Seth’s gone this week, speaking at something called a
Mission Command Conference at West Point. I’m excited that he gets the
opportunity to mentor young cadets and touch bases with the Army athletic staff
there- he’s busy laying the groundwork for the new job!- and I love that, after
all this time focusing on the 25 meter targets (get through this surgery/ get
rid of the wound vac/ get out of the wheelchair/ walk again/ lose the “wheelchair
weight”/ run again, etc.) he’s finally able to expend some energy on the 300
meter ones too.
But I miss him. Whenever we’re apart, but especially when I’m
home and he’s away instead of vice versa, I have a set routine. For the first
24 hours, I’m ecstatic that I can clean the house and it stays that way, that
there is no laundry on the floor, and that I can eat cereal out of the box for
dinner and watch what I want on TV and go to bed at a decent hour for a change.
And then the second day, I walk in the door and the house just feels… empty.
And quiet. Within a couple hours, I find that I am actually wishing for even
one stray dirty sock peeking out from underneath the bed.
When I’m trying to be positive, though, I tell myself that
it’s nice to be married to someone
you miss when you’re apart for only a few days. And that we’re lucky that we’re
at a point in our lives and careers and world events that we don’t have to
contemplate long deployments and geo-bachelorhood. (Although one should always
knock on wood when considering this.)
And in this case, at least we had had a really nice weekend
away to tide us over. After an absurd trains-metros-automobiles Friday night
adventure to get us both up to West Point in eastern seaboard pre-weekend
gridlock (I actually scored with the train option, despite having one break and
leave me trackside in Harlem), we survived a frantic Friday-Saturday lineup
of events surrounding the spring football game, for which Seth had been named an
honorary captain. http://blogs.hudsonvalley.com/west-point-army-football/2014/04/14/black-and-gold-game-details-supe-to-coach-black/
While Seth scurried from meeting to event to meeting and then raced
up and down the sidelines looking very official, I had a lazy brunch with
friends in Cornwall and basked in the sunny stands on an unexpectedly warm day.
Seth’s team lost but a good time was had by all, and he and all of his former
Army football player buddies waxed poetic about the future of the team under
the new coach, who we really like. As with all of these reunion-type events (I
assume we’ll be inundated with them once we move to the Hudson Valley), Seth
spent lots of time catching up with old friends, mentors, and teammates. I was
grateful that they all made an effort to make me feel included- Seth is a smart
guy and had been prepping that, knowing, no doubt, that if the West Point
exclusivity got under my skin it was going to be a long couple of years there. It worked, and I came away from the weekend reminded that West Point, although unfortunately situated in the cesspool that is the state of New York, is spectacularly beautiful, occasionally warm, and a terrific place for families. Which is more important to us than ever.
We're bad at keeping secrets and finally made this
announcement this weekend, in case you somehow missed it:
All the important details: we’re ecstatic, I haven’t been
too sick, Seth's been terrific, I definitely required Spanx under my dress at the football banquet, and
the littlest Nieman will be here before the Army-Navy game. (And I fervently look forward to my return to tailgating.)
We finally got a breather Sunday, and instead of dragging
ourselves to Easter services for more handshaking (it does get exhausting), we
slept in and headed up the valley for the best chocolate chip pancakes I have
ever had in my life (Painter’s in Cornwall, don’t miss it) and an Easter bike
ride along the river, followed by a pilgrimage to Seth’s favorite steakhouse. (Not that the highlights of our weekend were food...) I had taken Monday off, since- outrageously- USALSA didn’t get any days off for the Easter holiday, which gave us another blissful day to sleep late and wander around West Point and then head into the city for dinner with Mike & Marlena before I had to catch a late flight back to DC. I’ll spare the details of my “public transportation to JFK adventure”- especially since I still (unbelievably) made it home to Bethesda before Seth made it back to West Point.
At any rate, I’m home, playing catchup at work, and before we know it we'll be heading to Oklahoma City to see the Oklahoma Walters this weekend. It’s
definitely an on-the-go spring for us!
Pictures of the week are
of our adorable nieces’ Easter egg hunts.
Oh, and this one (from the banquet) just kind of cracked me up. In an unrelated note, the cheesecake (also pictured) was delicious.
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