Blogathon entry – Melanie Conlin “While you were gone”

Why is it, when our partner is away, EVERYTHING and ANYTHING goes wrong?

As any FIFO partner will testify, either the day before they get back or the day your partner leaves, something always goes wrong.

I want my husband to head off to work with confidence that we will be ok, and he doesn’t have to worry too much about his family back home.

I, like many partners at home, don’t want to worry my husband. I want to be a strong independent woman who can hold down a job, study at night, bring up two kids and manage the household. But, sometimes I am just kidding myself.

I am lucky to have such a handy hubby who, over the years, has done all the chores and maintenance on our home, cars and bikes. But it has left me lacking in the skills department when it comes to these tasks.

I try to not let everyone see if I am struggling and I try and give everything a go myself before I call for reinforcements. But the FIFO hex always comes back to get me.

When my husband calls late at night after a 12-hour day on a 28-day stint away, I am pretty sure he doesn’t need to hear that the bathroom door came off the runner and I was stuck in there for 15 minutes trying to get the rotten thing back on. I have to say I was a little generic bactrim online glad I had taken a glass of wine in or I may have just lost the plot.

Maybe he would prefer to hear that the power has gone out and I can’t find the torch to get to the power box. And what can he do when we have a snake in the back yard, and he is so far away?

And, when I had to have our faithful old dog put down, that was a whole other nightmare.

Whether it be the gutter falling off, catching the snake, the pool overflowing, the dog dying or trying to fix our son’s bike. These are just things I have to deal with on a weekly basis.
But, at least I am home. He would love to sit in the garage with his son and work on their bikes. And I am sure the Tarzan in him would have come out to get the snake. And he would have felt much more comfortable with our daughter going on a date had HE met the young man himself.

So, I just laugh (sometimes scream) and do the best I can. And always have a list of things for him to do when he gets home.

Most of all, I am so very grateful to have him in our lives and will never take the little things he does for us for granted.