Wish me luck.

Each year around this time — in the heart of the haze, the heat and the seasonal hullabaloo — I am left to my own devices.

“Oh no” is right.

Fifty-one weeks out of the year, we partner up to play with the cards we’ve been dealt. Crisp and clean, if somewhat frayed around the edges as the years pass.

But when this 52nd week rolls around … hmmm, let’s just say that I’m not playing with a full deck.

My usual travel companion has escap … will be carried back to the wilds of Ol’ Virginny — where she and her two sisters will spend their annual week together carousing and cavorting as much as their 60-plus-year-old bodies (and teenage spirits) can handle.

No husbands allowed.

“Oh no” is right.

I mean, it’s not a problem. I’m a grown man. I can manage to roam around the house without getting lost, forage for food (most of which I’m allowed to eat), pass the time on the internet and in front of a good book or the tube — not to mention shutting down for the night, and waking up, at hours near which my body clock has been set.

Heck, since absence makes the heart grow fonder, I might even continue to put down the toilet seat.

It’s just that … well … you know.

Things were different during this week in years past, when the Head of the Household would be around to ignore me — emerging only to order me to feed her or to go to sleep.

She’d jump up next to my pillow and stare at me until I opened my eyes, then demand to know why there were only two of us in the bed.

“It’s that week,” I’d tell her and she’d huff and trundle away … only to return an hour or so later expecting a different answer to the same question.

This week, though, I’m on my own. Just me and the voices in my head — some of which aren’t on speaking terms with each other, which can become so distracting that I find myself roaming the kitchen forgetting why I was there.

The problem, at least in my estimation, is that hers is a family of unicorns.

They like each other.

There’s little to none of the sibling quibbling that most of us face. Back in April, the three sisters gathered appropriately in Bend with their brother. This time, spouses were allowed. So, too, were nephews and nieces, grandchildren and significant others.

Fifteen of us knocking on the doors of downtown restaurants, looking for a place to eat … without a reservation.

“Oh no” is right.

Despite having all the ingredients for a melodramatic minefield, it worked out fine. No one was stabbed with a fork, shamed for grabbing the last dinner roll or accused of not paying their share of the tab.

You might find yourself asking the same question I have for the past 45 years — what color is the sky on their home planet?

I mean, I have four siblings myself, and the last time we were all in the same room, there was all the conviviality of a dentist’s office waiting room — people thrown together because they had to be there, scanning the room for the nearest exit.

Of course, that was Dec. 7, 2003, when we gathered for my father’s funeral.

The point, if there is a point, is that this coming week is the one each year where I am alone again, naturally. As the unicorns romp in Virginia, with no Head of the Household to shepherd me, and the voices in my head muttering to themselves in scattered gyri and sulci, it’ll be a major undertaking to get through the week.

Wish me luck.