Ben is outta here!

Scary. Ben is out of town for NINE days! He's a Jr. High leader at our church and is on a mission trip to Tennessee with 15 pubescent boys and girls. I'm not sure I'm jealous.

We have never been apart this long since my 6 week trip to Germany when I was 17 years old the summer before we got married. In fact, that time apart was so painful that it was while I was in Germany that Ben asked me to marry him - right over the telephone. This time apart will be painful, but not for the same reasons. I'll miss him, no doubt, but it's not that raging intense hormonally induced 'miss him' that I experienced 17 years ago...thank goodness. No, this is painful b/c I'm the sole responsible party for the 3 kids that those raging hormones eventually produced.

My first goal when he left was to clean out the gutters. Ben is a lot of things...caring husband, great dad, computer whiz, builder of websites. He is not, however, a mechanic or a yard man. Our gutters have been sprouting trees...that's how bad it's been. We've had so much rain and we have a huge oak tree that dropped its seeds and those suckers had seriously taken root...in the gutters! It was embarrassing but not one of those things you think about until you realize that someone is on their way over to your house. Knowing that if I tried to take it upon myself to empty the gutters in Ben's presence it would create strife... I have used that tactic in the past..."honey, where's the screwdriver?"..."why?"..."Oh, I was just going to take apart the xyz and figure out why it's not working"... At this point Ben jumps up and takes over b/c he knows I'm not at all mentally or physically equipped to fix xyz. But, knowing that that is a tactic and not a legitimate means of getting him to do something, I just let him leave town and decided to do it myself. Something I won't do again.

First of all, my whole body is sore. I had no idea I would be hurting this bad. Second, as a family, we pretty much were the neighborhood spectacle trying to get those suckers cleaned out. Just opening the ladder and maneuvering it was a sight to be seen! It all started out promising. I got the first part cleaned out on my own while the girls were asleep. Then came the higher gutters. I opened the ladder all the way up...started up the ladder and started to fall. With all the rain, the flower bed is riddled with sink holes. So, the next idea was to get on the roof and clean them out that way. At this point, the girls were up and dressed and in the front yard fighting over the $5 Little Tikes car that I just purchased at a garage sale on the way back from dropping Ben off at the church. Gracie would pull Ella out and then Ella would pull Gracie out and it was pretty much pure pandemonium. I climbed on the roof first, scared out of my mind...and realized that Nolen was much more suited for this job. So I decided to come down. I got to the ladder, ready to get down and then realized I had no idea how I was going to maneuver my body around the ladder to climb down. I sat for a minute wondering...what if I can't get down? What if the neighbors all come out and see the mother of these 3 kids stuck on the roof with her husband on his way to Tennessee. What if the fire department has to come get me... Will Child Protective Services take my children b/c their mother was so stupid to climb on the roof? Maybe I'll just jump...but what if I break something?? I finally figured a way, climbed down and vowed never to do that again. Instead, I sent my 10 year old son up there. Seriously though, he loves being on the roof and has been up there many times with Ben. Like his dad, he is also not a lover of yard work...or any manual labor of any sort, but he played along and went to work. He did great! But then he reached a breaking point..."This is too hard!"..."I can't do it"...the meltdown was coming. But by golly, we had gotten this far and I wasn't about to let that kid off the roof without finishing the tiny bit we had left. Knowing that getting the contents of the gutters into the trash bag was a hassle, I got a huge blue tarp from the garage, laid it out on the flowerbed and told Nolen just to throw the stuff down onto the tarp. This worked! But looked ridiculous and caused the neighbors to see what the heck we were doing. One neighbor walked over and the first thing out her mouth..."where's dad?" "Uh...gone for 9 days...and I couldn't take the trees growing out of the gutters any longer."...and her response..."You had trees growing out of your gutters? Crazy! You sure couldn't see them from across the street. I never noticed them"...this was not making me feel better about my decision to take on this task. We chatted for a bit, I cleaned the tarp off the best I could, the kids continued to oust each other from the car, Nolen recovered and celebrated with a strawberry pop and all was well. Of course, there's still one section of gutter that still needs to be cleaned but I just ran out of steam. Moral of the story... don't be an ass. Let your husband clean out the gutters when he's good and ready. :) And, Ben...when you get back, will you clean out that last section of gutter and you'll probably want to spray the tarp off with water. Love you!