B Shift Blogging

The internet just ate my post, so I will attempt to recreate it. We're not talking about re-painting The Last Supper here, but it was an hour's worth of work down the cyber-drain. Although I've been ridiculed for saying it before, I will repeat it here: phooey.

What I was saying before my slate was so rudely wiped clean, was that you might notice an unusual pattern in my blogging schedule: I normally post a new something-or-other every third day, or for you fire fighters out there, every B shift. This is because my husband is a fire captain on B shift (he is at the fire station from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. the next morning every third day), which leaves me completely unsupervised for 24 hours at a time.

This is apparently difficult for some couples to adapt to, as evidenced by the high divorce rate among fire fighters. Personally, I loooove it. That doesn't mean that I spend Drew's days off grinding my teeth, waiting for him to toddle off back to work again. Heck, I schedule my armpit shaving around his days off, and if that doesn't say love, then I guess I don't understand the concept.

However, these 24 hours gives me all the time I need to take long baths, write, paint, listen to NPR, and watch art-house movies (not all on the same day! I'm not that much of a pseudo-intellectual bohemian slacker) without any guilt about spending us-time shut up in my studio or making Drew read too many subtitles. Bonus: I get to eat stuff that Drew doesn't like. When my son Dean is around, we can order Domino's pizza. Drew thinks Domino's is the McDonald's of pizza and thus beneath him (actually, Pizza Hut is the McDonald's of pizza), while it makes me feel all sentimental about college days, ordering pizza when we should have spent our money on, oh, maybe rent, or soap.

Every once in a while, Drew will talk about his future in the fire department, which will eventually lead to a "white shirt" (slightly derogatory term for chiefs and under-chiefs) and an eight-hour day. I am not sure I will cope well with this change. In addition to my current level of unsupervised free time in which I can play BT or Fat Boy Slim and dance around like a fool if I so choose, we are both spoiled with a lot of week-day time to do things that other people have to squeeze into crowded weekends.

In addition, Drew's week-day time off allows him to make a lot of calls that normal people could make all by themselves, but which sends me into cold sweats (hence the name of the blog). It will be much more awkward for me, for instance, to have to call him at work to make a doctor's appointment for me, and then call me back to tell me when to show up...

This all in explanation for my blogging schedule. And to give women one more reason to lust after fire fighters besides those beefcake calendars. And yes, my husband is the calendar variety and not the walrus variety (an explanation for which I will leave for a future posting). See you in three days.