I hate it when John's out of town. I immediately fall back into some of my least admirable habits like eating at fast food restaurants instead of cooking. I feel horrible. My stomach is aching from eating at McDonald's this morning and Burger King this afternoon, all because I have the car while John's gone, and I can get to these places easily. The guilt is inappropriately heavy. I know I shouldn't be eating like that. I have a tremendously high cholesterol count. I fear heart attacks, and obesity, and poverty from spending too much money on fripperies like sodas and french fries, but I still do this every single time he leaves for a couple of days. It's bothering me because I don't want to stop.
While I was typing just now my youngest cat leapt onto the monitor, grabbed my sand-filled lizard toy from Australia, and began monstering it with the result that my keyboard and desk is now sprinkled with genuine Australian sand. Keiko looks very pleased with herself. She's been extra frisky lately. I think she likes the weather now that it's no longer in the 90's.
I'm starting to look forward to autumn even though we've barely had a summer. There's the faintest tang of coolness in the air that sets me scurrying to hoard enough seeds and nuts to make it through the coming winter. Leaves are beginning to drop from the dry spell, but it seems to me there are far more than can be chalked up to lack of rain. Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll get the kind of autumn I love most: rainy, cool, misty mornings and dusky twilights, pungent smells of fallen leaves, and wet earth, and fires. It's far more likely to be sunny and cheery late into October, and the palm trees seem out of place when I'm in the mood for colorful maples and aspen groves. It doesn't matter. I'll still make my seasonal change of china, putting away the pinks and purples and yellows in favor of blacks and greys and golds.
Time rolls on. My father is through with chemotherapy. The cancer has been pronounced eradicated, so he and Mary Lou are off to the Oregon coast for a long week of golfing and beachcombing. They'll continue on to Hawaii for a couple of weeks where I hope Dad will regain some weight and maybe a bit of hair. By the end of next month they'll be ready for their annual migration south to the desert, another one of my seasonal markers. I look for the ragged V of geese, the blooming of spider chrysanthemums, and the phone call telling me they're on their way.
Maybe that's why I'm so anxious to get my snout in the trough these days. It's not pining for my husband and substituting food, it's an ancient urge to store up fat for the winter. Yeah, right. As it stands, I'm good for another 80 winters or so.
I hope John comes home soon.
