Whenever Herself zips off someplace for an extended stretch I suffer from delusions of creativity.

The idea is that somehow a window will open onto a shining world full of possibilities — blogging, podcasting, cartooning, etc.

Ho, ho. Miss Mia Sopaipilla gets more accomplished in one trip to the litter box than I do all day.

Here’s that annoying poet again, poking his big beezer through my window:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow — T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

In Herself’s absence Mia and I both find our daily routines disrupted, but Mia bounces back faster. Initially, upon discovering that her support staff has been halved, there is a related increase in vocalization, perimeter inspection, game-playing, and other attention-seeking practices related to separation anxiety.

But then she rockets right through all five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — and simply takes more and longer naps in various sunny spots, reasoning that time passes more quickly that way, and soon she’ll awaken to Herself offering a soupçon of half-and-half while preparing her breakfast coffee instead of that old baldheaded sonofabitch grumbling over a mug of tarry black heart-starter.

Me, I get to pick up a few more shifts in the barrel.

Herself gets up at 4 a.m. most days, so when she is not around to arise and deal with Mia, well, this means that I get up at 4 a.m. most days. This cuts deeply into my beauty sleep, which anyone who has seen me in the flesh knows I need desperately, the way Stephen Miller needs a walk-in freezer full of dead teenage runaways. (“Time for a cold one. …”).

Then there’s the cooking for one. Takes as much time as cooking for two, but now I have to handle the post-dinner cleanup.

Laundry. Won’t do itself. I’ve done the research. Same goes for taking out the trash and recycling, and loading/emptying the dishwasher.

And don’t get me started on the whole “making money” thing. Lucky for me it rolls in like the tide. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.

Birds gotta be fed. We were out of seed, so it was off to our seed dealer, who is a talker. Hummers are back, so their feeders had to get filled and distributed around the yard, which was in need of mowing.

Somehow mowing is one of my regular chores. I’ve argued that it should fall to Herself, since it’s basically vacuuming outdoors, sort of like the parkour of hoovering. But she just chuckles and reminds me who makes all the fucking money around here.

Then my old VeloNews comrade Casey Gibson happened to be rolling through town to spectate at the Tour of the Gila, so it goes without saying that we had to get together for a couple of meals and complain about all the money we weren’t making.

And of course bicycles must be ridden and runs ran. Run? I’ll get back to you on that.

Thus a whole lot of my daylight (and best-laid plans) went up in smoke. And all I’ve got to show for it is clean laundry, washed dishes, a trimmed lawn, a couple extended chats over restaurant meals, empty trash bins, full birds, and a happy cat.

Because Herself just came home. Half and half is back on the menu. And I’m sleeping in tomorrow.