I need an adult

I really need some supervision.

I have known this for a long time. Anyone who knows me has known this for a long time. But, for some strange reason, my wife and daughter still choose to leave me on my own for a few days a couple of times each year.

On the outside, this seems like a great thing. I don't have to make the bed. I can swear at will. And no one knows when I go to bed, which means I can stay up as late as I want without feeling guilty when I'm asked the next morning when I came to bed.

That's the big problem right there. Usually, my "home alone" times come over the weekend. I had the place to myself for almost 60 hours during the week this time which meant I had to have all the fun I could while still making it to work in the morning.

That's just not fair.

The last time they left me alone, I had an entire Friday and Saturday at my disposal, so it was easy to stay up until 3 a.m. playing football on my PS2 because I could sleep in and still get a good breakfast out.

Not this time. I had to be up between 5 and 6 a.m. and maintain a decent level of competence through 5 p.m. I couldn't take off because my boss was off so I had to actually pretend to be some sort of authority figure while wishing I was home playing video games or napping.

I promised myself that I would try to show some restraint and not stay up too late. I'm really shitty at keeping promises.

First off, I never came home, got changed and made myself dinner right away. I always had to get online and screw around before I could do anything productive. That means I didn't get to eat dinner until after 7, which threw off my entire night, but in a good way.

I had plenty of soccer and other TV to keep me occupied until about 10 p.m. That's about the latest I stay up during the week when my wife is around. You would think I would start consider heading up to bed at that time, but that would be crazy.

How can I do that when Comedy Central shows South Park at 10? Especially when they were showing the one where Cartman turns his hall monitor status into an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter. That's also the one where Ike sleeps with his teacher ("Nice") so I had to watch it.

I could have gone to bed after that, but Friends is on at 11 so I only needed to entertain myself for half an hour before that came one. Stop laughing. I still watch lots of Friends reruns. There's nothing wrong with that.

After Friends came Scrubs, which I have to watch because I have only seen each one about six or seven times as opposed to the dozen or so times I have seen every Friends and Seinfeld episode. Obviously, needing supervision isn't my only problem. I finally got to bed a little after midnight and managed to make it through work.

I had a chance to go to bed early the next night, but that would be too easy. I pretty much repeated the whole process and got yet another night of absolutely shitty sleep, thanks to a combination of beer and worry about oversleeping.

Pretty much the only positive from the time alone was how I managed to get in a bunch of grilling. My wife does pretty much all the cooking so I love the chances to be real manly and fire up the grill with no supervision.

I got the guts to finally buy the Buffalo chicken sausage I had seen in the store a bunch of other times. Damn, they were good. Then again, you could put wing sauce on a shoe, and I'd find a way to enjoy it as long as I had enough blue cheese dressing. So I have a freezer full of food I grilled and saved for another day because it's no fun grilling for just one.

Now lots of TV watching, too little sleep and grilling might not sound like a cry for help, but it really is. If they hadn't come back Friday night, I don't know what would have happened. If I didn't need to work, I could have racked up some scary numbers on my PlayStation.

I managed to clean up the house, make the bed and get everything nice and tidy before my wife and daughter came home. I hugged them and told my wife of how I barely survived alone. I told her how I really didn't know if I could survive without her.

Then I asked her when she was going away again because I know there's lots of good TV on between 10 and midnight every night.

Brian Shea is probably enjoying a beer in his basement right now. You can contact him at columns@regularguycolumn.com.