My wife and kids left for vacation on Friday, and consequently I have become an indentured servant working for my freedom.

In the days leading up to my week home alone, I knew I would miss my family intensely but also indulged in certain fantasies of napping, newspaper reading, clicker control and moviegoing.  My wife told me that all I had to do before leaving was three things: get two rooms ready for the flooring guys, get a desk for Bubba, and close up the house for vacation.  My initial estimate on time my honeydo list would take to complete: Saturday afternoon. Revised estimate: the whole week.

The folks that own our house gave us the good news that in reparation for the recent Plumbing Horrors (I still cannot speak of this) that new flooring would be installed in our living/dining room and in Coop’s bedroom. The timing seemed good, right after wife and kids departed.  All I would need to do is remove everything but the large furniture from the rooms in question.

Remember your last move?  This is like that, except that you move one half of your house into the other half, rendering both uninhabitable.  In unloading all the cabinets in the living room (a decade of accumulated stuff), I carefully stacked everything in one corner of the kitchen, cleverly blocking access to all cabinets and the coffee maker.

The best part was unloading the cabinet housing three childhoods worth of stuffed animals. Please, people, if you do nothing else this year, spay and neuter your stuffed animals. Good grief! I hauled ten bags of fluffy creatures out of that thing. It was Tribbles all over again.

(Speaking of Tribbles, I should come clean and confess that I did take two hours out from my housework to see the new Star Trek movie in the theater. And I had a blast! A great good time. I didn’t learn much, but fun.)

I finished the preparations for the flooring guys just in time for Baba’s arrival Sunday morning. For Bubba’s birthday, she wanted to buy him his first big boy desk, to celebrate moving on to middle school. We left for Ikea at 11AM. About twelve and a half hours later, I Allen wrenched the last nut into place on the new Education Center (aka Mikael Desk, Add On Unit, Drawer Unit and Desk Chair) in Bubba’s room. During my assembly binge, I watched almost the entire first season of Mad Men (not sure yet if I’ll watch the second).

I hope the desk is inviting to him — a sign of our willingness to support him — and not a towering symbol of our expectations. But I have a sense that he’ll like it. That it will make him feel grown up. And if it wakes him up to the dimension of the academic challenges that lay ahead at his new school, well that’s okay too.

And there’s also the distinct possibility it will collapse on him. There were a few pieces left over.

I still have to prep the house for departure. Let’s hope I do a better job of that.