Adjusting to life as we once knew it

There has been a sudden change in our household, a seismic shift of sorts, and I find myself equal parts happy and sad, free and burdened, relieved and annoyed. What is the change? After nearly nine months of unemployment, Jon has returned to work.

It is wonderfully happy to have Jon working again. It is even better that he was able to open his own tattoo shop and that the shop is doing pretty well for its first month in business. But those nine months we had unemployement we also had a lot more time together. We had dinners as a family. We shared evening parenting duty. We didn't have to send Evelyn to daycare. (I hate sending her to daycare.) We talked more about our days and our dreams and our lives.

Now Jon gets home between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm, eats dinner, sits down to watch a little TV and decompress from the day, and we're in bed a half hour later. He drifts off to sleep and I watch the news or an infomercial or How The Universe Works, and that is it.

It is kind of nice to have my evenings free again. I can watch embarassing TV shows or work on a knitting project. I can lay around doing nothing at all or wash the dishes or eat potato chips right out of the bag. These are all things I can do with Jon around, of course, but they are things I didn't do with him around. I have started planning an exercise routine for the evenings after Evelyn has gone to bed. These alone-time evenings are nice, but not quite as nice as husband-time evenings.

I suppose it is a good thing that I like to spend time with my husband. I know it is better that he is working and I really wouldn't want it any other way--well, no, I would want him to work normal 9-5 hours if I had my choice--but the readjustment has been a little hard. Come to think of it, when Jon lost his job in the first place, having him around all the time was pretty hard to get used to, too! I guess change is hard no matter what is happening.

We are blessed. We are fortunate. I am not complaining.