Ah, to be alone again.

To give some history. My husband used to work a nightmarish retail job where he had to be there basically from morning to evening, sometimes not coming home until 7 or 8 PM, and always working Friday and Sunday (and sometimes Saturday). I worked a normal "corporate" job, slinging loan documents about and causing havoc with my bad attitude. I still work a corporate job, but now I sling other stuff, and I still have my bad attitude, but it's toned down a lot since Mateo arrived and my meds kicked in.

Basically I was alone a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean, A LOT. I was lonely. I was sad. I was lonely and sad. I picked up some hobbies that kept me busy, but I was still lonely and sad. I was even more sad when my husband had a day off with me and would constantly be on his cell phone making sure his employees weren't burning down the store and fighting customers. I was probably at the loneliest when the phone would ring at 2 AM and the store's alarm company was calling to tell my husband (the first person on the list to call, of course) that some one just broke into the store, the police have been called, he needs to be there like 15 minutes ago.

Then he got a corporate job, slinging junk and making phone calls, and he has had a regular schedule (give or take days where he's a whopping 15 minutes late getting home, something I can definitely deal with), and is pretty much around all the time now. Well, at least on the weekends he is.

My loneliness is long gone. I have company 24/7, including two annoying and neurotic cats. Now I wish for solitude. I don't want to be lonely, just peaceful and alone. There is a difference.

My husband wanted to go out tonight after work with our work friend, and I was all for it. Why? Because when I got Mateo to sleep, I would have a couple of hours to myself doing what I wanted to do. This time last year, if he had said he wanted to go out after work, which meant I would have to go get Mateo after work, which meant I couldn't go as well, I would be very irate and a tad jealous. I wanted to go out after work too! I wanted to drink a couple of beers and shoot the breeze! I wanted to people watch and make fun of them! I wanted to have some fun with adults!

Then I realized that my tolerance for alcohol is pretty much zilch at this point (over 9 months of not drinking will do that to a gal), I'm tired, I shoot the breeze at work enough as it is, and why people watch when you can write about people...on your blog!

My jealousy soon diminished.

I was looking forward to tonight since the moment we agreed he should go out and I should pick up Mateo. I was going to get that little boy to bed way before 7 PM, have my luxurious two hours or so to read, watch the shows I wanted to watch, blog, fall asleep, listen to music, eat junk food (it is my foolish diet day) - whatever. But especially, I'd be alone. For the most part.

Mateo, of course, had other plans. He was perfectly fine after I picked him up from daycare. He even made a quick pit stop with me at the eye doctor's so I could pick up some contacts to tie me over until my appointment at the end of this month. But as soon as we got inside, he saw a sippy cup, decided he was dying of thirst, and needed water RIGHT NOW, so he flipped out. My time to get him fed and relaxed for the night was limited, so instead of trying to soothe him, I hurried to get stuff put away before I fed him.

Right when we stepped in the door, our phone started ringing. It was my husband asking me to call him back to tell him how Mateo was today, and then he added that he wanted me to look up the BART schedule to see when the last direct train to Fremont was leaving. "If you could do that for me, that would be great...... I love you," he said.

Okay, add that to my list of things to do tonight, I thought. Because trying to get onto my laptop to look up a BART schedule while my child was turning into a real grumpasaurus was not happening at the moment.

My normal routine when getting home is to go into our bedroom and change. When I walked into our bedroom I was greeted with two piles of cat puke. Since I had a screaming toddler on my hands, I couldn't take the time to clean it up.

I grabbed my clothes, went into Mateo's room, changed while he flopped about the floor, grabbed him when I was done, took him into the kitchen and gave him dinner. The food seemed to help him calm down, so when he was finished, I took him into the bathroom to wash his hands and brush his teeth. Then it was PJ time.

We watched Barney (he watched, I surfed the Internet), and when the show was over we went into his room to get ready for bed.

I thought it was going to be easy. He seemed tired. But with his cup of milk he turned into a toddler who just woke up from a nap. All he wanted to do was play and mess around. After a bit, I put my foot down and put him in his crib and left.

I went into our bedroom to write, and listened to Mateo mew. He mewed, then mewed louder, and louder, and then started crying. Lately he's been going poop after we put him down, so I had to go check to make sure he didn't need to be changed. I walked in and he was standing up, crying his little head off.

After a bazillion attempts at trying to get him to calm down, I gave up and gave him more milk. This did the trick and he soon passed out.

When all this was finally done, it was 7:45 PM. My lovely night relatively alone was shot. I wasn't too happy, but what was I going to do. My husband called at bit after 8 PM saying he was in Fremont and was picking up or dinner. Forty minutes later he walked in the door.

So I basically got an hour alone, which is better than nothing, but still.

The topper of the evening was my husband getting mad because I didn't want to watch TV for another 15 minutes and had requested that since it's taken us 20 minutes to watch 7 minutes of 30 Days (pausing to talk), we should just stop it for the evening so I could go to bed. After he got annoyed, I informed him that I can't have a nightlife because I have to get up with Mateo every Saturday and Sunday, and since I never know how long he'll sleep in (average is 5:30 AM), I needed to go to bed early so I wouldn't be so tired in the morning. If he wanted to stay up and watch TV, more power to him, but this lady was tired and ready for bed.

I still don't get the whole watch TV with me thing.

And yes, I cleaned up the cat puke.