How long?

Now that I am single-momming it for a few days, I am prey to my dark mind even more than usual. Normally it is dark in the way that a jam cupboard is dark--you're not sure what's in there, but there's an excellent chance that it will be sticky and sweet. At worst, it will be a spider or perhaps a deer mouse. A rabid deer mouse, with hanta virus and . . . . Anyhow, last night, as Smoochie slumbered, I went through the following scenario: So let's say something happens to me. . . . a murdra, a stroke, a tragic stumble over Harry Potter in the night. How long would it take for help to arrive? Who would notice my absence? The babysitter? Or would she just assume I was flaking again when I failed to deliver Smoochie at the appointed hour? My mom? Or would she just assume that I was working too busily to return a phone call? The meter man? The coffee delivery lady? Nope--they'd both just go away and try later. How often? How soon? Luke comes home on Saturday at midnight--what would he find? A starving Smoochie and a very full diaper and a dead wife? Would the rats already have moved in? Would Smoochie know enough to lock himself in the bathroom to get away from them? But what if he got really thirsty and either drank out of the toilet (a mother's worst nightmare. . . . almost; see above, and below) or ran the bathtub and flooded the house and then when Luke opened the front door, the water was up to the ceiling just like in "A Fish out of Water" and the whole works, Smoochie and all, just roared out into the driveway? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

At that point, I hit the Ovaltine and Architectural Digest ("Hollywood at Home"). I bet Audrey Hepburn never worried about floating her son up to the ceiling and out into the frozen streets of a northern town. I just bet.