Kathleen’s doctor has advised her to try to escape the winter climate once a month, if she can, so she’s staying in Boca Raton a bit longer than necessary. The conference that brought her there started today, but she arrived on Friday afternoon, and she won’t leave until Wednesday.

In other words, I’m home alone. Unsupervised.

I was very good yesterday. I got up early, fixed breakfast, and got to work on the usual round of Saturday chores. I did a load of towels in the laundry — the dry cleaner can’t be made to wash them without fabric softener of some kind — and took down the Christmas wreath over the mantel. When I was done, shortly after six, the apartment looked not only neat but so well-groomed that the formidable Park Avenue matron that Lena Olin plays in The Reader wouldn’t sniff before sitting down. Not that we get a lot of Park Avenue matrons this far east.

I had a glass of wine or two with my spaghetti alla carbonara, but after dinner I zapped a mug of Lapsang Souchang and was constructive for an hour or two. Then I poured another glass and went out.  

Went out in a manner of speaking, that is, to the Webcam Tavern. I had a great time with a law school chum. How we laughed! It was very jolly. But then, suddenly, it was very late, and there were two empty wine bottles at my feet. Uh-oh.

I didn’t have to drive home, and I didn’t spend any money, either on wine or on phone bills. I don’t think I said anything too stupid. But I might as well have driven into a tree, lost my wallet (and the wad of cash in it), and irreparably insulted my old friend, considering how I felt about it all this morning. The worst thing about overindulgence nowadays is the intense remorse that grips me the next day. It is a moral hangover that I rarely experienced in my hard-drinking days. “I didn’t do anything,” I tell myself, but it’s not convincing, even when it’s true.

That I was fit only for reading today wasn’t cause for regret, because that’s what I do on Sunday. When I’m through with the Times (three days’ worth, usually), I read The Economist. Ordinarily, The Economist confers a fine patina of virtuousness, but not today. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the drift of a story about the record-low nominal yields of Treasury bonds.

The physical hangover wasn’t so great either, but at least it was not one of those interfering maladies that makes fatal disease seem preferable (very preferable). I was able to make breakfast once again — and to order in lunch and dinner, and to eat it all with relish. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’m still a disappointing young man — at sixty-one!

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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