And boy do I feel unbalanced right about now. Jamie is back in class. Training. Torture. There are many names for what he does on his 8 hour vaca from home each weekday. The guys he works with have some colorful descriptions of how they view the process by which they are being trained to do a job some odd years in the future, but I'm too much a lady to convey any of those here on my blog. To wrap it all up in a neat little nutshell: It sucks. Apparently when you are being trained to be in charge of a nuclear reactor, they expect a lot out of you. (I personally believe, after seeing some pictures of the control room, that they are being trained to operate an aircraft using alien technology, but Jamie assures me that really is just a control room. Whatever. I've seen enough Star Trek to put two and two together. But you know, it's probably just super top secret and the whole reactor thing is just a really good cover for what they are actually learning, but so far none of my methods to extract this information have been successful). He maintains he is being trained to do this thing that provides people with energy for their electronical crap. I'll play along. It brings income into our house, so the nuts and bolts really aren't that important.
But back to the training. Jamie brings in a binder his first week. How nice, I think. They have given them all the information for the whole class for him to study at home. He completely bursts my bubble and blows my mind when he informs me this 4 inch binder, with paper printed double side is just the information for his FIRST TEST. Number one, I can't even think about the trees that have sacrificed their life for ONE test (and you know, first implies there will be more. More paper. More tree funerals....wasteful) and secondly, I've lived with Jamie's head for like 15 years. I am well aware of it's size and circumference. The dude's smart, but let's talk logisitics here. How is it possible that he can cram that amount of information into his head and not have it explode?
It's because all the basic knowledge he has gathered up until this point in his life, is slowly leaking out to make room. Things like "Where are my shoes?" which he could answer all by himeself most days, are now a major ordeal. If would be fine if this question passed his lips one time per incident when he couldn't find them, but the thing is, on the way up the stairs to get the shoes, that piece of information leaks out of his brain and he has to ask again, from the top of the stairs "Where'd you say they were again??" Thankfully, once he finds them, it only takes a short amount of time for his brain to remember how to tie them (And if it didn't, I would gladly do it for him. I'm helpful like that.)
Throughout his career, I've put up with a lot. I did a lot of things solo when he was playing in the ocean on a submarine. I waded through holidays, home repairs, broken bones and newborns without him. I've kept a smile and pat him on the back when he was given trophies and paper awards for all his super duper achievements as Leader of Saving People From Radiation at a national lab (and dude, the paper award thing was NOT, and I repeat, NOT of the green variety. Apparently, saving your division a couple hundred thousand annually with a change you implemented and getting some scientfic discovery published isn't enough to earn a pay raise. It just earns you a "meets expectations" on your yearly evaluation. Working for the government is enough to drive anyone to postal behavior). I've moved across the country and back again, and spend nights all alone while he was in some other state doing more important type stuff I do not understand, but there comes a time when a girl/wife/mother has to reel against what her husband's employer dishes out. I mean, really, can we just save a little brain for the girl he loves? I mean, just a LITTLE? Maybe we can negotiate here. I get 10%, they get 90%? I think that would be very generous (of me. Piggish of them, but they do help with that whole keeping everyone fed, clothed and housed thing.)
It's the little things I miss the most, like him remembering, oh, where we put the sugar on the shelf, or what the dog's name is, or important dates (mybirthdayisin18days) Or him being decisive about what he wants to watch in the evening instead of act flipping through the movies for a solid half hour, unable to concentrate enough to make a decision. He even confessed that he can no longer listen to music on his way home from work because it's too much for his brain to handle. How sad is that? And so if music is hard on his brain, you can imagine how a wife who has a million little details of her day to share sounds like to him. So I shush it and just talk basics. No more long ponderings about our life, our family or hopes and dreams. We stick to the essentials "Hey honey, yell at this kid, talk to that one, this one did really well today and here's what we are having for dinner." I miss his most important and excellent skill: Diffusion. He not only completes me, he diffuses me. As in bomb squad precision diffusion. I can be a little high strung. A little stressed. A little crazy. Explosive even and without his yin, my yang goes all sorts of haywire.
So we'll be a little heavy on the yang for a few more weeks, and then hopefuly some balance will be restored and there will be a little more yin.
And I'll link my beloved to the post, thinking it will inspire him that his wife so dearly loves him and misses him as to write a long, lengthy
It will be something about how perfectly yin and yang fit together and if I miss it so much, he's more than willing to show me another form of it. *wink*
I love that man.
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