Painful Separation

This past weekend I accompanied a group of friends to a cabin in Lycoming County. We have taken to calling it our annual Men's Retreat. Everyone met at our house Friday afternoon. I left work early, and on the way home stopped in to bid Amy farewell at her work. It was rather painful.

We stopped at Sheetz and McDonalds and Giant on the way and stocked up on foodstuffs. We sat around and ate and talked and sang (we forgot to take a music box along, so we made our own music, complete with lots of cackling) and played games and shot our guns and slept all Saturday afternoon. We argued with the propane; it did not want to burn steadily, but it would occasionally light off when enough came out of the nozzle. Ker-thump. The good news is that the oven did eventually light, and we were able to make egg casserole for brunch and lasagna for supper.

All the married guys complained all weekend how much we missed our wives, and the single guys listened with great wonder. By Sunday morning the loneliness was at an all-time high, and we set a new record of 10:30 AM for leaving the cabin Sunday. We made it home again by 2:00, so I was MIA for exactly 47 hours. A very joyful reunion took place at that time.

A friend from work tells me he avoids home, because his wife makes him clean. I want to tell him to clean the house for her, and perhaps she won't make him do it.

Quite a number of people have told me over the years that when a fella gets married, he loses contact with the friends he had in his single days. My old friends and I are determined to get together at least a couple times a year and relive our glory days. (We'll try not to call ourselves "The Gang.") This past weekend was one of those times. Methinks the glory days are right now, at home, with my best friend ever.