Dog Drugs, Singlehood, and the Joys of Solo Time

CORBEN PULLS A MARILYN

Yesterday while I was doing my hair, Corben left the bathroom and ten minutes later I found him spread out on my couch with an empty pill bottle tilted down his throat. He’d slobbered the label completely off the thing, so I had to retrace his steps until I found some tablets on the ground and could determine what he’d taken. It turned out to be a sedative used by both humans and animals (small blessings), so when I called the vet I was simply put on ‘dog watch’—a minimum six hour monitoring of a nine month-old puppy for ‘signs of anything unusual’. Y’know, because 9 month old puppies never do anything unusual. Anyway, he spent the rest of the morning getting really fascinated with anything I touched. At one point he buried his head in the laundry and just inhaled, slow and deep.

OH YEAH, AND...

Oh, and I’m single again. Yeah, I thought I’d write a big emotional thing here, but I’m fine. I mean it: I’m FINE. Truly fine. I don’t know if breakups are different the older you get, or if it’s because after divorce, everything feels a little less catastrophic…like if you had a leg eaten off by a shark, and then later a dog bit you at the park, and you’d just be like, “That’s nothing. Have you seen my peg leg?” The actual breakup happened a few months back, and I spent some time processing, and now I’m at the point where I’m not exactly single ready to mingle, but I’m also lightyears away from crying in the dark.

I think what’s surprised me the most is that I’m totally okay with being alone. I’m looking forward to it, in a way. If I want to eat cereal for dinner while standing in the bathroom because I’m doing my makeup before heading out to a movie, that’s ok. If I want to play Call of Duty for an hour instead of buying groceries, that’s ok. When I do buy groceries, I only have one insane set of dietary needs to consider, and that’s glorious.

BOYS VS GIRLS 

Today my friend Pepper and I were discussing dating. Pepper is awesome. Her romantic experiences are within the realm of girl-boy things, whereas mine (as you know) meanders back and forth over the gender line. We were conferring on the complexities of trying to get men to talk about their feelings in an upfront and direct way. I told Pepper, “If I knew how to get guys to just talk about their feelings and practice appropriate self reflection and introspective observation, I maybe wouldn’t have ended up spending half my adult life dating women.”

Pepper pointed out that this means I have options, but it’s not that simple. I explained, “Yeah but then you get into the world of 'mental ninjitsu mixed with verbal acrobatics with a smidgen of passive aggressive assasination attempts', and then you'll find yourself seeking out the refuge of a strong hairy chest and monosyllabic conversations.”

“So, pros and cons to both,” said Pepper.

“Yep. At the same time, it's like choosing between two equally awesome tropical beaches, but also being stuck on two tropical beaches without an umbrella or sunscreen...eventually, it burns...”

Obviously, I’m not coming at the dating scene with the same wide-eyed naïve vigor with which I approached it as a younger woman. I think this means I’ll be a lot more committed to my mental ‘checklist’ of things that I will and won’t tolerate. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned that time is precious, and I’m wary of wasting it.

Unless, of course, we’re talking about laying on my bed, alone, playing Call of Duty for an hour wearing a sexy nightgown for no reason and eating Easter chocolate I keep hidden in the freezer. That…that is time well wasted.

Why I (Intentionally) Dropped the Ball on NaBloPoMo

WHY I STOPPED THE NABLOPOMO THING

At the beginning of November, I announced I’d be participating in the NaBloPoMo, which is where bloggers pledge to post on their blog daily for the entire month. I think this a great idea, and a great exercise, and this would be my first year taking a run at it.

I blogged religiously for about the first three weeks…then, if you’d been counting, you’d notice I suddenly stopped keeping up.

This wasn’t laziness, or distraction, or anything else of the sort. I just realized I’d learned some lessons from the exercise that actually made it clear the exercise needed to be stopped.

Everything in moderation—even work

It was somewhere around the end of week two that I started to see a concerning pattern: I’d rush home at the end of the evening’s activities to write out a post; sometimes I’d be feeling frustrated and flustered, while sometimes I was eager and inspired. This is normal, and all part of the experience. But either way, I best like writing at the end of the day, when enough stupid things have happened to fuel my sarcastic humour—or, on other days, I’m tired out enough to be mellow and have a high level of concentration. So here I was, rushing home to write, and I started to miss out on life.

Alan’s kids came for the weekend, and I sat at the computer for the better part of one particular Friday evening, furiously typing away for a specific post. Usually Friday nights are catch-up time, where the family engages in chatter and planning for the weekend ahead. While I was physically present for much of that usual stuff, I wasn’t mentally there at all. Instead of the feeling of accomplishment I’d thought I’d have at the end of the night, I felt like I'd missed out.

There were several evenings when Alan and I would come home from an activity, and instead of ending the night off with a good cuddle, I sat in bed with my laptop ‘til midnight.

I tried writing during the day instead, and found that I was missing out on time-sensitive tasks, as there are so many things in this world that require regular business hours. Other projects started getting delayed—projects that affected my happiness, my profitability, or my productivity. I think, especially for those of us who make our living from home, or online at all really, you can overdo the whole 'sit at a keyboard' thing if you aren't careful, no matter how positive your intentions were to start.

Life doesn't wait for you to document it.

I’m not saying that daily writing/blogging is a bad thing at all. But I’m reminded of a quote:

"Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time."

I think that rings really true for me. Here, let me show you a picture of my day planner on just a random week (and yes, I still use a PAPER planner…I have a system!)

This is a casual week, light on workload, summer months. You
get the idea. (Mustaches are for privacy. And cuteness.)

I hate being bored, you see, so I’m always doing something. I try not to have it be busy-body work, but rather, I try to check as many boxes off of life in a day as I can. I haven't sat still for an entire movie in over a decade. I’m sure some people would say my pace is unrealistic or unhealthy, but it’s a pace I’m generally very happy with. I like to go to bed tired.

Busy and productive are different animals.

But I don’t like busy-body work, and the reality was that (mandatory) blogging daily felt like busy-body work. I don’t mind the idea of writing something and saving it on my computer everyday; but to write something for public consumption every single day is just something I’m not always up for. 

Quality content makes for contentment.

I’ve been blogging for years—I had a blog before they were called blogs—and I know what makes good content: quality, not quantity. (Though brevity is another matter entirely.) We’re all so eager to create content these days that we seem to have forgotten the idea that, unless you have something to say, silence is a viable option. Sometimes I like to give the air a break, and instead of pumping out half-conceptualized chatter, I like to shut up and wait for something truly geniune and powerful to say.

So I stopped participating in NaBloPoMo this year—by choice, not by mistake or poor work habits. Will I participate again next year? Absolutely, and I’m going to continue making time everyday to write, which was a good thing for me to get into. What I won’t do is burden you all with posts that were written with a sour heart while I miss out on family time…or posts that are poorly constructed…or posts that are written with a fake smile as I’m dealing with one of life’s hiccups (one of the rare ones I don’t feel I can share with you all, though I do know how much we all enjoy laughing at my follies).

I will speak when I have something to say; the rest of the time, I’ll be living in the present moment, making mental notes, and preparing for the next great piece of prose to be delivered to my readers, who deserve my best work.

The Pros and Cons of Single Living: or, What happens when you fall down the stairs.

My sketch of the great fall.

I decided to set up my Christmas tree this year, even though there didn't seem a lot of point because all my holiday festivities were happening away from the house. I got my dad to drag the boxes out of storage, then set to work decorating it. I chatted with my bestie, MJ, on the phone while I worked, and it was done pretty fast. Feeling productive, I picked up the empty tree box and headed down to the basement, still chatting away on the phone.

I don't know what happened next. One minute, I was navigating the steps without trouble, and the next, I guess I thought I was on the bottom one...but I was actually four steps up and I pitched forward as my foot fell into open space. I wasn't that worried at first, knowing I'd probably land on the laundry I'd failed to wash at the bottom of the stairs; but I didn't think about dangers on the way down. In a former life, my house had a half-door at the bottom of the basement stairs, and the weird half-door frame is still present, and this sharp angled corner of wood was what drove itself directly between my two elbow bones as I fell down into my basement. 

I think MJ really had the scariest time, as she would have had only this absurd train of sound effects to tell her what had happened:

(Me speaking): "So then I said to Alan, like, that's totally not what I--OOOOh!" [Clatter, thwack, skitter, thunk...] "Oh my god! Ohhhhhhh my god, owwwwww....OWWWWWWWW!" The phone got away from me as I rolled around on the floor, holding my arm and cursing. 

The point of this story (which continues on with a hospital trip, two rounds of xrays, and a hand that keeps going numb) is that, as I lay on the floor without anyone to help me, I thought: this is the ultimate reason why being single SUCKS.

Then I started composing a list of the pro's and con's of living single.

PROS TO LIVING SINGLE:

-You can watch whatever you want on TV.

-You can fall asleep watching the same romantic comedy every night for a month.

-If there's no milk left, you have only yourself to blame.

-You can pee with the bathroom door open.

-Dishes can wait. Sometimes, for weeks.

-Shaving your legs is also a sometimes thing.

-You can make any plans you want, without consulting anyone.

-You have only yourself to blame when the peanut butter runs out.

-You can talk to your dog like a human without anyone raising an eyebrow.

CONS TO LIVING SINGLE:

-When you fall down the stairs and injure yourself, you may die all alone in the basement.

-You never seem to finish all the eggs in the carton before they go bad.

-You have to yell at the neighbour next door to turn down his music, without any backup behind you.

-When you pick up sushi for dinner, you have to eat all of yours. Even the gross salmon ones. Because there's no one to trade with.

-If you need a glass of water at bedtime, you're either getting out of bed and stepping on that freezing cold floor, or you're going to bed with a parched throat.

-You have to get very, very creative on zipping up your own dress.

-You basically can't drink, because drinking alone in an empty house, especially while talking to your dog like a human, seems like a lot of checkmarks on the list for 'You May Have a Drinking Problem'.

-There is no one to whine when you eat the entire box of crackers, so sometimes you do...in one sitting.

Anything to add? Leave a comment below. I feel like these lists could go on endlessly. While you comment, I'm going to go look into one of those Life Alert pendants, even though I'd undoubtedly forget it on the bathroom counter and then STILL fall down the stairs all alone. At which point, Mr Darcy will be his usual heroic self by eating my hair. 

SONG OF THE MOMENT: Get Up Offa That Thing, James Brown.