This post is brought to you by my dear Hubby, who suggested I share a weird and humbling moment with everyone. So, yes, dear Rick and Darcy (not their real names) at church, you're about to learn something new about me...again.
Hubby is on vacation this week and spent the last couple days with his mother in a town across the state from home. He does this from time to time, and it's no biggie.
Normally I get up at 5, get Peaches out the door to work and then go back to bed for about an hour before I get up and theoretically go for a walk before I start work. Yesterday that routine was thrown out the window because Peaches was ill and didn't go to work, but didn't make that decision until 4:45. She sent me a text, which got me WIDE awake for some reason. I could not fall back asleep.
So I rolled around, thinking, "I should just get up and go for a walk and get that out of the way and then go get working."
Well I didn't. Instead, I rolled over and managed to fall back asleep until about 9 minutes before I had to be at my desk. That meant all the niceties of going for a walk, putting on make up, applying deodorant all went out the door.
The one thing that did not get missed, the one thing that DOES NOT GET MISSED...I made the bed.
Admittedly, not my best attempt at making the bed, but for those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that I cannot ABIDE an unmade bed. It's one of those fun little things some would call an obsession...I call a quirk.
One of my other quirks, for the purpose of this blog, is I hate, hate, hate it when Hubby and the kids don't return a text IMMEDIATELY. Nothing throws me into a panic faster than sending a simple text like, "When will you be home for dinner?" and not getting an immediate answer. I begin to picture all sorts of horrors have befallen my beloved family members.
An unanswered text from me also results in many, many more texts from me. How on EARTH did my mother survive without cell phones? She had no idea where I was half the time I was growing up. But I knew if she blew that coaches' whistle out the back door and I wasn't in the house within ten minutes, life as I knew it would be over. Still, all she knew was that I was ten minutes away. I could have fallen out of a tree and broken my neck. I could have crashed my bike into a parked car. (I actually did that, but that's another story) and gotten injured. As far as I knew, she did not care what COULD happen to me. She just knew what WOULD happen to me if I didn't show up ten minutes after the whistle.
They must have made mothers different back then. My kids are grown up and fully capable of getting from point A to point B without dying, and yet I'm panic mom if they don't answer a text immediately. (And no, telling me they might be driving doesn't help.)Anyway...
So yesterday I made the bed in a hurried manner and then went to the next room to work. Normally I keep my cell on the desk with me so that if any family member needs anything from me, I'm RIGHT THERE with an immediate response.
Much like a made bed, staying in contact with my immediate family is a quirk for me. Call it an obsession, go ahead.
Whatever.
So my day progressed, as Mondays do. Work was a little busy. Peaches recovered from her illness enough to drag herself to class. Skippy had a day off so I had no thought that I'd see him before 3 PM. I moved around the house doing chores, I went for a walk and then I sat down on the couch to each a late lunch...and promptly fell asleep for over an hour.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Simple: This entire time I assumed my phone was sitting on my desk and if anyone needed me I would hear it ring and be able to respond immediately, as is my quirk. (obsession.)
The truth of the matter is...that phone was no where near me at any point during the day once I left the bed.
Yes...it's true. I'd fallen asleep with my phone next to me on the bed and in the morning when I made the bed because I cannot leave it unmade, I managed to bury the phone under the covers.
I was almost 5 Pm by the time I realized this. I found my phone and, too my horror, I'd missed (well, nothing from the kids. I mean, it's not like they text me without prompting.) many, many messages from Hubby!
Looking at the list of texts that had come in over the course of the day (and one missed call) I knew if I were on the receiving end of such a complete ignoring, I would be in the middle of a stomach churning fit, certain my lovely spouse was kidnapped, dead, or worse.
Kudos to Hubby. When I called to apologize he said, "I knew you weren't dead, you checked in on
So, my friends, what have we learned today?
We've learned that Hubby is far more calm than I am when it comes to unanswered texts.
We've learned that my mother had a completely different mind set than I do when it comes to being in contact with our children.
And, finally, we've learned what my #1 Quirk/Obsession is...the one thing that rules over all other obsessions, including being in constant contact with my family:
The unmade bed. My one Obsession that rules them all.
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