My wife Kristen loves these Nordic Noir books and TV shows. Sometimes she muses about living in a rustic cabin somewhere near the Arctic Circle. I’ll catch a glimpse of what she is watching and see a burly, bearded man pouring a cup of tea for some crestfallen fellow who apparently hasn’t slept for weeks. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s sad. They have tea. I’m not sure I get it.
Last year when she suggested we plan a trip to Norway for February when the best deals could be had on flights and accommodations, I immediately ran through the cons in my mind: (1) It will be bitter cold. (2) The food will be weird. (3) It’s expensive already and double if we both go. (4) There is no guarantee we’d see the Northern Lights. So I creatively replied, “maybe this would be a good trip to do with your sisters?” She ran with that offer, so quickly in fact that now I question whether it was ever my idea to begin with.
The patient folks at Zappos will confirm it took Kristen nine attempts to find just the right boots to withstand the elements. But wouldn’t you know it, their trip coincided with a fake Spring of sorts and for the most part the weather was relatively mild. Good for them. I received notifications every time they added photos to their album, and I didn’t want to call them out or anything, but the scenery in some of those pictures looked fake.
Anyway, I was laser-focused on handling the household morning routine. Typically, I walk the dogs and then sneak off for a workout. Kristen wakes the kids, makes lunches, makes the beds, folds the laundry, empties the dishwasher, and often drives the kids to school (which seems like a lot of stuff now that I type it all out). Even with my mother-in-law preparing dinners and giving the kids rides, the challenges of household management without Kristen here were all too real.
While Kristen was snowshoeing up a picturesque mountain, it was over 80 degrees here and our air conditioner failed. Even with the windows open and fans on, it was like a fake June. The A/C technician diagnosed a leak in the refrigerant line that runs inside the walls. So while Kristen was playfully feeding reindeer, I vacuumed up sheet rock dust over three levels of the house until they found the leak. Anybody got a good drywall repairman? And did you guys know that reindeer are real?
Kristen asked me to get that little knocking sound in her car checked out while she was away. Our mechanic said the front axle whatchamacallit needed replacing and he would be metaphorically punching a few more holes in my drywall. Somehow while Kristen was enjoying a feast on the top of the planet at a Michelin-rated restaurant, I was the one spending more money this week. Good times.
The sisters visited adorable little towns and took polar bear dips in the Norwegian sea and through all these adventures, they raved about the hotel breakfast. The breakfast offerings alone, it seems, would have made the trip worthwhile. On my side of the planet, we were out of Cheez-Its and Larabars and I was heading to Publix for the third time that week.
Seeing the Northern lights is a once-in-a-lifetime experience but for Kristen and her sisters, it was four nights in a row kind of experience. They were told they got lucky and I’m going to have to agree. The highlight of my week was the morning walk when the dogs saved me a minute with synchronized pooping. I guess the moral of the story is either I should fully appreciate all that Kristen does around here OR I should never, ever, let her take another trip without me.
