I forgot the eau de parfum Little Boy in Summer. Good lord! They truly emit noxious, green clouds. At this very moment I have one showered and deodorized asleep on the sofa while his clothes are airing out on the balcony. It was an unplanned sleepover so I make allowances.

For breakfast, we’re going to an icon of Americans’ wonton indulgence in salt, grease, and sugar, IHOP. If he’s still a little gamey when we get there well, that will be the problem of the IHOP maitre d’ won’t it?

Talk about food value. Do you know a child can get eggs, links of sausage, bacon and five fried, sugar coated hushpuppy-type pastries for pittance if accompanied by an adult? Obscene. I ordered four whole-grain nutty, pancakes. I ate only two and one of his sausage links.

I know I was bad. I just don’t give a damn. No child wants to snuggle up with a skinny grandmother sporting sculpted abs. Sculpted abs aren’t comfortable. Children, and some adults, want someone who feels like a body pillow, and I’m trying to be accommodating. Let me be clear. My goal weight is comfortable-for-children. I don’t intend to eat my way up to wearing pearl-snap housedresses and riding a scooter through Wal-Mart carrying a chijuajua.

On another matter, I have calculated the approximate number of hours I have left to live if I live to be my actuarial age. This is sobering. Hours are not as abstract as days or years. Perhaps abstract is not the word. The better word is undeniable. There’s an emotional fudge factor in days and years, but I know what an hour feels like.

I did not do this calculation to measure my inexorable march to the other side but to help me decide how I want to spend my time on the way. It works.

For example, I’m done folding underwear. Talk about a waste of time. I’m treating panties like Kleenex. Stuff them in a drawer and grab a pair out as needed. I had a similar system in the halcyon days of my youth when I pulled them out of the pile of unfolded laundry on the floor.  This is really the same system with the exception of putting it in the drawer. I only do that because the cat likes to tunnel in the clean laundry, and I don’t like cat hair on my underwear.

Another waste of my time is ironing. I live in a climate that is brutally hot. Ironing is a task requiring the application of heat. Where's the logic in that?  One lives in a perpetual state of sweat here. Heat is not kind to me and sweat is not kind to ironed clothes so why bother?

I wear cotton and a lot of linen, and no, I do not iron the linen. Why spend any of my hours ironing because in this climate ironed linen lasts until I get to the car and put on my seat belt?

My procedure is to wash it, smooth it out while still damp, give the seams a gentle stretch and line dry it--well, to be specific, I shower rod dry it. The result is a soft, pliable garment that looks as good, if not better, than ironed linen and  is certainly less frustrating than thirty minutes of hot work inside undone in eight minutes outside.

If it requires ironing, it doesn’t live here anymore

Granted, I live in a city known for its informality. Here people wear patio clothes to the symphony and barbeque clothes to weddings. Funerals are where I draw the line on funky. I have a black, all-season suit and a strand of pearls for funerals or a last minute audience with the Pope. You never know.

The sartorial bar is set low here. Line dried linen doesn’t warranted a second look when you can see a guy in my neighborhood riding a speed bike in a thong. That’s right, a thong. Period. One can only imagine should one be perverse enough to do so, the condition of his butt cheeks.

As for his personal hygiene, the mind reels.