Hopeless Solo

August 12, 2011

This post is a miracle.

The very fact that I’m sitting in this chair and typing on a keyboard right now is itself an astonishing feat. Never mind that the words are (so far) stringing themselves together more or less coherently, and that they’re headed for my website as planned, rather than some online petition to Save Transgendered Chinchillas or a Wilford Brimley moustache appreciation page. That’s just angel-food icing on the miracle cake.

So why is this post so unlikely?

My wife is out of town for the weekend. Off to the middle of the country — the kidneys of the nation, or perhaps the gallbladder — to visit her family. But not me. Just her. Solo.

“‘Bankrupt’ is among the least of your worries, when ‘Grease Fire’, ‘Explosive Canine Heimlich’ and ‘Naked Drunk Rooftop Karaoke’ are still on the board.”

That means I’m alone here in the condo, without adult supervision, until Monday night. Already I’ve endured a night on my own — just me and the mutt, fending for ourselves. In the past, that’s been like bending over and giving the Wheel of Bad Fortune a good spin. You don’t know exactly where it’s going to land, but you know it’s bad news. ‘Bankrupt’ is among the least of your worries, when ‘Grease Fire’, ‘Explosive Canine Heimlich’ and ‘Naked Drunk Rooftop Karaoke’ are still on the board.

(I never seem to hit “Lose A Turn”. That would solve all my problems. But do I hit it? No. I never do.)

So far, the pooch and I have survived intact. Which, at the risk of repeating myself — mir-a-cle! But the path ahead is fraught with peril. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the weekend, and already things are turning for the worse. I’m working on maybe four hours of sleep here, for starters.

(I tell people that I don’t sleep well when my wife is out of town, and they say, ‘Awww. That’s so sweet!‘

Right. Why don’t you pop by for a visit at four-thirty in the morning, when I’m lying in bed yelling ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep‘ at the top of my lungs, running my forehead along the slats in the headboard like some suicidal xylophonist, trying to drive myself into a nice exhausted concussed coma?

Still think that’s ‘sweet’, PopTart? Then maybe you could’ve taken the 9am meeting bullet that I got popped in the forehead with this morning, and I would’ve slept till noon, instead of drooling all over myself and half the conference room during whatever the hell presentation I was mostly sleeping through.

I started awake once and made such a loud noise that everyone looked at me like I was going to ask a question. So I played it off and said, “I was just thinking that last slide was a little confusing. You could really organize that data better.”

So he went back a slide. It was the acknowledgments. I wasn’t on it. Nobody saw that as ‘confusing’, particularly.)

Second, I’m already getting just a little too ‘free’ with the freedom of having the place to myself. I had leftover pizza for dinner — and I didn’t reheat it. Also, I didn’t use a plate. I just ate it right out of the foil it was wrapped in in the fridge. No napkin, either — I scarfed it down, licked my fingers and I’m good to go.

Are you getting this, people? I’m talking serious Lord of the Flies shit going on up in here. I’m seriously considering taking my beer off the coaster on my desk. Because who’s gonna tell me not to? Nobody, that’s who. I gave the dog a big fat hunk of pepperoni, so she’s on my side. That’s right.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I actually dropped the pepperoni. Because it fell off the pizza, since I didn’t warm it up. And I didn’t have a plate, or a napkin, to catch it with.

But the mutt doesn’t know that. I totally have her eating out of my hand now.)

(Which, uh… happened after I licked my fingers clean. Not before. Because that’s gross. Ew.)

The real danger, of course, is that I’m here all alone, and it’s the weekend, and I know where the beer lives. In the fridge, next to where the pizza was, and close to the six jars of mayonnaise and olives that will likely have to sustain me until Monday, now that I’ve scarfed down the leftovers.

(That was probably a bad move, in hindsight. It was most of a pizza, too. That’s probably not going to end well.

I’ve never been good at the rationing. That’s my wife’s thing. The dog and me, we’re scarfers. She rations; we scarf. Without that check in place, there’s nothing stopping us. It’s going to be empty mayo jars and olive pit shrapnel all weekend. Not pretty. Nutritionally subpar. Probably a little slippery, by the end of things.)

So just be happy — if this post makes you so — that you’ve heard anything at all from me this weekend. The next three days will likely be a blur of empty bottles, smeared condiments and a doofus dog slowly turning feral. When my wife gets back, I’ll probably be wearing the tatters of whatever I find in the linen closet, with a Castaway beard, bloodshot eyes and a face drawn on the dog’s butt to talk to. Because I’ll get tired of dealing with the other end pretty soon. It’s slobbery and hot and smells like horse meal.

And it’s eating all my goddamned pepperoni. I’ve got to go fight for what little solid food is left in the house. If I’m not back by Monday, send in a rescue team. Or a Domino’s guy. Readers’ choice.