While the Tom Cat's Away....

I don't find myself virtually alone in my house very often. This has been an unusual eight days all right. Very interesting. First, there was a seminar and then a guys' fishing trip leaving just me and my daughter HOME ALONE.

Verrrry interesting.

No, we didn't get up to anything bad but damn, was it ever relaxing. She is in her first semester in college and currently on spring break so there were no alarm clocks to set, no dealing with anything pressing at all. I'm not kidding...this stuff is great.

Not that we don't miss him. That's not it at all but I've learned over the years that some people are a creature of habit. They want things just they way they want them. Mail fetched at a certain time. Dinner served precisely at 6 p.m. The list goes on and on and on. You get the drift.

So for eight days it has been just my seventeen year old daughter and I and I must say we've had fun. Nothing special really, just chilling out. Watched what we wanted on the tube. Read books and talked about them. Discussed life and love and family history that she didn't know before. Then in the morning, we slept as late as we wanted. Sometimes we'd move aimlessly from room to room. I've written, eaten lunch and dinner and watched television in various rooms. Didn't want lunch until 2 p.m.? Not a problem. We ate when we were hungry. And messes? What messes? No one cared. We were free and light and easy.

And writing. Oh my! Got a lot of that done too. Don't you find it nice to just chill and let your mind go free? I do. I made notes on stories that as of now are only a glimmer in my imagination and worked on my current story. It occurs to me there is a huge difference between loneliness and solitude. These past few days have been solitude. There is a lot to be said for that.