When my husband's alarm clock went off at 3:30 this morning, set so early because he had a plane to catch, I still hadn't managed to fall asleep. I was still a bit druggy and spacey from all the cold meds, and feeling pathetic because I was supposed to catch a plane of my own tomorrow, and spend the weekend with him, and now I can't, and when I don't feel well I hate being alone. Between the coughing and the illness-induced clinginess, I was literally in tears when he kissed me goodbye.

I got up, wandered around the darkened house, watched Cleo run across the yard to chase the shadow of a neighborhood cat, did an online grocery order to be delivered tomorrow, because I really am not in the mood to face the grocery store, and finally went back to bed, to a fitful sleep. I've never slept alone in this house, and after five months I'm still becoming accustomed to the noise. I tossed, I turned, I made Cleo move to Fuzzy's half of the bed, because there was space, and finally, two minutes before my own alarm was due to go off, I woke up.

It is impossible to pathetically miss someone when the first thing you see in the morning is a jumbled up pile of their dirty laundry, left in a corner of the bedroom floor.

I called my parents hoping for a comforting chat with my mother, but she had actually left the house before eight AM her own time for a conference call at her office, so I ended up getting a rare treat – a conference call with my step-father. Someday I might go into the true oddness of my relationship with him, or I might not.

I wandered around my house a bit more, let the dogs out, took their food out to defrost, watered the front garden – my daffodils are blooming, and it makes me feel like my family is surrounding me, because my mother planted them all for me, the last time she was here, and I mixed my grandparents' ashes into the soil.

And now, I'm off to work.
For the last day of my week.