While The Wife is Away

Sometimes Robyn leaves me all by my lonesome.  It's usually to visit family.  This time was one of those times.  She flew to California to babysit our twin toddler nephews for a few days.  (She's an epic babysitter.  There was not a single person with her qualifications within a 700 mile radius.)

Every time Robyn goes out of town, people ask me, "What are you going to do while she's gone?" or afterward, "What did you do while she was gone?"

Well, the simple answer is, "Not much."

Mainly, I do a lot of reading.

I make sure to be as precious as possible when I read.

But there are a few things that are important to note about when my wife is 700 miles away.

1. There is no one to dispute that just because something says "Star Wars" on it, doesn't mean it's amazing.

If it says, "Star Wars" you just buy it.  You can ask questions later.

It turns out that Star Wars cereal looks like Lucky Charms and tastes like Trix.  But it has tiny Tie Fighters, Yodas and lightsabres, so it's clearly awesome.

Don't you just feel The Force?

2.  There is no one that makes me kill spiders.

Here's the thing about spiders.  They eat insects that we like less than spiders.  So I consider them to be friends.  Robyn considers them to be incomprehensible horrors.  I noticed a spider perched on the wall on Thursday.  He was still there Sunday morning, because he knew we were friends.  Unfortunately, he should have hid himself because I had to terminate him in preparation for Robyn's return.

3.  There is no one to impress

I usually make Robyn breakfast on Sunday mornings.  It's a tradition that we enjoy.  She gets to sleep in a little bit, and I get to enjoy her happy face when she wakes up to something yummy.  My cooking generally does not include baking.  And while Robyn does not ask to be impressed, I do like to make sure that what I make is something she'll enjoy.  I thought it would be fun to try to make muffins from scratch.  What better time to try it than when Robyn is away so that if I epicly fail, she never has to know?

I got the batter all made.  (I was impressed that I got this far.)

I think I probably filled the individual cups a little high because the muffins merged together.

The hardest part was getting them out of the tins.  Many muffins died to bring us this breakfast.

The good news was that I didn't care what the muffins looked like.  They still tasted great.

I totally didn't eat the ones that survived the reaping from the tins.  Thus Robyn could come home to these and be totally impressed.

So there you have it.  That's what I do while Robyn is away.  It's safe to say that I have accomplished more in other years.  But I'm happy with how I passed my time.

A Week of Bachelorhood

Last week, I was without a wife for the entire week.

Robyn's family had been in town the previous week, and so Robyn took the opportunity to ride back with her Dad to California so that she could visit friends and family back there, and most importantly to spend some quality time with her aging grandmother.

I didn't really have any plans to do anything while she was gone.  I mostly figured I'd read a whole bunch of books.  (That's what I do when she's home, so I figured I'd do it even more when she's gone.)

Naturally, I read an issue of Astounding Science Fiction from 1938.  It nearly disintegrated in my hands.

In addition to reading, it turned out there were lots of people willing to spend quality time with me, and keep me busy.

So here are a few of the things I spent time doing.

I went on a super sweet hike to Stewart Falls with Jen and Todd.

Look how precious we were

It was a super fun hike.  I've done that hike at least 3 or 4 times before, but it's the first time I've done it since losing lots of weight.  It turns out it's a way easier hike than I remember.  (I should have worn a 70 pound backpack to simulate what it would be like to hike it back then.) Here are a few bonus pictures from the hike:

I loved the thick vegetation.  It almost felt like we were in Hawaii or somewhere not Utah.

I told Jen and Todd to look precious.

This spider was weird.  It looked like a black widow but it was white.  I shall give it the highly scientific name of white widow.

This butterfly was just taking a sip from the flowers.

The trees provided a nice window to get a first glimpse of the falls.

It's important to take a selfie at the falls.

What up Stewart Falls!

It turns out I like hiking, so I take lots of pictures.  Who would have thought?

On a different night, I had a very special man date.  Matt and I saw The Edge of Tomorrow.  I really liked it.  It turns out our last man date was to see Oblivion.  We just like to see Tom Cruise Sci-fi movies together.

Look how precious we were in the theater.

I spent a whole afternoon organizing my books.  They're almost 90% organized now.  All authors are together within themselves and there are even genres together.  It's amazing.

I even got to see my little Bro and my future nephew.  Don't they totally look alike?

Of course, the most time consuming thing all week was that my Mom put me to work on several different nights scanning pictures of my grandparents.  It was actually really cool.  It was a lot of work, though, because most of them were glued into albums and so I had to scan whole pages and then use Photoshop to separate them into multiple images.  I'm still not actually finished with that task.  But, I did already write about my favorite pictures here.

I'd say it was a successful week of bachelorhood, but I'm glad to have my wife back.  Being married is way better.