A Girl...

Left to My Own Devices

Today was the first dry day in about four score years, and I had all kinds of plans to feel the partly sunny sun on my face by jogging to the gym and skipping to the farmer's market, tra la, and generally being all independent-productive-proactive-grownup girl while my boyfriend is away. (He called from the slopes this morning and said he was having fun but it was COLD. Who wants to warm whose toes between whose thighs now, huh?)

Well, I did my productive thing by way of cleaning the smelly dishes and organizing the corner where Simon piles his clothes, but I haven't put so much as a pinkie toe outside the house and now it's almost midnight and I think the stalls at the farmer's market are most certainly closed up for the night. And 24-Hour Fitness? Not so much.

I've spent the last thirteen hours pretty much attached to the couch editing the manuscript I was supposed to be reading at work all week but didn't because I was trying to finish a freelance project that got out of hand, like they always always always do. I'm keeping hours and trying to balance time sheets and, ouch, all the math is killing me and I still need to finish my taxes. (Come on, big refund, Mama needs a new pair of shoes.)

Since Simon and I started doing the my place/your place thing, it's rare that I spend more than three hours awake and conscious in my own apartment, so the last day and a half have been a real trip. For one, I was under the impression that there were only two people living in the apartment next door, yet all day I have heard people clomping up the stairs and fumbling with the keys and dropping the keys and banging the door open and closed, and yet I never hear anyone leave. By my count, there are about sixty people in the 1+ bedroom apartment, and I think there are some clown-car physics at work here.

Secondly, tv pretty much sucks. My Indian MTV channel was playing only really spacey modern stuff with silver vinyl miniskirts and not a sari in sight, and I've only seen one episode of Alias in the last two years and wouldn't you know it that is the episode they're rerunning tonight. (Not that it matters, because the show is such a soap opera now that you need three seasons of backstory to have any idea what's going on and who is dead and who is a clone and who is married to Ben Affleck.) The good news is that I watched the first three hours of my Italian drama and successfully resisted forging ahead with the Twin Peaks tapes that are stacked oh-so-temptingly next to my tv, so I still get an A+ on my entertainment report card for today.

Food report card? C. I am sporting neither a belly distended from self-inflicted starvation nor a belly bloated from consuming an entire pizza in one sitting. I cooked scalloped potatoes (from a box) and cod fillets (from a box) and ate various other things out of cans, bags, and individual-serving packets. I honestly can't remember the last time I ate a vegetable that wasn't rehydrated and smothered in cheese or cut into strips, fried, and rolled in salt, and good lord, I need me some vitamins. Mayhaps that explains the headache.

Conclusion
Positive side-effects of staying home alone:
--Clean dishes
--Happy cat
--Billable hours

Negative side-effects of staying home alone:
--Malnutririon
--Pancake ass
--Spreadsheet of all the must-see tv I've been missing, including next Monday's Dr. Phil, in which one woman drives her S.O. clinically insane with all the I-want-a-baby-impregnate-me-now-big-stud talk. Perhaps she too has seen the Target commercial with the newborns on the baby-powder conveyor belt, bopping along to chipper chants of "Baby! Girl! Baby! Boy!" The cuteness! Can you blame us?! (Although maybe I'm just suggestable, because that commercial also makes me want to dress up my cat in couture and pearls like a 1930s glamour star and take her to a cabaret club. Target commercials are made with crack.)

Hold on. Killer Klowns from Outer Space? What is this crap? Oh god, there's a theme song. I think it's time to go to bed. Goodnight, all.