At 4:30 this morning I woke up to Dolly in her crate sighing. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve heard a dog sigh. I was determined to ignore her because I knew if I got up with her, that would be the end of my sleep for the night (morning?) and I needed to be up before 6 to get ready to be at church by 7:30. But after ten minutes of sighing, she started “yipping”. So about 4:45 I finally gave up the idea of getting more sleep and got up to let her out of her crate and both girls out to the yard. Where is the Great Hunter while this is going on you ask? Well, the Great Hunter is again doing one of the things he enjoys most: hunting with his son. Sigh.

I swear hunting and going to our camping lot is about the only thing he really puts any effort into. Don’t get me wrong, he does help with projects around the house when he’s asked (he did hold the ladder for me while I put the Christmas lights on the gutters), but that’s about it. Sigh.

The moles in our backyard have totally destroyed it and his only comment is “yeah, we need to do something about it” and “after all that work WE put into getting the yard nice this spring”. Wait, what? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, because I don’t recall there being any “we” in all the work that I did in the yard. Sigh.

I’m pretty much a Grinch this year. I’m not sure why. I spent one whole morning last week wrapping presents and each time I wrote the tag “from Gma and Gpa” (because ‘Grandma and Grandpa’ doesn’t fit on those little tags, and truth be known, I’m too lazy to write it out) I got a little irritated. I chose the item. I shopped for it. I paid for it. I wrapped it, but he gets his name on the package too. Not fair! The Great Hunter had always taken the easy way when it came to Christmas gifts for his children by just writing a check. Several years ago when his son started coming to our house for Christmas, I told him he had to buy presents for his granddaughter because she needed to have presents to open with everyone else. I even make him wrap his own presents although one year he conned the granddaughter into doing it for him. He’s always been generous in buying for me but I have to tell him what I want and exactly where to get it. Sigh.

When I was working full time and still had children at home, I always said what I needed was a housewife (a purely platonic one). The Great Hunter still works fifteen hours a week, but I would gladly exchange working fifteen hours a week for someone else doing the shopping, cooking and cleaning for me so I wouldn’t have to do it. Several months ago, I told The Great Hunter that I wouldn’t make dinner on Tuesday nights any longer and that he would be responsible for it. He accepted that but it only lasted for about two weeks, then it went by the wayside. A couple weeks ago, I sat in the living room until 6 p.m. (we usually eat about 5:30 because old people eat early and we’re old) to see if he would come out of his room, but he didn’t. I finally broke down and fixed dinner. I swear someday I’m going make dinner, sit down at the table, and start eating without telling him. I wonder how long it would take him to come out of his room to see if there’s something for dinner. Sigh.

So anyway, I went to our Choir Christmas concert at church this morning by myself and for a brief time I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Our choir is pretty fantastic and most of us have sung together for twenty-plus years. Our Christmas program includes a mini-orchestra of strings and brass and drums. And it was beautiful and the Great Hunter missed it. Sigh.

Now I’m the one sighing. Maybe someone should let me out.