We Interrupt this Marriage

It happens every year, without fail, as summer comes to a close.

This year it began slowly, quietly. An hour here, an hour there, gone. Then there was this past weekend. Bam. Practically an entire weekend, gone.

Gone to football, that is.

Saturday: college football. Game after game after game. Sunday, 3:15 p.m., The Game. Then Sunday night, more games. And on Monday, what was this, two NFL games on a Monday night?

I didn't realize it until it was too late that we'd missed our Sunday night date night. It's just the two of us, appropriate cocktail in hand, parked in front of the TV, watching Mad Men. (Listen, with three small kids and an already-stretched-thin babysitting budget, watching a TV show together, uninterrupted and with intention, is a date night.)

Thank goodness for DVR; we should be able to get our fix of a wickedly dysfunctional family and pickled work environment later this week.

I'd made an unforgivable error in judgment Sunday, though. I'd left to run a few errands around 4 p.m.: I returned a playdating child to his parents, went to the grocery store for milk, wine, bananas (the basics), and stopped at the library for the newest John Krakauer book, the one about Pat Tillman. Tangentially about football, the book is for my football-loving husband who's about to embark on a very long overseas flight. Thought he'd like it.

But later that night I heard: "you left me with all three kids for, like, two hours in the middle of MY GAME?" Ok, I did stop for a coffee before my library visit. I could have been gone just an hour.

It's not like I didn't know life would be like this. I mean, the men in our wedding switched from the church-approved, color-coordinating vests to "Packers" and "Bears" vests for the reception.

In fact, our vows may very well have included a phrase about 'interrupting this marriage for football season."

And that's ok. As Kevin likes to point at, "at least" he isn't in a fantasy football league. And it's true. I fully accept having to plan our life around the Packers schedule. And that's all he truly cares about, football-speaking. Yes, he'd like to catch a Badgers game or a few select NFL games, but it's three, sometimes four hours, every week, from September through January.

It makes him happy (as long as the Packers win). I'm willing to interrupt this marriage for a Packers win.

Unless they're playing the Bears.