There's No Place Like Home

Ahhhh.... Home at last. I had hoped our business would end on Sunday, and it did partially. After church we had a leisurely lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon outside. Hubby works out of town and wouldn't get a day off this week, so we decided to visit him instead of going home. (We always spend Sunday with my parents.) I really had only planned to stay 1 night and then come home around lunchtime. The kids were so happy to be with daddy that they wanted to stay longer. We went to the store, bought a big jug of bleach and a mop, and spent the next several hours cleaning and wiping every surface we could.

Let me explain. My husband is a chef. To make money he needed to head out of our smaller town and work in the city. He shares an apartment with other men that do the same thing (currently only one as the restaurant is short a person.) This apartment is not a home to any of them. It is merely a place to crash after their hard 12 hour days. Are you getting the picture? Nothing ever gets cleaned. Oh, to Hubby's credit he said he had vacuumed his room 2 weeks ago and he did buy a new shower curtain. It still was grimey. So grimey you wear your shoes everywhere. Anyway, a few hours labor took care of all the gross grime.... the worst part is always the bathroom. Men away from home quickly revert to pigs in the potty. ......blech.

So after it was scrubbed and bleached (-a quick note here, my homemade dry laundry detergent worked wonders on the greasy floors!!) the children decided it was a rather nice place to be so we spent another night with daddy. The following day I planned to leave when daddy left for work, but the children had other plans. They weren't quite ready to go, so we did school, played a while and finally departed around 5. Supper time, but I was determined to not stop until we had put some distance between us and the apartment. Every exit along the road that had somewhere to eat I would do a hunger check and they always said they could wait a little longer. To the kids credit we didn't stop until we were a half a hour from home(1 1/2 hours from daddy's apartment.) There we splurged on a steakhouse dinner. Salad bar, steak tips, baked potato and frozen yogurt for dessert. Yummm. Hunger really is the best seasoning.

We made it home shortly before bedtime. I checked email, read some blogs, and then talked to hubby when he got off work. Bedtime was too late and we slept in this morning, but it was worth it. The kids got to see daddy, his apartment got a much needed cleaning, and I came home with a paycheck.

Really after such a busy week I can identify with Dorothy. "There's no place like home."