Panama Eve

I just got back from dropping off my wife at the airport for her two month tropical sojourn with her family in Panama.  While I understand her need to spend time with her aging parents (and coincidentally escape from cold weather) it doesn’t make this annual ritual any easier.  After thirty one years I’ve kind of gotten used to having her around; even with the varied challenges she can present at times.  I think this is her way of paying me back a little for all the deployments I made earlier in our marriage when I left her with two young children for months at a time to go play around with well armed friends.

Yesterday saw the culmination of the packing experience with my wife leveraging new packing technologies to get the most out of the limited space a suitcase provides.  She was using vacuum sealed bags to shrink wrap her wardrobe and transferring as many heavy items as she could that might wait two weeks for my suitcase.  I may end up traveling with two pair of underwear and an extra t-shirt of my own. 

My Lone Contribution

I performed my lone contribution to the effort by using her portable scale to weigh each bag.  She literally danced a little jig (well maybe salsa) when she learned she was underweight on both of her checked bags.  She immediately went in search of discarded items to add back in.  It was almost embarrassing for her not to be near the weight limit.

We had a very nice dinner together sandwiched around two last shopping errands (it never ends).  She then spent almost the entire evening on the phone as various friends and family members called from around the world to wish her safe travels.  I would have been a  little upset about our loss of time together except there was a national championship college football game on to assuage my hurt feelings and I graciously took one for the team.

I would say the early morning trip to Boston was through the schizophrenic weather of New England but that would be an insult to schizophrenia.   Yesterday we had temperatures in the mid 50’s which removed a lot of the snow cover.  Temperatures nose dived overnight and it was a balmy 7 degrees when I backed the car out this morning.  It’s never a good thing when the temperatures more than triple in a fifty mile drive as it was nearly 23 degrees in wind swept Logan Airport.

The Driveway This Morning - Compare to Yesterday's Photo

The airlines must have noticed my wife’s suitcase packing prowess because they threw her a curve ball when she was checking in; they weighed her carry on bag!  This robbed her of one of her go-to strategies of packing all the heavy stuff into her carry on bags and then hope for a mesomorphic fellow passenger to lift the bag into the overhead compartment.  We were exiled to the side while she frantically repacked some of the heavy stuff into her underweight checked bags – she was not happy that someone changed the rules on her.

Just After Her Traumatic Re-Packing Experience
Divesting herself of the Warm Coat and Shoes She Won't Need for a Couple Months

I’ve had a bunch of fellow married guys come up to me and say I must be psyched to have all the freedom attendant to a lack of spousal supervision but I’m too set in my ways to see this as a good thing.  I miss her already.  Then there’s the billy goat factor to consider.  We had a saying in the Army about a multi-appendaged billy goat.  I won’t explain it here but the Army guys know what I’m talking about. It’s going to be a long two months.

And Poof! Just Like Kaiser - She's Gone!