T Minus 15 Days

I often refer to our current living situation as my "stucco tower". Frugality, the busyness of wrapping things up, and a lack of local friends all contribute to DH and I seldom leaving the house. Personal weirdness means I don't leave our room much, either. (But I will leave the convoluted and not-quite-noble tale of our situation for another day.)

These hermit tendencies are exacerbated by an irregular sleep schedule: my days are often 26 or 28 hours long, putting me at odds with the outside world. That's not so bad. The real trouble comes when my odd patterns put me at odd with DH's schedule.

He's not a 9-to-5 person either (often staying up till dawn and sleeping past noon), but there pressure to get his freelance illustration work wrapped up as soon as possible. That pressure, plus the fact that his working space is the same as his living/playing space all conspire to be stressful. I let him manage his own time, though.

These factors, and a few others that I can't distill into words, conspire to keep us from spending a lot of quality time together. Sure, there's five minutes here and there when we snuggle and exchange recaps of the past few hours, so I'm not completely deprived, and if I asked he'd probably put things aside to hang out. There is merely a dearth of spontaneous walks and meals without the accompaniment of TV or computers. It seems odd to bring this up so soon after we spent Christmas Eve and Day out of the house and with each other, but now I'm watching a countdown: 15 together, 84 apart, 10 together, 100 (or more) apart.

But how does one measure the stores of warm-fuzzies that I'm trying to save up for those separations? How does one plan natural, memory-making quality time? Any time I collect "romantic" elements and construct an hour or two for us to spend alone, it can feel awkward and scripted, as though there are hidden expectations that I need the experience to live up to. Turning on a camcorder and saying "be memorable" is just as ridiculous as telling someone to "act natural".

In my mind it's a proven fact that things that happen organically make for better memories than things that are set up with memory-making in mind. For example, when thinking about our wedding, a walk we took a week or so before the ceremony to talk about our pending nuptials stands out better than the event itself. Similarly, when we made plans to take pictures (film and digital) on my father-in-law's land, we had a good time, but I was still overly conscious of the reason the moment was set up, instead of letting myself be in the moment.

All of it it so messed up and convoluted. Making plans, not making plans, making not-plans... and wondering if we'll find time to get out from under this cloud of obligations in the next fifteen days.

I do have this good news: I purchased plane tickets today. It's not a sure thing until I'm on that plane, but I now have both a place to go while DH is in boot camp, and a way to get there.