Rog,

wives are like speedometers/odometers in that they help us to establish some relationship between time and the distance covered during it.

I've found that since my wife is gone (ie, there's nobody to open the door and tell me that the past 30 minutes was actually 3 hours) that the situation you describe has multiplied about tenfold. I just spent the past week working on music for what seemed like about half a day.

work expands to fill the time allotted for it. If you have all day to write a song, it will take all day. If you have a week, well...