It's amazing for me to realize that tomorrow I will have completed my nine weeks of solitude here at Rancho Cortez.

I've still got two weeks to go before I leave for home, but Nicole arrives tomorrow to spend the next 14 days here with me. It will be wonderful to have her here, but it will be very different than it has been.

For one thing, it will be an opportunity for me to see if I really have progressed that much on an emotional and philosophical level. I believe I have, but it's easy to talk a good game about putting other people first when you're living alone. Starting tomorrow afternoon, I am a full-time married man again.

[caption id="attachment_526" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Me after eight weeks"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Texas-101.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-526" title="Texas 101" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Texas-101-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

I have written before about what a unique opportunity it has been to step outside my life, as it were, for more than two months and do a reassessment of where I have been, where I am and what I want to do with the years I have left to me.

The one thing I am more sure about than anything is that I want to spend those years with Nicole. She has been a wonderful wife through both good times and not-so-good times, and she has stood by me at times when I let her down very badly.

I have told her she is my favorite person in the entire world, and indeed in many ways she is my closest friend.

The next two weeks can be wonderful ones for her. Between work and all the other things going on in her life, she is dealing with more stress than I could handle -- and dealing with it well.

Still, I'd love to help her have two stress-free weeks here.

That's my goal.