Absence makes the apartment cleaner

Yes, I do miss my husband, although he hasn't been gone that long yet. But there are upsides to not having the little homebody around. I got a decent night's sleep and didn't have to sojourn to the sofa to escape any snoring. When Theo howled in the night, I called him in and, after a good snuggle, he settled down calmly until the morning and there was no one to threaten selling the orange guy on eBay. Cherubino, however, missed his Daddy's morning ablutions dearly, as he came licking and batting at my face at 5:45 a.m., when he normally joins Eli in the loo for a shvitz and a manly tussle with the dental floss. (Spi doesn't seem to give a shit one way or another. It's nice having one proper cat.)

But the best thing about Eli's absence is that I could clean all the debris that's been unearthed by the packing process. You'd think a man who takes 2 different brands of allergy medicine a day would be all over the vacuuming but he keeps saying, "Let's just wait until we've moved and I'll clean everything then," and "I don't think you should be lugging the vacuum cleaner right now." As soon as I got home last night I sucked those dust rhinos into the vortex of the Eureka. Man, this is why I'd never want carpet -- you could never know just what horrors are lurking in the pile.