Alone Again, (Un)Naturally

A.P. is out of town until Friday night. (He's on business in Las Vegas. I get Kansas, he gets Las Vegas. Ah, well, whatdya gonna do?) He left early this morning. I was so, so sad to see him go. I pick on him a lot. I demand a lot from him. I know I'm not a piece of cake, but I love him. It's times like these I know for sure. He woke me up to say good-bye, and I actually got up on my knees and gave him a big, tight hug and kissed him good-bye. I don't do those things every day. I'm not a touchy feely person. He hasn't been gone that long and I already miss him a lot. It's weird to miss someone you see every day.

I had planned on coming home early tonight, my only early working night this week, and uploading my birthday weekend pictures to share with you guys. I discovered A.P. took his camera with him, so I'm left with nothing to do really in an apartment that suddenly feels larger. I'm also left with a ton more responsibility.

For the rest of this week, I have to take care of our dog, too. Usually, I take care of the cat and the guinea pig, and A.P. takes care of our dog. Now, I get all three. Walking that dog is becoming the bane of my existence since I'm working late the rest of this week. That means I'm scrambling around trying to take care of three pets and work all these crazy hours. I actually thought about coming home tonight and cleaning. Ha! I still got home mega late from work, and have done nothing but work, talk on the phone with family, or figure out what to put in my belly.

Which brings me to my next thought: remember how I said I was getting sick of dealing with dinner all the time? Yeah, that's still a problem. Working late has only made it worse. Last night I went to go cook dinner only to discover half of the ingredients I'd bought had gone bad. It seemed like I'd only bought them a few days before, but it turned out to have been over a week ago! So when I came home tonight, I decided I was going to just make my life easier and grab some fast food. I know it's not healthy, but I figure I'd get over it, and free up some of my time. Why did I decide upon fast food, you ask? After all, we have a car now; I could have gone to the grocery store and bought something there. I didn't want to carry groceries up three flights of stairs. A.P. wasn't here to help me carry them, and I hate doing that by myself. It's such a pain in the ass.

On my way to the fast food joint, I was paranoid about walking by myself late at night. It occurred to me that I don't really do this anymore...walk by myself at night. I don't live in an unsafe neighborhood, really, but there are a lot of drunken vagrants around this one intersection that I would have had to go past to get to the fast food joint. I wasn't scared, but I thought that one might hassle me, which they sometimes do. I missed A.P. because not only does he handle situations like that well, but he is fun to walk with. I like our talks on walks like that. Going to grab some dinner from a neighborhood joint, be it fast food or a restaurant. Or just walking to the convenience store. We talk about silly things, or work, or just make jokes. It's nice when we're not glued to the TV or our laptops or whatever, and we're just walking and talking.

Then it hit me: How did I ever survive without A.P.? Do I not sound like one of those spoiled girls whose man does everything for her? I promise I'm not, it's just that (and I almost hate to say this) I'm used to having someone around. It feels a bit strange to be alone. I thought it'd be fun, but there's nothing on cable, getting food was a pain and no fun, and now it's the end of the night and I'm going to bed alone. I used to revel in A.P. being away. Now I'm bummed and lonely. When did I get to be so lame?

What about you guys? Are you like this? Or do you still love when your boo is away on business? (That's right. I said boo. You love it. It's okay.)