Traveling Dad

Nine summers ago I asked my friend Mike Stand what he knew about this cute guy with vintage eyeglasses that I'd seen at shows and parties. It was Craig, of course. Mike seemed to think we would be a good match, but he had three caveats about Craig:

1. he had been married before and remained good friends with his former wife (true)
   
2. he traveled a great deal for his job as a "nuclear scientist for the goverment" (partially true; he's actually a physical chemist at a national lab, but he does travel a lot)
3. (completely untrue and has been deleted from the record)

Numbers 1 and 3 were not a big deal, and for many years neither was number 2. If the timing was right and a conference was someplace glamorous (like Assisi, Italy or Cambridge, England) I would go along as an "accompanying person," and sometimes I would go even if it wasn't glamorous (like the wilds of Long Island or Essen, Germany). Or I'd just stay home, as I did when Craig went to Japan for three weeks or to Boulder on sabbatical for five months.

But this is a baby blog, and the baby has made our being separated a lot less tolerable -- for me at home as a pseudo-single mother, but especially for Craig away from his family. For most of the past year he has managed to stick close to home, but that couldn't last forever -- now he's got four week-long trips in a three-month span. I don't have anything witty to say about this, just that we miss him when he's away.

There's a solution, of course -- haul Isaac along too. We're working our way up to that.