the last week

My husband blew into town today for a grand total of three hours and twenty minutes, bearing gifts of steaming piles of fetid laundry and a shooting schedule that has, yet again, changed for the worse. Today was his one day off this week and even though the intelligent thing for him to do would be to hang out at the hotel and get some rest, he couldn't . That silly little job he's trying to hold down here keeps getting in the way.

The location on this film is in the middle of absolutely nowhere, somewhere on a prairie somewhere in the middle of Kansas. They have no internet access. I didn't know hotels even existed anymore with no internet. The upshot, of course, is that he can't really get anything done there for his "real job" and has had to make the long haul home to get caught up on his "day off."

The shoot is having more than it's share of problems. Five weeks into a six week schedule tempers tend to run a little hot. Problems that were small three weeks ago do not look not quite as small anymore. Six days a week of sixteen to eighteen hour days has taken it's toll on everyone. The Film Geek sounds ragged, homesick, wanting this damned thing to be done. Seven more days. The countdown has begun.

It's hard to say exactly why this is such a pain. The reason it's a pain for him is pretty clear, but it's starting to wear on us at home, too. I've finally realized tonight that not only does it not help when he's here for a matter of hours, it almost makes it worse. The kids and I are in a routine when he's gone, and things go really smoothly. When he's home for this brief a time it just gets the kids all worked up. I don't have any problems with him traveling so much, as he's always done it. I manage just fine on my own, thank you very much. We've never had the kind of marriage where we're joined at the hip and feel we have to do everything together. Thank god. I see people like that where they obviously have good marriages and I think (for about six seconds) how nice it would be to do everything with your spouse and spend all your free time together and I get carried away on this train of thought until I remember that if we did that we'd be divorced. And then the whole thing would be moot.

So here I am for another week with a constant background noise of video games and arguing and people saying things like heymomcanihaveasleepoverandareweoutofchipsandithinkthedogpukedonyourbedwhycan't
wehavechinesebuffetfordinnerit'sbeenfourmonthsandallwe'vehadtoeatiscerealdoyouknowwhere
mycleatsaredidyouhearmeohnoiforgotmyhomeworkatschoolithinkihavedogcraponmyshoesidon't
knowhowthatgotbrokenididn'tdoititmusthavebeenmybrotheryouknowhowheisit'snotmyfaultatall


and my husband is off to The Little Film Shoot on the Prairie with clean clothes and a goodie bag full of home baked chocolate chip cookies and poppyseed bread and even a handmade card that the kids made to brighten up his hotel room. Of course he's not supposed to eat any of this so if he drops dead this week I'm going to feel really bad. I would've sent steamed broccoli but it would have made his room smell really bad by Wednesday or Thursday.


On the other hand the smell might have reminded him of home.