The boys are on the road right now. 10 day road trip. Just left this morning. So that leaves me here in a new city, no friends, no job, not much going on, all alone. I AM SO EXCITED!!

I have such a long '2Do' list; go to the gym, go to the park, go hiking in the state forest, find a lake with a beach, find more parks, scrapbooking, Pilates, wedding research, catch up on reality TV, get an updated budget...ahhh...I love it.

The boys leaving on long road trips have been a chief complaint I have heard over the years among baseball girlfriends and wives. Not me. No complaints here. Rather than looking at these long stretches of alone time as days spent lonely and bored, I look forward to the chance to hang out with “me”.

When you live with someone, you become "us". It's a hybrid of the both of you. As much as I love dear Baseball boy, like any relationship, there is a good deal of compromise we must do to accommodate one another. It's a subtle, unconscious accommodation that you hardly realize is happening at the time. The compromises create less fighting and resentment, and it becomes routine. And years later you wonder if that small part of you is lost forever, or you have "changed" to be in this relationship, losing your true self.

That’s all pretty heavy sounding stuff and when you hear my examples you might think I am a bit over-dramatic. But it all adds up! Like what you watch on television. My boy wants to watch ESPN baseball- of course he does-do I? No! Give me reality TV. So we compromise. We watch Law and Order. It's just a show we both enjoy. I love enjoying the great outdoors, but due to 3 knee surgeries Baseball boy gets pain going for long walks, and also tells me "I get paid 8 hrs a day to be outside, I don’t want to be outside anymore". So we compromise, sometimes I will get a 10 minute trip out of him.

But when he is gone, and It’s just me...I get to be selfish me. I get to re-discover myself and find out what the authentic me likes to do. I am not living off his time schedule. We don’t share a car when he goes away, so I can take my time at the gym, I can watch re-runs I have seen a million times before, I can delay going outside until its the perfect temperature before dusk, and I can get lost in the city and not have someone telling me I should have been paying attention. (“I was paying attention my dear- to the beautiful building we just passed, the Mississippi river that I have never seen before, and the gorgeous church on the corner- streets signs? Who can pay attention to those little things when there is so much else to look at!”)

Baseball wives tend to take on a mourning type of attitude when their men leave, and I wonder if they are not approaching this whole road trip business from the wrong perspective. I have tried to share my viewpoint before but get a “I love my man so much I cannot function without him and maybe you don’t love Baseball boy enough” attitude. But that’s a whole other topic…the psychological justifications a woman will put herself through to “prove” to the world and herself the “real” reasoning she is dating her Baseball man.

Anyhoo…I know this is a finance blog, but I just wanted to celebrate my upcoming alone time and tell you all I hope this weeks blogs are extra long because I have plenty of time to do commenting now that no one is in the apartment asking me when I will get off the computer already!