It is 5:46 a.m. and I am watching Full House on the only channel I can find that isn't an infomercial. A Boy Meets World Marathon is starting in fifteen minutes. I dropped David off at the airport this morning so he could attend a conference. He won't be back until Sunday night--we are going to be apart for five days.It isn't like he has gone off to war or into a space shuttle headed toward the moon (and thank goodness, because the recent film Moon, the one starring Samuel Rockwell, has frightened me away from space travel for good, holy moly Moses Nancy), but the thing is, David and I have never spent one night away from each other since we were married last August.
I'm surprised that I'm feeling such separation anxiety because I used to love it when all my roommates would go out of town and I'd get the apartment to myself. It isn't that I disliked my roommates being around, but there is just something magical about watching whatever I want on TV whenever I want while eating macaroni and cheese out of the pot with a wooden spoon.
But somehow I have lost my ability to be by myself. There's Blue Bell ice cream in the fridge, homemade pizza leftovers waiting to be picked at, Lonesome Dove just showed up yesterday via Netflix, and I am only about halfway through the Super Nintendo game Secret of Mana. But do I really want to watch Lonesome Dove without Davie? Would beating the Secret of Mana really be the same without David there to watch me cream the final bosses?
I also have an annotated bibliography to finish, three final essays to begin, a presentation to compose, two books to read before next Wednesday (not to mention a thousand other critical essays to read and summarize), and about 12 hours worth of grading to have done before Saturday. But can I really accomplish all that when I'm so distracted by David's absence? Not only have we never spent a night away from each other, but I've only been home by myself for less than a few hours at a time, and only rarely. Since we've always had the same work schedules at the same school, we've always left the house together and come home together. It makes sense that this brief separation should be healthy because I obviously need to cope with time on my own, but five days? With no training wheels first?
In true Kevin-McAllister-style, first I'm going to get freaked out by the heater (this is not a joke), then I'm going to watch this Boy Meets World marathon until I fall back asleep (Mr. Feenie just got stood up on his date, and is feeling lonely, too), then I'll find a renewed sort of independence at which point I will shoplift a toothbrush and booby-trap my house to protect my own turf. After the creepy old man across the street unhooks me from the back of the neighbor's door, I will wake up Sunday morning to a fresh snowfall just as David steps out of John Candy's Polka van.
Maybe I'll even put on some of Dave's aftershave and scream into the camera a few times. (But in an adorable way, not, like, a weird way.)
