She's leaving home... and I'm a mess

In a few hours the spouse and I will be taking our daughter to her sleepaway camp up in Massachusetts -- and I feel like my heart is going to beat right out of my chest. It is only for three weeks, and she had a great time there last summer (so much so that the day we picked her up she asked if she could go back the next summer), but still. We are both (my daughter and I -- not the spouse, who is still snoring away in the bedroom) a bit... anxious. Because. You know.

It also does not help that I am "hormonal." ('Nuff said.) But just a word to the wise, to all you guys out there whose children are or are going off to sleepaway camp, for the first or second or third time, and whose wives may be feeling a wee bit... tense or anxious: now is NOT the time to be picking a fight with her.

Case in point: Yesterday, after spending the better part of the day packing up my daughter, doing laundry and making sure she had everything she needed for camp, and feeling incredibly tense and anxious (even though I know she and I will both, eventually, BE FINE), the spouse casually mentions he wants to go to yoga class this morning. Which is FINE. Really. So I equally casually ask him to gas up his car on the way back from yoga class, as we have to drive around 400 miles today. (After we drop our daughter off at sleepaway camp we are going on a little roadtrip, to Cooperstown, the Adirondacks, and Montreal.)

Now the response to that simple request should have been "OK. No problem." Or something like that. Especially as he knows I am ALWAYS a wee bit anxious before a big trip, and am extra hormonal, because... you know. But instead he says, not-so-casually, "I have around half a tank. That's plenty to get us up there."

So I say, slightly less casually, "Okay. But could you please fill it up anyway, since you'll be out, so we don't have to stop later?" And he says, not casually at all, "J-------, my car gets, like, 500 miles to the tank, more. We'll be fine." And I say, gritting my teeth, "Honey, please, can you JUST GO FILL UP THE TANK ON YOUR WAY BACK FROM YOGA?! Please?"

He is about to argue with me, but I cut him off. "Sweetheart. When your wife is a near basket case because her one and only child is going off to sleepaway camp for three weeks AND is hormonally challenged, the correct response is 'Yes, J-------.'"

Again, he starts to bring up the fact that his car is a HYBRID and gets over 40 miles to the gallon and that we should be perfectly fine, when I cut him off again. "What did I JUST say, dear?!"

"Yes, J-------."

I am now off to make my daughter, who just got up (and woke the spouse up), breakfast.

I will have my laptop on the road, as well as my cameras, so I hope to post some nice pictures.