Oh, dear.
My boyfriend/fiancé Jeremy went off to some Catholic retreat with his (ultra-progressive, if you can believe it) school congregation. He’s at a monastery in Oka, Quebec, which is about an hour northwest of here.
This is my first weekend with the house to myself since we met, really, because he started coming over soon after that, and had moved in by the end of last December. Now, I’ve had weekends away - to visit my parents, or when I went to NYC Megadope - but this is the first time he’s gone away.
It’s also my first weekend alone since the weekend after I got sober, which was exactly 11 months ago today. That’s a bit scary, but I’ll be OK.
Anyway, I knew that I’d end up making a huge mess, leaving stuff all over the place, not doing the dishes, and what not. But I didn’t realize I’d be able to revert from being so completely whipped by the boy that I do my dishes before I finish chewing, to the slob I used to be, in one night.
Yes. The place is a disaster. I mean, not nearly as bad as it used to be before Jer came into my life and my apartment and Swiffered them from top to bottom. For example, there’s nothing growing in the sink, and I’m banking on a desire to do the dishes coming over me sometime later today.
Last night I went to the noodle place and got some General Tao’s (Tso’s for you Americans) chicken, some noodles, and a whole load of spring rolls. And a couple of movies - stuff Jer wouldn’t be interested in, like “All The President’s Men”. There I was, with the styrofoam take-out containers spread out on the coffee table (along with the ashtray and my cigarettes and my Coke and the remotes), dishing myself out General Tao, dripping its dark sauce onto the table, spilling noodles onto the carpet (they weren’t that great anyway, and I’m going to chuck the rest), getting plum sauce all over my t-shirt. Oops
The difference was that I cared. But I let myself anyway.
I fell asleep in front of the TV about halfway through “All The President’s Men” and woke up hours later, having missed several calls from Jer at the monastery - I’m assuming that was him, from the Caller ID record. Who knew monks needed PRIVATE NAME/PRIVATE NUMBER? Oh well, he’s just calling to check up on me anyway, right?
“Did you eat?”
“Yeah, I got take-out.”
“What did you get?”
“Chinese.”
“Did you make a mess?”
“Umm… no?”
“Liar.”
“Well, nothing’s stained, at least.”
So after I woke up, I found the spot in the movie where I had fallen asleep, and picked up where I left off. That, with the “Dingo ate my baby” movie, and it’s two something in the morning, and I’m exhausted again. Being a pig can be tiring. I go to bed, and set my alarm for noon today, so I can get up and be productive.
Yeah, there’s a bunch of stuff I wanted to get done today. I need a hair cut, then maybe a bit of shopping (just mundane stuff like more solid color boxer-briefs, and perhaps some basic groceries), then go to the gym, then hopefully get together with my sponsor. (After all, in a month, he’ll be giving me my one year cake, and he should know how I’ve been doing, but I don’t call or see him nearly enough.) All of this to say my idea was to have a nice, long sleep, then get up and tackle Saturday with healthy, robust, sober vigor.
No dice. I woke up at 8:30 in the morning, with talk radio still on (some show about spaghetti squash), and I was hacking up a lung. We just put the heat on this week, and it’s been quite dry in the apartment. See, that’s another thing I was going to do today: dig out the humidifier and get it running. All bets are now off.
I’m now faced with a dilemma… Go back to sleep and try to get back on track with my original plan? But I’m not tired. And there’s still Chinese food in the fridge. I haven’t had any coffee yet - only chai - but I just don’t feel like sleeping.
But I don’t feel like doing anything else, either.
Complicating the matter is that I’ve had another burst of inspiration, and if I really wanted to, I could work on my music, but I just got the latest version of Cakewalk for music sequencing, and I have no idea how it works, since my old version was from like 1990 and written for Windows 3.1.
And the boards have been boring me lately.
So I’m in a purgatory of sorts.
Who knew that this living together thing would so completely change me and my routines, both weekday and weekend? It’s pathetic! I’ve turned into the archetypal helpless male left alone in the house by the wife, waiting for her to come back and restore some sanity to the situation.
Right, I’m going to hit RESET on today and the weekend. I am going to find time to both get things done and relax and pamper myself.
I think I’ll watch the rest of that Dingo movie now.