For nearly a month I’ve been ignoring instant messenger. It’s not you, it’s me. It got to the point where even though I’d open iChat and “get online”, I’d hide the app all day, and totally ignore all incoming bips and beeps. It started getting really easy to ignore, and I haven’t really sat down and thought of why I continue to have it on at all until right now.

See, I suspect that if I leave it off for more than a few days, people will begin to wonder if I’m in some kind of trouble. When Buffington isn’t online, surely some sort of crazy must be percolating. So I leave it on so people know I’m alive. After fooCamp this weekend followed by some more travel, I’ll begin to respond. I promise.

Second thing. I’ve been home alone for the past several days and it’s not the thing for me. It’s nice getting a lot of uninterrupted computer time in, keeping that flow going, but it makes me crazy too. I talk out loud a lot, and practice improbably official voices for myself while cooking eggs and beans in the same pan, wondering if tomato soup would help. I practice shifty socked dances while the eggs and beans marinate in tomato soup, and consider adding the tamatillo sauce to my delightful looking meal.

Being alone is what makes people crack. People who’d otherwise lead healthy productive lives turn into babbling lunatics, and stand in the middle of a room wondering what to do next. Not having kids underfoot and tasks to complete spins me right out of control. It is not, for example, acceptable to be writing this with one sock on, sitting on a chair in the kitchen while the TV plays country music videos because it, in my own spoken out loud words (in a very official tone) “y’alls gotta make some kinda peace with yer fellow Americans, and country is the salve that’ll do ’er.”

If not for the Internet and all of her peoples, I’d be making mountains out of mashed potatoes by now.