A new normal?

Although I'm still not at all used to not living with hubby, I am becoming more accustomed to our weekend patterns....

Thursday evening and Friday we play and have some fun together. Saturday we intersperse work and play, and Sunday we break up our work with occasional play. It isn't a bad pattern, if only we also had the weeks together.

Next weekend is the first debate trip of the season. It will be nice to see old debate friends again -- although one of my friends is no-longer coaching -- and I will miss her... What is sad is that on our debate circuit, there is only one woman I can think of who has been around longer than I have -- one of my Red State pals, and she's not on the road very often at all... it really is time for me to end the debate addiction. It will also be odd to be there without hubby. I've done some tournaments without him, but not many. This will be the first year he hasn't been doing a decent amount of travelling with me. I guess I'll just have to call him to decompress -- he got me into this coaching thing, he can at least talk me down from smacking an obnoxious teenager once on a while.

Hubby will come home the following week -- we'll do pretty much the same thing we did this weekend... except we'll have to find something else to do in place of the golf -- I suspect petting the cats will take a chunk of that time, as will hanging with Brain.

Due to debate trips and hubby's fall break, I won't be back in Red State on my own until early November. The next time I come to my other home, I'll have a few debaters with me and we'll be all business. It will be their third tournament, and it will be a pretty big one for them. Someone will crash on the very comfortable couch I'm sitting on right now while others take the livingroom couch, the bed in the basement or the extra room upstairs. It will be kind of weird having this house full of my current team, most of whom don't even know hubby all that well. This is a house designed for company and with 3.5 bathrooms, I'm sure we'll all make it to the tournament both clean an on-time.

Next time I'm here on a personal visit it will be a bit different around here then -- less green, more brown. A real chill in the air and old, sad, frozen Jack-O-lanterns around the housing development. If we want to hit any golf balls, we might have a chance to go to the driving range on a warm sunny afternoon, but the courses will probably be closed or on winter restrictions by then. My new clubs will have to wait until spring for momma to come play with them... sigh.

After that trip, will be our anniversary, Thanksgiving and my birthday -- and then the end of the semester... wow.