Some moron from the Food Network is getting ready to take me on a journey into the Secret Life of Chili Peppers, and I really am not interested because it's just going to get me thinking about Stacey and her vindaloo curry or, at best, my current famotidine dosage, and I just do not feel like going there tonight. So I click off the TV.

I don't get up right away. No reason to; I can stay up as late as I like, since I don't have to worry about Wilson waking me up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning polishing his teeth to be ready for early rounds. But even though things are getting back to normal it's weird not having him around. Even my mom was getting used to his being here. When I talked her earlier tonight, she sounded disappointed to hear that he's gone for good. Of course, she had her own reasons for hoping he'd stay; I think she figured that with Wilson around she could be sure I was eating well and keeping my feet dry and what not.

She also had someone else to talk to about that stupid show she watches. A few weeks ago she got her wish and they had standards night. That was the night Wilson insisted on watching it. Rod Stewart singing the classics? Did the 60's and 70's not happen? They might as well fire up the bubble pumper and the reanimated corpse of Lawrence Welk.

So there was Wilson eating popcorn and drinking beer and making cracks about how at first he thought Simon and I were separated at birth but that theory can't be true because Simon has more hair. I was sitting there trying to ignore him and silently fuming at the lack of visual interest in that show -- Paris was hardly dressed to seduce that night (though if she had been it would have been more "disturbing" than "hot"; it hadn't been that long since we'd discharged our teenage supermodel). Wilson tried to get me into a differential diagnosis of Paula; "She's an idiot," I snapped, and went back to reading the paper.

And then I looked up at the TV again as some girl who looked like an extra from the "Hee Haw" cornfield began her attempt at "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered." Wilson snorted and said something about "one out of three, anyway"; I sat there, staring, remembering another April when I'd sat in a college auditorium listening to a green-eyed girl perform the very same song.

I watched until I sensed Wilson looking at me. I gave the paper a snap, said something about that girl needing to just find herself a nonagenarian millionaire and settle down, and pretended to go back to reading the paper.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Since then, Daisy Mae has been kicked off the island, and I'm beginning to understand the savage pleasure that my mother takes in seeing contestants get voted off.


Now if I could just get the song completely scrubbed out of my head....

I sigh and get ready to push myself out of the chair. After all that, I'm going to need some famotidine anyway.