one million seconds

Stu and I said goodbyes this morning at the airport, he was headed to Brasil with his dad and brothers for an 11-day "man trip". Both he and his brother Tanner served their missions there and they have been planning this trip back for quite some time. Stu loves Brasil, LOVES it. He loves the people, the culture, the language, the food... He's been singing the national anthem for the past couple weeks, non-stop. When they bought the tickets [months ago] I cringed at the idea that my Stu would be leaving me for such a long time, but it was kind of one of those things where I tried to pretend it wasn't going to happen. I mean, October seemed like forever away, it was easy not to think about it. But daily it creeped closer. This last week, I felt myself getting a bit cranky every time the trip came up, my little "let's-pretend-Stu-really-isn't-leaving" game wasn't working anymore. And today I had to come to terms with it as I rode away from the airport without him sitting right next to me. I felt so lame as little tears started to flood my eyes, the same reaction I had when I left for girls camp over the summer.

Is this boy that much a part of me that I can't be away from him for a week and a half without bawling like a baby? Yes.

Did I cry when he called me from his stopover in Atlanta [a mere 7 hours after I had seen him last] because I was so happy to hear his voice, because I missed him already? Yes.

Am I desperately excited for 6pm tomorrow when I can finally Skype him? Yes. Gotta love the world wide web.

Stu and I were doing some time conversions a few days ago, like, "one thousand seconds is 16.6667 minutes." I'm not sure why it started. I plugged in 1,000,000 into my calculator and converted that into minutes: 16,666. Then to hours: 277. Then days: 11.5 days. Which ironically enough is the exact amount of time that will lapse before I see my Stu again in the flesh.

Counting down the seconds...