My Person

   I miss Sweetness.  The "Outage" started this weekend.  What is an outage? Hmmm, I'm not sure I know what an outage is, but here's my understanding of it:  An outage is a set number of days that certain parts of the power plant will be shut down for work to be completed in.  Sounds simple enough.  Plan the work, shut some stuff down, work and return to normal.  Not so much.  We won't be seeing Brad much from now until April twentieth.  He'll work more hours than any one man should in a day, sleep a couple hours then go right back to it.  He'll be at Plant Scherer more than one hundred hours a week.  When I hear people complain about their eight hour work day I sit on my hands to keep from accidentally punching them in the throat.  Thank God for OSHA guidelines, if not for them Brad would work several twenty four hour shifts in a row. 
    I call Brad my Sweetness.  Sounds better than my person, but my person is what he is.  I never think of him as my best friend, he's more like my right hand.  He's my constant, and what a strange match we are.  I was reading a friends blog this morning and it made me smile.  My friend Wendie has cancer and is fighting through chemo.  She wrote that she was falling in love with her husband all over again.  It made me remember the weeks I spent in the hospital and how that made me fall in love with Sweetness all over again.  If I ever doubted my husband's love for me all questions were answered in May of  2009. 
     I miss my person when he works all the time.  We did get to go to a fantastic party last night and stay at a beautiful winery.  It was great and I needed time with my husband.  As soon as we got home Sweetness was out the door to work.  He'll work til midnight tonight, sleep "late" til six and then go right back.  He'll work eighteen hour days for the next two months, and I'll miss him.   He is a work-a-holic, but it's not that simple.  He's not working like this because he likes it, it's necessary.  Apparently the city of Macon will not volunteer to go with out electricity for a month or two so PCL's crews can work a normal fifty hour week and have time for their families.
     The next couple months are going to be hard.  Our little family will be member short most of the time.  Turner will be starting baseball and Brad won't be around to practice with.  Dinners will be served to a table of three and singing God our Father will sound empty without Brad's voice in unison with ours.  The little time Sweetness is home he will be burnt out, tired and his mind will still be at work.

     I am looking forward to April twenty first, when I get my person back and life is back to a version of normal.  I want to plan a camping trip and steal Sweetness from work and the kids from school.  I want fires at night, fishing, and just being together as a family.   So the count down has begun, seventy four days til I get my Sweetness back.