I’m not sure about the adage, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” but I can say, “When the wife’s away, the husband will eat strange concoctions.” Ron admitted one night that after boiling pasta he got lazy (because boiling pasta is so taxing) and merely poured sauce directly from the fridge over the pasta on his plate, creating a rather unappetizing luke-warm globby mass. Then another night, he managed to cook dinner well enough (good old frozen pizza), but when having a newly purchased frozen fruit bar, he managed to reenact the scene from “A Christmas Story” and got it stuck to his tongue and cheek. He said the extraction was rather painful and I would think most likely removed a hefty dose of epithelial cells from his mouth. Those things should have a warning label (like, “Only consume in the presence of a fully-conscious adult.”)! He did pay the housekeeper, do some grocery shopping (in addition to the frozen fruit torture bars), and fed and entertained the cats as needed, so all in all he did fine. But it’s always nice to hear that I was missed, even if it’s primarily for my dinners and ability to dial the phone when he’s saying, “Helb, the o‘sicle i uck oo eye fae.”

As a side note: I did come home to find that this brilliant man I married managed to, with quite a bit of struggle I would imagine, put new sheets on the bed – sideways – fitted and all. I continue to be bewildered in my married life by the fact that fitted sheets and cutlery drawers with four sections (knives, forks, large spoons, small spoons), completely befuddle my dear betrothed. He can build a computer with a bit of twine and an old button, and can recite Plato's breakfasts preferences, but under his control cutlery drawers become a jumble of steel and have him make the bed and it turns out looking like a one-armed blind man had to do it in under 30 seconds. The mysteries of marriage continue to unfold.