5 Days

Kate’s off to a conference in San Francisco for 5 days. It’s been so long since we’ve spent any significant amount of time apart that I’ve forgotten how to prepare for it … and of course, the last time we spent time apart there were no offspring around. Unlike previous flashbacks to bachelorhood, I won’t be able to sit around in my underwear eating tortilla chips and watching Mythbusters non-stop… (or will I?)

Instead, I made a huge pot of cassoulet-inspired vegetarian stew before Kate left, and something that alleged to be “tempeh confit” but really is nothing at all like confit, and we asked our babysitter to come an extra day this week, and we counted the frozen bags of breast milk in the freezer to make sure that we’ve got enough. (Yes, we have enough. Anyone need some frozen human milk?) Kate changed the cat litter. I’ll balance the check book. I keep telling myself that if everyone does tasks of this size on a regular basis, we’ll have a working economy and a functioning world.

I have writing I want to do, but as usual, when I let myself anticipate the writing I want to do (instead of just doing it) I freeze up and convince myself that I should just keep writing it in my head, where it’ll be inviolate and perfect and mellifluous and above reproach. Works great, until my classic anxiety dream (on stage, forgetting lines) crops up again, and then I know it’s time to actually put my fingers on the keyboard and say something, anything, even if it’s dull, and has no coda. So that’s my goal for these five days: write the thing, continue writing the other thing, and refine the thing.