While we do live in Northern Florida, we were not in a hurricane effected area. We anticipated getting a few outer bands of weather, but other than a single 10 minute burst of rain, felt no effects. We were lucky in that respect but it was tense I. Our household the few days before. A left on Tuesday for a 10 day stretch of meetings in Washington DC. At first I thought we would be fine without him but then I waviered (after he mentioned how frequently our power goes out in storms) and decieded he should at least make sure our smaller generator and some power cords were accessible. When I asked him to ensure they were useable he came back with “but you said you would be fine”. Cue Herricane Someday. Here I came dropping F bombs left and right, finger pointing, and all kinds venom spewing! He wasn’t even going to be here and couldn’t even summon up enough to care for his wife and children while they were gone? How hard was it to get four little item out? Why was he spending so much time planning for this pilot related conference instead of taking care of us- obviously he cared more about his pilot bros than us... Finally he agreed to get the equipment out. I asked him the next day, before he left, what point he was trying to prove by arguing with me instead of just agreeing, but he didn’t seem to have one.
Back to the conference for a bit as it really has been dominating our lives for the past few weeks and had been the source of a fair amount of other arguments as well. This meeting happens every other year and then every other conference they also elect a new union president. This year is an election year, naturally. So I get to hear about how they are going to be sweet talked, can’t go anywhere alone, how all the airlines have hospitality suites to visit, how their airline has theme nights in their suite, how he needs a red velvet jacket because his base always represents... on and on and on. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and reminded him that while he was off at this meeting- having to worry only about himself, having his meals provided, sleeping undisturbed- I would be at home. Taking care of the kids, arranging schedules, planning and making dinners, getting woken up by someone at least twice per night, and having to manage everything by myself, while I continued to work full time. While he worried only about himself. His response that the all day meetings might be ‘boring’ didn’t fly with me. So we had many discussions about who has to manage what and when I would get a vacation as well. I told him I would be happy to stay at a local hotel alone and go to work for the week following his conference just so he could see what it was like for me. You can imagine how well that went over! He did cut down on talking about the conference at least. But it still irritates. And now I’m dealing with everything, with a cold.
We have had some victories lately as well- one is daytime potty trained and one will walk any day. The new pilot contract passed and will give us a bit more breathing room in our very tight budget. And we are still alive to see another day!
