FaMilY TimE

Tonight Sky begins another outage at the nuclear plant. The easiest explanation of the term 'outage' is they stop the unit from producing electricity, discard the spent fuel, make any reapairs/upgrades, and refuel, and bring the unit back online and begin producing electricity again. It's a very long process that requires 'all hands on deck' working non-stop. Well, a nuclear plant requires non-stop work regardless. But, the hours do change and can be hard on families. Sky will be working 4 on, 1 off - which means he'll work 4 days in a row and off one. However, days is misleading - my husband will be working nights. These are 12 hour shifts, of which everyone, in many jobs across the world know that you always arrive early for work - in some jobs, earlier than others. Add that to the fact we chose to live nearly an hour away from his job - and you've got some pretty long days(nights). The routine will be such that he sleeps until anywhere between 2 and 4pm. He will cut out some of his sleep to go work out on this shift because it keeps him energized during long nights. I can understand that. Then, he leaves for work. Know that the big boys (middle school), if they don't have a game or practice, arrive home at 3:30pm and the little guy doesn't get home until 4:20pm. So, they will not see him in the afternoons - the little guy, not at all. The big boys - a few minutes. Then, he'll arrive home in the am around 7:30, maybe a little later and go, almost directly, to bed. The big boys leave at 6:30am and the little guy leaves for the bus at 8am. So, whereas the big boys can see their dad a few minutes in the after noon, the little one gets a few minutes in the am. 4 days? That's not bad. No. except on night shift fo so long you can't come off nights just for one day - it's impossible. So, Sky will remain on this work at night/sleep during the dya schedule until the outage is over - sometime around Christmas but if history repeats itself - well into the new year. During this time the kids get real ansy and frustrated. Soooo - last night we spent a little quality family time with dad. I went and got wings from The Bar, we all ate at the table and had conversations. Then, we cleaned up and all played Yahtzee together - and you know what? It was a whole lot of fun. After that we hooked up SingStar and sang until bed. We didn't go anywhere and managed to have more fun at home. So, I think we'll implement this on the nights that he doesn't have to leave so early for work because he's off. My point of this whole blog post is: If I can manage one out of every two off nights for family time - hopefully that will be enough that all of our minds, attitudes, and frustrations are kept in check. I know though, that occasionally Sky might need to go hang out by himself or have some fun at a bar with 'friends.' It's a tough time of the year we're embarking on. So, wish us luck that we get through it without any major debacles and tears (though the tears would most likely be my own). Sigh. Ready, set, GO!