You Can Hear a Pin Drop

I was sitting at the computer, eating a bowl of cereal and re-reading Cardiogirl's hilarious post about leading her youngest daughter's Daisy troop, when I recognized a sound I seldom hear ... absolute silence. It dawned on me, I am in the house alone. Oh my goodness! I can't even remember the last time that happened.

The boys are all at school or Parent's Day Out. Hubby went to run some errands. The dog must be off somewhere in the house sleeping. We're down to just me and my thoughts. Amazing.

Is it possible to be both an introvert and an extrovert? Since moving to this isolated locale, I have found this dichotomy perplexing. On the one hand, I tremendously miss having people that I regularly have contact with. I miss my writer's group. I miss my old church. I even miss BSF (Bible Study Fellowship - would have tried it here, but it is quite a drive to the nearest one). I miss getting together with a couple of friends and going to a movie or out for pizza and laughter. Those are all oppportunities that, somehow or other, haven't presented themselves to me here in Indiana.

Yet, at the same time, I miss time to myself. It seems like I am rarely in the house alone. I do take advantage of the moments when my boys are all sleeping, but still, that is not without interruption when one of them wakes from a bad dream or has to go to the bathroom and cannot manage the zipper to the blanket sleeper (I'll admit, we usually wear sweats to bed for this very reason).

I wouldn't normally consider myself an introvert. I very much like to be around people. In fact, I'm not an especially quiet person when I AM around people. If anything, I often leave a social gathering and wonder why I didn't restrain myself more. However, I have discovered that I crave time to myself ... to process my thoughts, to breathe without constant demands, to remember that I am separate from all these bodies in this house that require something from me almost every minute of every day!

For a while there, we were making a concerted effort to carve out a few hours a week for me to get away. That, sadly, has fallen by the wayside. Hubby usually wants to exercise when he comes home from work. Plus, I'm not really one to look forward to shopping as down-time. My ideal down-time is exactly what I am experiencing in this moment: a house completely to myself, time to hear myself think, space to listen to the cars driving by, and the wisdom to drink it in deeply ... because hubby will interrupt this solitude within a half hour's time.