Mark-less and whiny

It's now officially day 6 of my Mark-less stretch ... And I miss him a whole lot. This week is not as bad as the last week that I worked (partly because I am no longer pms-ing, which keeps my emotions in significantly better check...). But it is still no fun. for us, who were ALWAYS together, the every-other-week thing is beginning to get old. (Which is really bad, since it's only been 2 weeks of working so far...) The only times we've really been apart is back in college, when we were on summer break, and since we've been married, just once when I went on vacation with my mom and my sister. I'm used to seeing him every single day, and it's hard when I can't. I'm tired of my ring finger feeling naked for a week at a time (we can't wear rings at work), and I'm tired of having no one to cuddle in bed when I get home from work, and I'm tired of feeling tired and a bit isolated while I'm at my parents' house, and I just miss him an awful lot.

He misses me too. He says that he doesn't sleep well without me - when I'm at home, Mark hibernates like a bear. He sleeps at least 9 hours every night, and more if I don't wake him up. When I'm gone, and not in the bed with him, he's restless and tosses and turns and only sleeps about 5 or 6 hours. (Which subsequently causes him to take lots of naps during the day. This needs to be resolved soon, or he's never going to get any productive studying done...) I'm pretty sure he's lonely a lot of the time, because he's not really a social person, especially by himself, and he's probably just sort of hole-ing up in the townhouse with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. This makes me sad, because I want him to be happy. I think things will be better when Andy and Suzie move back, but hopefully I'll have a job by then and we'll all be together again :)

I hope my new job works out, so that I can be home with Mark. I want a dayshift position so that I can cook for him when he goes to class, and be home when he gets home, and on my off days, be able to take care of the house adequately. Really, I'd just prefer to be a housewife, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. I would like to be able to take care of him, though. I hate it that he has to make grocery lists and go to the store by himself and do the laundry and wash all the dishes, etc. etc. while I'm gone. I used to consider myself such a "feminist" - when I was in high school, I always thought it was so dumb when women bent over backwards to do stuff that a man is perfectly capable of doing as well (ie. cooking, laundry...) It drove me crazy. But I understand now - it's not that they don't know how (I guess some of them don't, though, which still makes me a bit crazy...) - Mark is perfectly capable of doing all of the aforementioned things, but because I love him, I want to do them for him, because that's a great way for me to serve him. Sort of like I'm perfectly capable of carrying my own bags and opening the door and staining our furniture and banging nails into the wall - but Mark does those things, because he likes to take care of me, and that's his way of serving me.

As hard as this whole process has been so far, it's made me stop and think about marriage, and what it means, and what you should never take for granted. It's given me a greater appreciation for the "give" side of give-and-take, because it's becoming something I strive to do more and more. In the two years that we've been married, I think we've both done a lot of giving (and thus, a fair amount of taking), and for a while, I wasn't focused as much as I should have been on the giving aspect. But I'm finding that it feels so much better to give than to take, particularly to someone who you love so, so much, because you want to do it. And because it ends up being better for the both of you, in the long run. It's taken me a long time, but at this point, I'm really sort of looking forward to the unknown (and for those of you who know me well, this is sort of a shocker.) I'm excited about what the future holds, what will happen After Grad School. I don't know where we'll move, and I don' t know what Mark will be doing or what I will be doing, but I'm really peaceful about the whole thing right now, and I know that God will take care of us. I also know that God will take care of us in the next couple weeks, as we find out if I get to make the permanent move to Birmingham. I hope so. I pray that the job will just fall into my lap. But if it doesn't - life will go on, I think.