On Tuesday, Duane gets home from work early. He walks in with a bottle of wine, puts down his things and says to me,"I have good news and I have bad news." My stomach dropped. In this economy, a spouse getting home from work early with a bottle of wine is not necessarily a "good" thing. I asked him to give me the good news first and he says, "I still have a job." That made me believe the bad news couldn't be all that bad. So, I ask for the bad news and he says, "The company is sending me to Toronto." Knowing they have a client there and they have wanted to put Duane on this project (and it would be good for him professionally) I ask the innocent question: "For how long?" He responds with, "That's the really bad news. They want me to be there for six months." The thing that makes it even harder to take is that he has to be there on June 15th!! That means he is not here when his mother moves into her new house. He is not here to go to Missouri with me. I am devastated. I had been so looking forward to showing Duane Centralia, to being at the christening for Alyssa together, to being together this summer after him being in England all of last summer. He, then, holds up the bottle of wine and says it is from his boss in hopes that it will make up for sending him away again this year. Nope...doesn't even come close although I did enjoy the wine.

He has to be there on the 15th for a two week training so we are hoping that the company will fly him to St. Louis on the 26th so we can spend the weekend together and he can be there when Alyssa is christened. The company is saying they will put him up in a corporate apartment but that they will not pay him a per diem. That stinks because now we have to take money out of our budget to pay for things the company normally would have paid for like some meals and taxi fare. They even told him he might have to drive his own car there. Our poor Fit. It will not do so well in the cold, I am afraid.

Duane's mom has been here almost since we found out the news. She knows but tonight she has gone home so maybe we can have some time to really process what this means for us both emotionally and financially. She will be back on Saturday to stay with us until she can move into her house on Wednesday or Thursday. By then Michael will be home from Boy Scout Camp and depending on the company, Duane could be on his way to Toronto.

So....here we go again.