My lovely lady wife is off on vacation in Argentina for a week, skiing with a friend. This leaves me alone (with the dog) and more or less left to my own devices. I have some spare cash, the maid comes in daily except for weekends, and I have diplomatic immunity. So, Dopers, what should I do? What have y’all done in similar situations?
Nap. Lots of naps.
The last time I was alone for a week, I locked myself out of the house. Dead of winter, after hours, had to call a locksmith. So keep extra keys handy.
Other than that, indulge yourself. Invite some friends over for beer and cards. If you have a solitary or noisy hobby that you don’t do when your wife is home, do that.
I spent a lot of time reading and watching DVDs, and eating what and when I wanted. One day I ate nothing but chocolate. I’m waiting for him to leave again. Three days in August, to some golf tournament in Chicago. Woo hoo!
You have diplomatic immunity?
Hey, everybody! Par-tay at False_God’s place!
Lucky you: I wish my husband would leave for a few days.
I agree with Auntie on the noisy habit suggestion. I love jazz, and I like to go listen to bands playing live. If my guy is around, he will not let me go alone.
After about 3 minutes at one of these venues, he wants munchies, preferably ones that make a lot of noise.
After about 15 minutes, he starts checking his watch, checking his watch, checking his watch ad nauseam. Then he starts talking to me. Jazz is not background music for me, so I am totally cut off from what was being played.
Once the first set is done, he wants to go home, and by then I am so frustrated that I agree with him.
The only times in the past years that I’ve listened to live music properly is when I’ve attended daytime homages to deceased local musicians. He doen’t come with me to those-- he must feel these are safer? It’s a bit sad to only hear live music (and enjoy it-- o sinner that I am!) at ceremonies commemorating the dead.
Hey, Buck, if you can get yourself down here, you too can enjoy it. I get to park wherever I want, and the worst thing that happens is I get shipped home.
Apart from that, not into napping and I don’t drink. However, I do have a mangonel that needs calibrating and I have 350 limes in my fridge. (lime juice is big here and you can buy limes by the bag.)
My stepfather apparently goes insane whenever my mother is out of town for a few days. He reorganizes the house. Mom has returned to find all of the cans and spice containers in her cupboards put in alphabetical order, and her clothes re-hung in the closets according to color.
He’s not as bad as my grandfather. Grandpa goes into survivalist mode whenever my grandmother is out of town. He sets up a camp site in the middle of the living room floor, with a bed area in the center, food set at the perimeter, along with clean clothes (dirty clothes go in a pile at the foot of his pallet), and piles of reading material. After a few days, it starts looking like a refugee camp.
Once, the burglar alarm went off while he wasn’t home. The cops called my mother to come and let them in. When they entered the living room, the cop put up an arm to stop her. “No! Don’t go in there! There’s been a break-in.” Mom peeped around his arm. “Uhh, no. That’s just how my dad lives when mom is out of town.”
When my parents went out of town and left me alone with my sister,
- I let my dog sleep in my room
- My sister slept sprawled out on my parents’ big bed
- We listened to music at top volume
- I cooked tofu because she likes tofu and the rest of the family does not.
- We walked to the drug store in the evening after it got dark
- We baked cookies
- We made a game of trying to come up with embarrassing things to tell our other sister’s friends when they called asking for her. Like saying she couldn’t talk because she was in the bathroom and had bad diahrea or that she was busy watching Barney & Friends. That was really mean of us.
- We contemplated some sort of elaborate prank like putting all our parents’ furniture in our other sister’s room and putting all hers in their room, but figured we’d just have to clean it up later and we’d be grounded.
- We cleaned. We want to have the house to ourselves as often as possible.
- We considered doing something like going to get me a haircut or dye job (her hair is already short and dyed) but ran out of time
- We watched fluffy shows and movies that we wouldn’t be able to watch with my dad in the house. MTV reality shows, VH1 celebrity listy things that we don’t care about, and movies like Center Stage and Bambi
- We played with the piano and had nobody making fun of us
- We tried to learn French from Amelie
- we went to the playground early in the morning and played.
Being without parents and your brattiest sister is different than being without your spouse, obviously… but that’s what we did
When my wife goes out of town back home, I get some beer, my favorite junk food, and play computer games watch a lot movies, don’t shave, pretty much let me, the dog and the house go to hell, then clean it all up the day before she gets back.
Sometimes that whole getting shipped home thing doesn’t work out quite so well either…
He got off easy
I find the whole diplomatic immunity takes all the fun out of it. No challenge anymore. 
When left alone I usually end up sitting around in my jammies, eating ice cream straight out of the carton and squirting the whipped cream directly into my mouth.
My now ex-wife moved out in early October and I am here to tell you that it never gets old.