36 Things That Did or Did Not Happen While My Partner was Out of Town

1. Fruit molded in the sink
2. Four episodes of Mrs. Marple were watched (the good one, with Joan Hickson)
3. Sometimes, I slept with the lights on.
4. I woke up every three or so hours thinking I heard a noise.
5. The cat began sleeping on top of me.
6. The cat and I invented a new game where a blanket hangs off the couch, which he then hides behind to hunt the string that I walk by with.
7. I accepted every social invitation.
8. I got a Dixie Chicks CD out of the library, and it was about all kinds of unpop things: infertility, divorce, parents with Alzheimer’s, and the crappiness of fame.
9. I also got a Prince CD out of the library, on the cover he is wearing a bandanna, a leather jacket, and a thong.
10. All these discs got stuck in my car CD player when it decided to pretend it had no discs. NO DISC. NO DISC. NO DISC.
11. I also checked out a library book that came up as another book called “Swimming,” which I did not check out. But, according to the library computer, I have this invisible book.  They can’t find it on the shelf, and are sure I have it. This CD eating is not going to help my case.
12. I made an effort to talk to a person every day.
13. I wrote an episode of Friday Night Lights where Hastings is gay, and Tami has to teach Sex Ed.
14. I allowed some pretty mediocre BBC into the house. Monday Monday, Inspector Lynley, Waking the Dead.
15. The vegetables I bought at the market pretty much rotted in the fridge.
16. I ate cookies for two days of meals.
17. I bought a teapot.
18. I carry the teapot around the house with me like a small dog.
19. I did not want to eat the barley soup I had made too much of. I did not want to make Daikon greens and soft rice with miso.
20. I got pissed that I have seen all the costume dramas on Netflix instant.
21. I did not meditate every day.
22. I did not go visit any museums, or bring my laptop so I could work there.
23. I did not go on any kind of amusing adventure by myself, unless buying tea at Whole Foods counts, which it doesn’t.
24. I didn’t remind myself of myself the last time I lived alone, almost 10 years ago.
25. I had no epiphanies of unfiltered self, except for mess.
26. I did not buy potholders, plants, or new sneakers.
27. I dyed my hair practically white. On Skype, a friend’s baby thought I was his grandmother.
28. I decided blooming peonies look like sushi–either the ginger, or salmon sashimi.
29. I trashed the apartment in the most boring of ways: clothes on the bathroom floor, mail everywhere, chopped vegetables left on the counter, every drawer open, really no place to land a foot without stepping on some kind of paper.
30. I did not drink.
31. I did not have nightmares.
32. I’m pretty excited about sleeping in the dark again.
33. My only revelation is that it was not a wild vacation, or a grand reform.
34. I will still probably clean the house tonight like a teenager expecting their parents home.
35. Does age  reduce all delights to modge-podging while listening to the dulcet tones of Arrested Development repeats?
36. I made a list.

Yours,

CF