Speaker 1 (0s): Okay, bows and bow ties. So look, you are gonna to, excuse me, I'm sitting at this train crossing, so if you hear any, I don't know, background noise, you know what's going on. So I've gotten a taste of what it's like to almost empty nest. So my oldest is away at college, many of you know that. And my twins are away at a county slash school sponsored outdoor school activities.
So that's for the week. And so it, it leaves me with one child who by the way, does not talk to us. It's like we barely know he's there. And we, we tend to Paula's name. We're like, Hey, do you like us? Do you know us? With that being sad, it's, it's only been one day and I don't know, I, I, you know, you, you think about, you dream about, you envision the days when you're like, I'll be glad when the kids grow up And they leave.
Well, getting a taste of that. It's different when you choose to go away versus when now they are pulled away and I'm like, I'm not sure exactly if I'm prepared. Now, when my oldest went off to college, I was incredibly just sad. I was overwhelmed, I was happy, I was a lot of things, but I still had kids at home. But when most of my kids were gone, I still how quiet the house was, and I enjoyed it immensely.
but I also was like, holy cow. Because normally I would be running and gunning to the various different sports activities. So basically we have our week to ourselves. My, the child that's home does play sports, but he's not on a travel or club team, but he does play sports. So his practices don't start up until I think next week.
I can't remember where I'm going with this is, this was a precursor to how I need to think about how to structure my life. What this made me think about was, you know how when people are married or in these longstanding relationships and then the kids grow up and then the adults in the relationship, the parents or whatever, they don't know what to do with themselves. They don't know who to talk to. They don't know how to communicate.
They don't know each other. Now, last night, my husband and I, we actually were like, we were sitting together. I don't know why we are so silly, like laughing at a show that he, we, we are really shady towards each other when it comes to the shows that we watch. Like I don't really watch the shows, but I'm like in the same area, but I'll comment and troll him and vice versa. So it pleased me to know that we still enjoyed each other's company, but it was an eyeopener in terms of day in and day out.
What does this mean? What does this mean? Because as you go through these various stages of life and your children go off and do their own thing, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my husband? It makes me think of how when our parents have been widowed, what is that like for them when they've been with someone for so for so long and no longer have that significant other, they've gone through several stages.
So it's just really like, kind of like, it was almost like a little eye opener, like a little glimpse into the future of, Hey, what does this mean for you? Are you prepared for when your children leave? Like we, we talk about logically what that means and things we wanna do and stuff like that. But then to have that night of wow, like almost all of the kids are out of the house. We have no outstanding sports activities.
They, they, let me just rephrase, or, okay, what am I saying? The activities are still going on. It's just that my twins have a requirement to attend outdoor school. Okay. And because of that, I mean, I could have picked them up for activities, but most parents don't. There's a lot of things going on at, at this outdoor school, you know, life skills, responsibility, all kinds of stuff. And, they get like community service hours for it. But where we live, the the, when you hit sixth grade, you're required to do certain things and it gives you certain community service hours and everything like that.
But it's for the week. But it was a glimpse into what I needed to consider. What did that mean for me? How, how are my nights gonna be structured? What am I gonna do with my husband? Right? Like how do we navigate this now? He was content. He was like, Hey, I'm good, you know, and I was good being with him and, and we were laughing, but in the same token, I was like, you have nothing to do.
Like, we didn't plan for anything 'cause we were prepared to do nothing. But he hit me that like, we had nothing to do because we always have something I think the thing was, I like having nothing to do when it's me planning the nothing to do or when I have control over it versus when it's not me In my mind, that made sense anyway. I just wanted to like just have that little conversation real quick. Because I was, I don't know, it just got me thinking.
It got me thinking, you know, oftentimes when you get out on these apps, when we talk about relationships or whatever or whatever it is that people wanna talk about, right? They always wanna talk about the negative. But what I don't see is I don't see the people who are in relationships talking about what happens when you're going through a punitive trans transition. So although we're now full blown into empty nesting, it definitely hit me yesterday.
Like my kids are getting older. My oldest is already, you know, doing his thing, you know, going to school and stuff like that. And in a certain number of years we are going to be true retired people, or at least empty nesters. Do we know how to empty nest. Now granted years from now, we'll also be more tired too, right? And I think there's gonna be parts of that. We're gonna welcome more. But everyone keeps telling me, you're gonna miss it.
You're gonna miss it, you're gonna miss it. And last night, although I did not want to be running around I was texting a couple of friends who were at practice and stuff like that. I, I I, I didn't miss the running around, but it definitely kind of like hit me. It just hit me like, holy cows, this what this is like when like almost all the kids are outta the house or the kids are outta the house and it's kind of like quiet and there's no, yeah, it was just, yeah, it was just something to think about.
I don't know if anybody has any experience with that. I would, I would be curious to, to know like how did you manage that? It was starting to talk to me. He was getting next to me and then my husband was getting on me like, the kids are fine. I'm like, but did they eat enough? I mean, but you know, I'm like asking all these questions because I'm so used to being preoccupied with everything else. Child. I wouldn't even know.
I don't, I don't know what this means. I don't know what I'm gonna do But. anyway, if anybody has any, any information on how to handle that, that would be great.
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