LD relationships suck

Today was a good day. The first day in weeks that we've actually been busy at work. I spayed 9 cats. Yep, nine. My personal record was 4 in one day. I just more than doubled that.

Happy Valentine's to everyone.

Our Valentine's was actually pretty good this year. It's the first one we've ever actually been able to spend together, rather than celebrating some random weekend. Not that we did anything. DH wasn't able to come home Friday night like usual. He was stuck in a ditch in some middle-of-nowhere driveway where neither a tractor nor another truck could pull him out. And the 24 hour emergency tow truck line? Wasn't answering. Yeah, so much for emergency service. So he ended up getting home at 2 pm the next day.

I was thinking about our relationship the other day. I love my DH and there's no way I would want to be with anyone else. But I was thinking, what if he weren't a truck driver? Wouldn't it be nice to find him a job that allowed him to be home every night? And then I had the thought of, yeah, right, like we could find a job like that. You see, this lifestyle is all we know, other than 3 short months when we first moved to North Dakota when he was indeed home every night, even if he didn't get home until midnight (after I was asleep) and left at 6 (before I was awake). It was still something to feel the bed sink when he crawled in each night, and be able to roll over and sleepily acknowledge his presence.

But that didn't last very long. Now he's gone again. And when I was thinking about this the other day, I was thinking about it as though almost everyone has this kind of relationship. Like it wouldn't be easy to find him a job that would get him home every night. Like in most relationships, one person is gone every night. And then I realized that while I know a high number of women in these relationships, it is NOT typical. The average person probably does have the type of relationship that I dream of.

And that was a depressing thought. Because what if something happened to one of us? We'd be alone never having known what it was like to see your spouse every day. And the worst part? Even knowing all of this and wanting to change it? We still don't know when he'll actually be able to get a local job. We don't know how long he'll be doing this type of schedule.

I keep having dreams, about the closest I ever get to nightmares. And in my dreams, something happens to him. Something prevents him from ever being able to come home again. He doesn't always die, but something happens. And I wake up every morning and the first thing I have to do is call him to make sure everything's okay. I never used to dream like this, and I know it's just stress. But then I have a morning where I wake up convinced he's home, roll over to say Good Morning, and panic when he's not there.

Something needs to change. He needs to be home more. He feels it too. But we don't know how long it will take or when it will be. And the uncertainty is killing me.



And right after I finished writing this post? Guy on the DR show who was an over the road trucker who had just lost his wife of 33 years and was crying on the phone. Not helping...