3 months in Spokane Washington

Hey there old friend. I took an unintentional leave of absence from the blogging world (both writing and reading) these past few months and now that we're well into the New Year I'm ready to return to this little slice of the internet that I've quite missed.  So where exactly have I been? What have I been up to?

You see I wasn't just absent from the blog, but from our actual physical home.  The husband had a three month away rotation at a hospital in Spokane, Washington and I tagged along. The program put us up in an apartment, I gave my job notice and we drove the five hours over the mountains to eastern Washington for all of October, November and December.

I always feel uncomfortable sharing with the internet when we're going to be out of town, especially when our house is going to be sitting empty for so long. Plus the apartment had little to no internet service so even getting on to my blog was a nightmare (I wont tell you what sort of data overage charges we ran up these past three months....).

So what did I do in Spokane for those three months? That's the question I got a lot because we had no friends or family there and I wasn't working. I admit that I always felt that question was tinged with just a teeny bit of judgment because some days I didn't have a good answer other than "enjoying that stay at home wife life!"

I spent A LOT of one on one time with the dog- seriously he's now officially scared of other humans because he's only interacted with me and T.J. this whole time. We joined the YMCA and I actually found myself enjoying going to the gym (something I'd never ever thought I'd say). I'd mostly just walk on the elliptical while watching Gilmore Girls and Parenthood on my cell phone (the gym had free wifi which was only a large part of my motivation for going) and it was a nice way to get out of the house and feel productive. I read a ton of books. I did a lot of cooking and tried a bunch of new recipes, I also joined a women's bible study at a local church. The eastern part of Washington is so different from where we live and T.J. and I really enjoyed exploring Spokane and finding new favorite restaurants. Oh, and we also got enough snow to last me 5 winters!

Most importantly, though, and the number one reason why I tagged along, I got to see my husband every single day! Before we came out to Spokane he was doing a different away rotation from July-September up in Seattle. While he was able to come home for maybe one day a week, for the rest of the time he was sleeping and staying up in the city. That gets real old after three months. His job in Spokane on the other hand had incredible hours where he was home for dinner every night and on his call days he only had to physically go in to the hospital once or twice so we had most every weekend free. I haven't had this much time with my husband ever! Not even when we were dating.

So maybe there were some days when I was really quite bored, days when I didn't speak to another human until T.J. got home in the evenings, or days when the only "big thing" I'd do was take the dog for a walk and fix dinner.  This time together just the two of us was so precious and wonderful, like a little sabbatical of sorts and it was worth all the data charges in the world.