Sleep Well, Mon Amour

Oliver's out of town, and it's been an interesting week so far. I've been insanely productive, and cleaned every room in our apartment. Pretty heavy-duty cleaning too, involving mops and scrubbing down on my hands and knees. I've also gone to my sushi restaurant again, this time making brief eye contact with another "table for one-r" complete with book in hand.

All in all, I've really been enjoying this time alone. I get to be in complete control of every square inch of our apartment, and I get to set the "tone for the evening", which never works for me when he's around. "Tone"... does that make sense? When I say this I mean that during my walk home from the subway after work, I say to myself "tonight I'm going to light a couple candles, call my parents, then dig into that history of the Balkans I haven't been making much headway in." I picture the mood, my evening's accomplishments, and my satisfaction with the end product. When Oliver is around, it's about five times harder to stick to my plan. It's funny how one person's mood can affect yours so strongly. If he feels lazy/exhausted one evening and wants to watch a movie, it's almost impossible not to join him. This is a good thing, really. It probably keeps me from going off some sort of overscheduled, zero-spontaneity deep end. Still, I like "my" evenings.

Problem is, I lose steam when it's time to go to bed. The apartment suddenly seems so big and dark, and I can't help but notice how easy it would be for a ruffian to break one of our windows and make himself comfortable in our little home. The quiet, which I loved half an hour ago, is now oppressive. My solution: tv. I've been sleeping on the couch these last few nights, and the tv is my loving companion as I drift off to sleep. It can't be a movie either. It has to be a regular broadcast, because then I know that thousands of other people are watching the same thing at the same time, and that of course means I'm not alone (Is this ridiculous, or do you feel the same way about these things?). Unfortunately for me, we only get five channels. One of them is CSPAN-style coverage of government proceedings, and the other four are in french. If you wanted a little "company" in the dark of night, which would you choose: programming in a language you can't understand, or CSPAN? The upside: it lulls me to sleep right away.