t-minus three days until Wife and Child return

so mrs nice guy has left the cape. instead of coming home to her doting husband, however, she has gone to vermont with her dutch mother and grandmother until WEDNESDAY. fine. i can take a hint. i don't need you around anyway. to be fair, she did send her dutch uncle and aunt and teenage cousins to manhattan for me to entertain for three days. so, i have that to thank her for.

honestly, the truth of the matter is that if the wife had come home today, here is what she would have found:

• about three inches of dust coating everything. picture frames, lampshades, cats, underpants (which, come to think of it are dangling from one of the aformentioned lampshades). everything.
• if i may quoth coleridge: bottles, bottles everywhere and not a drop to drink. (because, erm, it's all been drunk)
• a fridge that looks like the interior of some horrible Area 51 alien dissection chamber.
• the bed, she has not been made or changed in weeks. the white sheets have a charming lemon meringue hue to them. oddly, they taste like lemon meringue too. mmm, pie.
• i believe the brooklyn board of health is on the verge of condemning the bathroom. please don't make me go in there.
• it's been 90 degrees around here lately. the plants on our balcony need water every day. did you know that? i didn't. i thought the 100 percent humidity would take care of that. i was wrong.
• i was petting one of the cats the other day until its total stillness made me recoil in terror at the realization that i had been cuddling with a hairball bigger than my head.
• (note to self: delete traces of all websites visited this week.)
• i did not totally neglect to clean everything around here: my guitar is bright and shiny, nice and polished, with a sparkling new set of strings on it.
• she should be impressed that i have been reading the newspaper, front to back, every single day. she should not be annoyed that a week's worth of newspaper is strewn throughout the apartment.
• why do laundry? when your wife earns more than you do, you can just buy new clothes when the old ones get dirty!
• i alphabetized my cd's! again!

when wednesday rolls around, i am sure everything will suddenly look much better around here. it's not a matter of doing anything so drastic as tidying up, though, it's a matter of adjusting your standards a little. i think mrs nice guy can handle it.