I Survived Being An "Outage Widow" Again

If you are wondering what an "outage widow" is, let me explain. My husband works at a nuclear power plant. Every 18 months or so they have to refuel one of the units (there are two) where he works. They take out some of the spent fuel rods and put in new ones. They do lots and lots of needed maintance. When they do this they shut down the plant totally. With the plant shut down it's not making any electicity so the company loses money. We are talking major bucks every day!! Thus they want to work as quickly as possible. Which means the workers have to work long hard hours...12 1/2 to 13 hours 6 days a day for a little over a month. When you work that long all you do is eat, sleep and work. So, the term "outage widow" was born to describe what it's like to be left behind while your husband works long hard hours, sometimes even graveyard shift. Nothing gets done around the home that the man would ordinarily do. Decisions that need to be made together are not made because they are too tired to think. But, we survived and we should only have one more outage to endure before he retires!! Whoopee!!