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"I always say it&amp;#039;s the things I love about Rex, not what I don&amp;#039;t, that make me the happiest in my marriage. I can&amp;#039;t say I&amp;#039;m forever in a perfect state of bliss. Far from it! But more often than not, my irritations stem from focusing on the things I can&amp;#039;t change, rather than appreciating the items I wouldn&amp;#039;t want to change. (And let&amp;#039;s not forget that I&amp;#039;m far from an easy creature to live with myself. Unless, of course, buckets of thrift sale treasures, mis-matched coffee cups, stock piles of Yuban and decorating for Halloween in September is your thing.) With Rex gone last week on business, I was reminded only too well how much he brings to this family. I&amp;#039;d have missed him anyway, but last week was particularly hairy. First there was school starting angst to deal with. (Not for my kids... they&amp;#039;re happy as clams in high tide. The upheaval was all me! My babies are growing! They don&amp;#039;t need me! And I do mean, they don&amp;#039;t need me as they informed me from the hallway in first and second grade, &amp;quot;Mama, we love you! But don&amp;#039;t walk us to class. We&amp;#039;re big kids now!&amp;quot;) Oh... okay. If they&amp;#039;re so grown up, why was I crying? Perhaps it was going home to an empty house.  Perhaps it was the stress of driving across town to a meeting only to get lost and almost not make it. It could of been the insanity of the first PTA meeting of the year where, no matter how much I say I don&amp;#039;t care about politics and am just doing it for the kids education, I&amp;#039;m inevitably left feeling like I either don&amp;#039;t do enough or don&amp;#039;t do it well enough and frankly just don&amp;#039;t care about if the theme for the October pep rally is Fifties Funk or Jungle Adventure. (Though I do love the coffee and the treats. And the people who do run it? Fantastic folk. It&amp;#039;s just that I suck. My apologies in advance to LAUSD for my general disorganized mama-self.) I also started a new blog about transforming my childhood home. It&amp;#039;s stirring up crazy emotions of transitioning from daughter to friend to caretaker. (My 80-year-old mom hardly needs caretaking, but her house certainly does. Apparently I&amp;#039;m the only in the family brave...or perhaps nuts enough... to tackle this project. Please stop by and say hello. I could use all the support and advice I can get.) Combined with a feature for our local paper on gluten free living and a few bloody noses, life was far from the &amp;quot;Letting Go&amp;quot; attitude I&amp;#039;m attempting to live by. It was a go-go-GO/never stop/woops out of bread again kind of week. So you can only imagine how relieved I was to see Rex&amp;#039;s salt and pepper noggin beaming through the neon green cobwebs of our cranberry red door Friday afternoon. Peering eyes from the bright blue Super Shuttle be damned. I swung open the door and jumped my briefcase-laden spouse like our kids do when he comes home from work. Except instead of two little 40 pound bodies he found himself with a 180 pound six-footer wrapped around him like a barnacle on a pier. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t ever leave here again,&amp;quot; I cried emphatically into his ear. &amp;quot;I won&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; he promised, embracing me with all his might. &amp;quot;Because you missed me as much as I did you?&amp;quot; I sighed. &amp;quot;That,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;And how could I leave? I won&amp;#039;t even be able to budge from this lawn. Girl, you are HEAVY!&amp;quot; Fair enough. It was a bit of a low blow, but he was home. I love Frank (Frankenstein pictured above) but Rex has nicer eyes. The fact that Rex also has a pulse and doesn&amp;#039;t need to be blown up on a daily basis helps also. Well, not blown up in that way. Good night! Rex is home! Hooray! Happy Sunday to all! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/a3221/home-sweet-home/>