My bosses have been gone for two blissful days. By bosses I am not referring to the people who pay me. I am referring to the people who run me: Boy and Girl. They have been at Nana’s and Papa’s house since Monday, eating pancakes and lasagna and building forts in their living room. I can hear it in my parents’ voices that they are ready to bring them back. The question is, are we ready to take them?

Whenever Girl catches Bob and me kissing, she shouts “Romance time! Encore! Encore!” She thinks she is hilarious. Where she got this I have no idea.

Romance times are few and far between at our house. However, with the kids gone, we have not been spending the last two days kissing. We have been spending the last two days doing something far more romantic: we’ve been talking.

Usually we have to stiff-arm the kids to get a word in edgewise with each other. We have these reportorial conversations at dinner where we list all the crap that happened during the day, with very little color commentary around it at all. Just the facts, ma’am.

But in these last two days, we’ve actually been able to express thoughts and feelings to each other in more than quick sound bites. It’s been the best mental vacation we’ve had in a long long time. Bless you, Nana and Papa.

Romance Time comes to a screeching halt tonight. Ready or not, here they come!

My husband e-mails me with a link to a story he wrote about our school district changing its zoning. The upshot is that our kids will probably not go to the junior high and high school I had my heart set on. They will probably go to a junior high and high school with lower scores in crummier buildings with a much higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students.

I call my husband to discuss what we are going to do about this. He has the gall to tell me that we have some time before Boy is ready for junior high and that things could change between now and then.

He also says that if the district goes through with its rezoning plans, we should work to help make the schools better and more equitable for all students. Can you believe that? The nerve of him!

That is not what I want to hear! What I want to hear is, “Baby, don’t worry about it. We will buy a piece of property right next to that school of your dreams and pitch a yurt.”

FYI: A yurt is a round, portable structure that’s very popular in Mongolia. A friend of mine has a beautiful one on her property in Brenham, and I could definitely live in one for seven years while my offspring attend the schools of my dreams.

I haven’t mentioned my yurt idea to Bob yet. He’ll probably further inflame me with more logic and sound reasoning. I absolutely hate it when that happens.

Sometimes when a baby is born and the men gather out back to smoke cigars in celebration, I’ll slip outside and ask for a puff. One of them will laugh and hand me his cigar. To them, seeing me smoke is as funny and odd as watching a dog play poker.

Last night, my husband fired one up in the backyard as we sat in cracked plastic lawn chairs, watching the kids splash in the baby pool. They’re way too big for it, but they’ve concocted this game where they stand on a lawn chair, swing on a trapeze bar and then land in the pool. It’s a lot tamer than it sounds.

As we watched them sporadically play and bicker, we split the cigar, passing it back and forth. The conversation flowed just as easily. We didn’t talk about property taxes or the tire that needs air. We talked about all the blogs we liked and writing in general. He told me I was writing the best draft of my novel he had ever read, and he’s read them all.

The lightening bugs came out and we shouted, “Look kids – see the farfallies?” That’s what Boy called fireflies when he was little.

Later I thought, “We should do that more often,” and then I remembered, oh yeah, smoking is bad for you. I started worrying about the effects on my lungs and if the evening cigar had taken any years off the back of my life.

Then I decided I didn’t care. It was worth it.

I am secure in my marriage mainly because I know my husband will never leave me for a younger woman. Hot young chicks remind him too much of his beautiful oldest daughter. If I catch him glancing at another woman, I just say, “She looks just like B.,” and that’s like throwing verbal cold water on his nether regions.

If another woman does snag him away, it will be an older one who has kidnapped him to make him her boy toy. Older women LUV Bob. He has a fan club of older ladies in California who think he looks like Clint Eastwood. He certainly has the hairline.

I will never leave Bob because he cares about melty beads, as he explains on his blog.

I asked him to write this story on my blog, but he respectfully declined. He’s not enough of a Mr. Mom to post on Motherguilt. At least, not yet. I’m working on him.