So Lonesome I Could Cry

I miss my husband. He’s off in the wilderness somewhere without cell phone service for 6 days being manly and teaching a bunch of impressionable young boys how to be manly too.

Whenever he’s about to go out of town, I always try to psych myself out and convince myself it’s gonna be fun. I’ll eat vegetarian meals for dinner every night! I’ll watch Jane Austen movies and eat gummy sharks all week! I’ll let my laundry pile up so it’s spilling out of my closet onto the already tiny strip of visible carpet between the bed and the wall, making it impossible for Gary to get into bed without wading through a sea of business casual separates. Oh, you know what, I actually do that when Gary’s home. The only thing different about this week is that he won’t be annoyed that I never do laundry ever. Or at least I won’t hear about it. But like every other time he’s gone out of town, as the days go by, I realize more and more how much work he usually does around the house.

Excuse me dirty dishes, what are you still doing in the sink? Aren’t you usually hanging out in the dishwasher getting all sparkly around this time of night?

Oh, and trash receptacle to which I always incorrectly refer as a dumpster because I can never remember what you’re actually called? The garbage truck came two days ago, so what are you still doing on the curb, making it extra difficult to parallel park in front of my house?

Am I supposed to be checking our mailbox? I thought our mail got delivered directly to our kitchen table.

What’s that Brutus? You haven’t eaten in three days? Well how should I know where we keep your food?!

Then there’s the fact that there’s no voice with a crazy, unidentifiable accent coming from the next room asking me what I’m “doueing” every so often. (I'm not sure if it translates across the web, but believe me, if you ever hear it, you will laugh uncontrollably.)

I guess the worst part is how vulnerable I suddenly feel to things like murderers, vampires, and the occasional reformed drug addict who’s at the door asking me if I’ll buy two years’ worth of Rachel Ray magazine for $60 so he can be one step closer to completing the program that’s helping him turn his life around. Sounds great to me! I mean, for sixty bucks, I get the satisfaction of knowing I’m helping a young man improve his quality of life, even if it means I have to endure twenty four months worth of a magazine whose pages are mostly covered with cute little dresses and sunglasses that Rachel thinks are “just perfect for those summer weekends on the yacht!”, followed by ten or twenty recipes that don’t look all that appetizing in the first place (Oh, yum! Tripe and black eyed pea tacos with pureed beet salsa!) and whose ingredient lists are a mile long and include a garlic-jalapeno hybrid that can only be found on the Tijuana black market and some distant relative of Parmesan cheese that is apparently so delicious it’s worth paying nine dollars a wedge, even though I've never really been able to tell much of a difference between that and the three dollar plastic canister of powdered stuff...

I forgot what I was talking about. Time for a glass of wine and a nap.