neither of us wanted to take the time to go home and cook for just the two of us.  But we didn't really want to spend money eating out.  And then we realized, we have three more nights of dinners this week with just the two of us.  Yikes.  Can't go out that many times.

It's not that I don't love spending time with King, it's just that it is so quiet.  Not that I'm complaining (because I sure love quiet), it's just a little strange.  When I think about the fact that in just six short years(!!!), all of our girls will be done with high school and moving on to college, I get a little bit panicked.  (I think the fact that King is ripping apart our old swing set to take to the dump is contributing to this panic.  How did they grow so fast?  How is it that none of my babies want to swing on a swing set anymore?)  Six years is not a lot of time!  It will go too fast.  And I better think of more meals that are easy to make for two.  There aren't a lot of great restaurants in our neck of the woods.

And, I also need a career.  Just now, being a full-time mommy takes all I've got, but I'll have 20 years of time between when the twins graduate and King retires.  That's a lot of years.  What will I do with myself?  Have any good ideas for someone who has a debilitating headache 45% of the time, a really bad headache 45% of the time, and a stressed out lingering headache 10% of the time because the other 90% of the time her body is worthless?  Yep, me neither.  ;) 

Which is why I'm really excited to have those noisy campers come home in three days.  This week is enough empty nest practice for me.  Let's get back to the crazy life.