\u201cYou know what?\u201d he said casually, as though I hadn\u2019t just spent the last hour pacing the hallway with our red-faced, screaming 12-week-old. \u201cMom and Dad are going to a resort. They invited me. I\u2019m heading there next week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I blinked. I hadn\u2019t slept properly in days. My breakfast had been the edge of a granola bar, and I was sipping the last of a lukewarm coffee that had been reheated three times. My body sagged under Lily\u2019s weight, still crying in my arms. And yet, here he was\u2014barely glancing at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not because anything was funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because I was seconds away from hurling a bottle at his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But instead, I took a breath, counted to three, and offered the kind of smile only a furious wife can master\u2014sweet, serene, and quietly terrifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOf course, my love,\u201d I said smoothly. \u201cYou\u2019re the breadwinner. Go. Enjoy yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He grinned, kissed me on the cheek, and went off to pack as if he\u2019d just secured the Husband of the Year award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, Keith. You poor, clueless man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day he left, I kissed him goodbye on the porch, diaper bag in one hand and Lily on my hip. And the moment his car disappeared down the road, the real work began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First stop: the fridge. I emptied it. Every. Single. Thing. After all, groceries didn\u2019t just appear from nowhere like he seemed to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next: laundry. I collected every piece of dirty clothing he had, dumped it in a giant mountain by the washer, and left it there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I logged into our joint account and canceled every automatic bill payment I could\u2014streaming services, internet, electricity. All of it. Poof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that, I packed up Lily\u2019s entire nursery\u2014crib, changing table, diapers, wipes, onesies, bottles\u2014and loaded them into the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, I left a note on the kitchen counter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLily and I are on vacation too. Don\u2019t wait up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Phone off. Engine on. Off to my mom\u2019s house we went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two days of silence. Two glorious, uninterrupted, spa-robe-wearing days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cYou know what?\u201d he said casually, as though I hadn\u2019t just spent the last hour pacing the hallway with our red-faced, screaming 12-week-old. \u201cMom and Dad are… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3649,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions\/3649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodarticles.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}