If you live within easy driving distance of CVG, you can bid reserve and be at home quite a bit. Most pairings are fairly short. There are a few that go 6 to 8 days. If you somehow got two of those back-to-back, that could be a stretch, but you can also head that off by bidding one of the lines that have three blocks of days off. If you're even a little bit senior on reserve, you can exercise some control over your schedule by submitting reserve preferences and requesting airport reserve or whatever trips are likely to work best for you. Or if you hold a line, you might be able to drop it all and replace every day with mid-day airport reserve. I know of at least one guy who does that every month. Not only does he not fly that much, but he's getting paid for at least 80 hours per month, which is 15 over guarantee.

If you're commuting, you're going to be away from home for a total of 16 or 17 days per month whether it's in three blocks or all at once. I prefer to minimize the commuting time by bidding all of my work days in a single block. Then I get to go home, unpack my suitcase, and not worry about it for a while. Even after years of working in a job where I was home every day, my family did not have difficulty making the adjustment.

I see some replies raising the scary specter of junior manning, but it's not happening that much. There's a day here and there, but nothing like the serial junior manning that was happening six years ago. We introduced premium open time in the current contract, and that has eliminated much of the junior manning, which was the expectation. Those who want to work more can, and those who don't want to probably won't have to.

Regardless of how you do it, anything that can go wrong at home will go wrong while you are gone. That's just the way it works. In my two weeks at home every month, nothing of any significance ever needs my attention. Those things always wait until I leave.