4,772 miles. That’s how far it is from Alaska to Afghanistan. I haven’t seen my husband in 106 days. I miss him.

Really miss him.

But it doesn’t stop me from getting really pissed off at him. You see, Dallas has a problem. With shoeboxes. He saves them so he can use them to “store stuff.” I don’t get it. I don’t save stuff. I especially don’t save shoe boxes. If I need to store something I go to Target and buy a plastic bin with a lid that snaps closed.

My husband does this.

There are three things in this photo that make my husband’s behavior borderline psychotic. The first is there are three shoe boxes sitting on a shelf. The second is under the shoe boxes are three pairs of shoes. Why aren’t the shoes being stored in the shoe boxes? The third is the flag folded and sitting on top of a shoe box. If the shoe boxes are for storage, why isn’t the flag being stored inside the box?

In Dallas’ defense he gets his box fetish honestly. Once when we visited his Dad in San Antonio he and his wife gave us a bunch of stuff to take home to Georgia with us. My father-in-law’s wife suggested giving us the box that was in the trunk of their car to load all the stuff in. My father-in-law got slightly panicked and said, “but…that’s a really good box.”

This is the crazy I married into, seriously.

The problem has rubbed off on the children. This is Reese’s treasure box.

To Reese’s future spouse; I’m sorry.

Usually I don’t let the shoe box hoarding get to me. There are so many other things to be irritated by, this one is actually pretty minor. But today, he’s lucky he is half a world away.

We have a junk closet. (If you say you don’t have one too, you’re lying. If you’re not lying – I don’t like you.) In this closet we keep everything from towels to extra bedding to serving platters and tools. I had to get out some serving platters today. They were on the top shelf.

When I reached for them I knocked over a shoe box…

Frick on a stick. A plastic tub with a lid that snaps closed would have prevented the hammer from landing on my toe.

4,772 miles isn’t nearly far enough.