Things I Do When Sweet Baboo Isn't Around.

1. I return, time and again, to the house to get the things I should have brought to my workouts. Like bike shoes. And the wheels for my bike. Life without Sweet Baboo becomes a series of necessary checklists I have to consult before I do anything, because there's nobody around to say, "Did you bring your inhaler? Do you have your running shoes? How about your goggles? Did you bring anything to drink?"

2. Things eventually pile up all over the bed until I have to sleep in weird convoluted positions.

3. I stay up too late and fall asleep in front of the TV. I've decided this is because I really don't like the silence.

4. I don't eat well. I forget to eat, and reactively stuff a few things in my mouth when it occurs to me, and they usually aren't healthy things. I eat leaning over the sink, or in my car, instead of sitting down to a proper meal.

5. My life becomes engulfed in afterthought, instead of forethought, and I wonder around with the ever present thought in my head, "Now, why did I come in here."

6. The other ever-present thought in my kead becomes, "now, where did I put that?"

7. I talk to Mini-baboo too much. I think this burdens him.

8. I do things without really thinking them through. For instance, I might leave the ironing board up, pointing through the bathroom door, because it seems efficient and is near an outlet, and it's right there if I need it. If Sweet Baboo were around, he might ask, gently, "Are you sure you want to do that? That looks like something you might walk into stomach first in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom." (Because, indeed, it was.)

9. In fact there are piles of stuff everywhere, not just on the bed.

10. In fact, the bed is much less a bed than it is a pile of stuff under which I sleep. The covers get all weird and aren't tucked in and aligned properly, so that my feet stick out of the sheet and the blanket only half covers me.

11. I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. Since there's nobody else around I turn on the light and write dumb posts and emails read random Wikipedia entries.

12. I spend too much time on the phone (Sorry, Pirate) and waiting for the phone to ring.

13. I worry constantly about things, like when the bike guy says, "there's a 50% chance your crank might fall off again." Um, huh? Yeah. (More on that later.) I generally just worry much less when Sweet Baboo is around. When he's here, it's like a big bubble of protection is around me.

14. I get headachy, probably as a result of not eating or sleeping properly.

15. The night before Sweet Baboo is likely to return, I race around putting stuff in their proper places and getting rid of the piles of stuff all over the bed, so that the house looks as organized and neat and it should look for a proper human being living in a proper house. I also start making a real meal.

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