Monday, May 24, 2010

Ready to relax for a few hours

It's been a crazy last five days or so. I'm emotionally and physically spent at the moment. I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing tonight and, hopefully, tomorrow.

It all started on Thursday of last week. I was having one of those days. 99% of the time I love living in Hawaii and the isolation of being on an island in the middle of the Pacific (and additionally working from home) doesn't bother me. But for some reason on Thursday I felt . . . stuck. I wanted to be able to call up one of my non-Navy girlfriends and meet up at a bar, have a few beers, shoot the breeze and chill out. I just wanted to get out of the house. To hang out. To spend some time with friends.

And as quickly as the desire to go hang out with my friends swept over me, so did the recognition that it was impossible. The friends that I wanted to hang with aren't here. I love Zac. I love spending time with Zac. But that's the thing - I spend almost all of my time with Zac. We both know that we occasionally drive each other nuts because we spend so much time together. Even when we socialize with other people, we're still together. It's either me hanging out with Zac and his single friends, or it's Zac and I hanging out with another Navy couple. Especially since Bernadette left, I don't have anyone that I regularly see without Zac being there too.

This is the long way of saying that on Thursday of last week I wanted to ditch my husband and go hang out with my not-affiliated-with-the-Navy-in-any-way friends. And when I realized that I had no where to go and no one to go with, I got really crabby. So Thursday wasn't a great day.

Thursday was also the day that I started dog-sitting for a friend. (A Navy wife and Bernadette's heir apparent. Since Bernadette's name was changed to protect her, I shall refer to this friend as "Claudia".) Claudia's father had passed away and she and her family were going to the mainland for the funeral. I offered to watch her two dogs for the long weekend. I have interacted with her dogs many times, and I didn't think there would be any problems having them stay at our house with Toivo and Zoe. Alas, I was wrong. The short version is that after cleaning up the "territory marking competition" between her dogs and mine [multiple times], and not getting any sleep on Thursday night, I ended up taking the dogs back to her house and spending the rest of the weekend dog-sitting from there. (Claudia gets back tonight.)

On top of dog-sitting this weekend, Zac's cousin, Cressy, came out to visit. She came in on Friday and left for a neighboring island today. We spent Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday showing her around Oahu, all while making regular stops at our house to let out Zoe and Toivo and Claudia's house to let out her two dogs. All the driving, plus the exertion of hiking and swimming and hosting wore all three of us out. Zac and I had a long conversation yesterday afternoon about how worn out we were and how we were starting to get on one another's nerves. We had a great time with Cressy and we'll get to see her again next weekend when she comes back to Oahu. Hopefully Zac and I will be a little less stressed when we see her.

I think it was just too much at the same time - hosting and dog sitting. But you don't always get to plan life. Sometimes things happen all at once and you just have to roll with the punches. All I know is that I'm glad it's Monday evening and the only thing that's in my immediate future is "Wheel of Fortune".

No comments: