I’m having a hard time accepting that this Olof-working-away-from-home thing is our new reality. I keep feeling like it’s just something to get through, a hurdle we have to climb over before we can get back to normal, to him here at home with us every day, but it looks instead like it’s something that’s here to stay for a good long while. And I hate it, every single day.

So many things are different now, and I’m hard-pressed to think of any that are better. Our marriage is different, his relationships with the kids are different, *my* relationships with the kids are different (actually, one part of this is better — Brynja and I are totally sympatico these days), and it’s all taking way too long to get used to.

While it’s true, obviously, that it’s not much fun wrangling all the kids and pets and household duties on my own during the week, it’s not the increased workload that I mind the most. The worst part is the sheer loss of time spent together. For more than ten years Olof was a fixture here in the office, and all the hours we’re apart now leave me feeling a bit unmoored. His awake time at home is a fraction of what it used to be, and during those few hours that he is here and free (he’s got a couple of side projects going on that take up more hours than either of us would like), I’m competing with five other people for his attention. And they deserve his time every bit as much as I do, so it’s not like I can really try to beat them out or even resent them for the pieces they get that I don’t.

We do see each other every day, obviously, but almost all of the time we have together is taken up with practicalities and we don’t seem to have anything at all in the way of downtime, time just to be and to enjoy each other’s company. Even the one or two hours at night when we have our “grown-up time” (oh, how the definition of that has changed), we’ve got kids coming downstairs almost constantly with just “one more thing” they forgot to say before bed. It’s a rare evening that all of them are asleep before at least one of us is.

I know, of course, that many couples — most couples, even — live this way, and that mine is not an especially sympathetic position, but damn does it ever suck for us. The one bright spot is that he does seem to enjoy the job and I know that he really likes the people he works with, so I’m trying to hold on to that. We may have to spend our days apart, but at least neither of us is spending them in misery. That’s not nothing.