Home Alone

My wife and son are gone camping.  It's great.  I think it's so important for a young boy growing up to learn about the outdoors-- waking up to pancakes and bacon, fishing for bluegill and perch, bike rides, campfire, roastin' marshmallows and makin' s'mores in the evening.  With his Mom. While his father is home baking cookies.

It's not my fault.  I'm on call this week so being off on a camping trip is off limits.  Lucky for me.  My idea of roughing it is, as the saying goes, a hotel without room service. Tam knows it and that's why she chose this week.

So being home for a couple of days without the wife and son should be, whoo hoo!, big time fun.  You know, clothes on the floor, bed unmade, Cheerios and chips, dishes in the sink:  Sit back, watch TV and relaaaaax.

As good as that may sound to some it doesn't work for me.  In the old days when I was single and in top shape living alone it would have been no problem.  Music up, make some dinner, get on the phone, drunk dialing by midnight, bed by 2, up by 6.  That was bad Mickey.

So tonight I get home from work, empty the dishwasher, clean up some dishes from the morning, check my e-mail, heat up some left-overs, and then?? Bake cookies. Seriously. Like a mother hen with an empty nest I don't know what to do.  All those times when I just needed an hour alone to get some work done on a drawing or some writing or reading. Poof!

So tonight I bake cookies.  Ginger snaps.  Maybe I'll run the vacuum tomorrow. Is there a lesson here for my son?