By: Revanche

That week I flew solo

August 1, 2018

I’m an introvert, through and through. I’ve preferred to work from my home office, sofa, bed, a dark corner, over going into the office since 2006 and pretty much nothing has shaken my core love of being alone for 8-10 hours a day to work my work thing, dog at my feet.

On the other hand, I adore my little family so I always look forward to seeing them at the end of each work day. In those hours that I’d normally keep working or cut bait and relax … well, no, bury myself in a book because I don’t relax well, my evenings have been wholly subsumed with family time and I’ve been happy with that.

It’s limiting, of course. There’s no such thing as a late night date, or even an early night date, when you’ve got a ravenous wee beastie to feed before meltdown. Spending time with friends is almost entirely relegated to the weekends, as well, though I can’t in good conscience pretend that I was ever a fan of meeting up socially on a school night.

I’m a creature of habit, so all in all, it’s been a good balance of alone time to family and friends time.

Of course, whenever I settle happily into my routine, something comes along to shake it up. Like, for example, PiC deciding to take JB on a trip without me earlier this year.

That was a puzzler. Not the trip itself, but the opportunities that opened up because let’s face it, I’ve been without a child alarm clock exactly 6 mornings since being pregnant. 1 morning when I got away for a Mom refresher overnight, and 5 mornings for FinCon 2016 and 2017.

Y’all, I’m not protesting! I AM acknowledging that to a large extent, I’ve gotten totally out of the habit of being on my own. I worry a little bit about that. I’ve never lived on my own. What with staying in the family home far too long to support my parents, then moving in with PiC, I’ve carried all the financial responsibilities alone for years but actually living in a house solo and managing it physically is a whole other can of beans.

I decided that while feelings were going to happen, I had a choice. I could choose to be grumpy about being alone when I LIKE being alone, or I can do all the things that are tougher to do when the family’s around. Things like meeting up with friends, or going for a … oh. Right. I still live in my body that routinely fails me. Adjustments needed.

Instead of a glamorous day trip to sip wine and chat, complete with hours of exhausting city traffic, a goodhearted friend offered to come to me. Later, I found my massage therapist who I’ve not seen in over a year and scheduled a session.

Speaking of feelings, 3 days before they left, I had Doomsday scenarios running through my head: what if what if what if. What if a terrible thing happens, what if there’s a horrible accident, what would I do if…  I headed that off with making spreadsheets for our house cost basis and refreshing our household documents because I’m still me.

My parallel trains of thought

Freedom!!!
I’m going to have ramen for dinner. Just ramen. (Why do I revel in eating unhealthily when I’m on my own? I do LIKE healthy foods.) I get to shower alone without a preschooler asking about the Big Bad Wolf, or asking to wash my hair. I’m going to close all the blinds and hunker down. The heat is going off ALL WEEK.

and ….

ALONE 🙁
I have to do the cold late night walk with Seamus. Boy it’s going to be cold at night without either of my human heaters.

Six days alone

Day 1

Started off with multiple abortive attempts to get them on the road. A storm swept in unexpectedly and blocked up the roads for hours. They packed up, I joked that I have no plans to leave the house at all while they’re gone.

They left, I renewed some library books. They came back. We put on some Moana while I worked. We had a little meltdown before lunch, I coaxed JB out of it with a suggestion that we feed each other lunch. The idea was novel, ze was in. They left again, blowing kisses, and I put together a couple of freelance proposals. They stayed on the road the second time. Seamus grumps a little at the disruption. I’m a creature of habit, he is even more so, and he’s going to hate it when 7 pm rolls around and his human-shaped sibling doesn’t come bursting through the door.

I picked up a couple tiny freelance gigs because I want to have breathing room in our budget.

Seamus and I wait out the rain and dash out for a walk in the newly breaking through sunshine. I think to myself: “Maybe I should stop watching Supernatural before it gets dark.” He starts giving me the eyeball after our afternoon walk – both cars are home, WHY, mom?

We return for me to work late, had a bowl of ramen, of course, and worked until 11.

Day 2

I wake up wondering what time it is, what day it is, and where is Seamus? The usual. Except it’s odd that he hasn’t come to wake me yet. I think he’s respecting Vacation Mode: Mom sleeps in a little.

Up and out: we go for his walk and get him fed and settled down. I settle in for a morning of work and don’t take a break until his dinnertime (early afternoon). It’s looking like rain so he gets an even earlier dinner in anticipation of an earlier walk.

But also I booked myself a massage today! It’s the first one in 14 months and my muscles are badly in need. So badly, we backed off on the pressure this time because the usual deep tissue would have left me in traction.

Seamus and I head out, me smelling pleasantly of oils and with an entirely ruffled head of hair, and run into our neighbor’s dog. Seamus loves Turtle and romps and romps while I chat with the neighbor. It turns into neighbor dog fest as everyone is out walking, and I lose another 45 minutes being neighborly.

Unfortunately this means his paws are all torn up again so I have to clean them gently and wrap them with antibiotics. The old routine.

This also means we work late again, huddled by the space heater together, start making dinner at an unthinkable 8:30 and go to bed at 11:30 after working late again.

Day 3

No work today! I am at liberty! I have some chores I want to get done and a lunch plan with a friend.

Seamus and I tidy JB’s closet, I list an old jacket of PiC’s on Poshmark, and we prep lunch.

Friend and I while away the afternoon chatting house stuff and dog stuff and everything while I worked on bandaging Seamus’s paws, wrecked from the previous day’s romp. We finally bid each other goodbye mid afternoon.

Seamus was very pleased to have the company too, and wore himself out being pleased. We worked for a while, or I did while he snored next to me, and wind up watching a movie in bed before creeping out for a midnight snack-meal. Sleep was evasive but my wool socks and sweatshirt emsemble get me warm enough to drift off hours later.

Day 4

No work today – and suddenly it feels a little bit like I’m running out of time. I have to cut back my overly ambitious plans with a thousand chores down to: research and write for a few hours to get myself set up for some freelancing, clean the kitchen, organizing some tax prep paperwork and records for 2018, and then a long catch up with an old friend.

As a general rule, I now hate talking on the phone as much as I liked it back in high school. I make very rare exceptions. This friend is more than twice my age and while I hope she’ll be around with us for many more years, my chances to sit and chat with her on the phone about all things great and small are dwindling away. We chat for an unprecedented four hours.

I’ve got nothing left in the tank after that so I make some lazy notes for my writing assignments before I close up the house and we hit the hay. Totally forgot to mend JB’s pants, I’ll have to do one pair a day for the next week so ze has pants to wear to school.

Day 5

Back to the grindstone today! It was so cold today that I started baking to warm up part of the house. It’s too bad that I picked a recipe that required way too much prep. The bread batter didn’t make it into the oven until evening because PiC realized he had a last minute errand he needed me to run and that ate up nearly two hours of my work day. The hours I don’t begrudge but the amount of energy that took was the equivalent of 6 work hours.

On our afternoon walk, it felt like an anvil was sitting on my chest, squishing out all my breath and energy. Mistake noted.

Day 6

57 degrees in the house this morning. This is the last day of my no-furnace experiment. I wonder how much difference it made in our gas and electric bill to only have a small heater running for several hours instead of a furnace keeping most of the place at a steady 66 degrees.  (Answer: Our lowest bill ever in the new place!)

Summary

Set alone time can feel really good.

I’m bad at eating when I’m alone. I cooked twice: meatloaf (splitting a large batch into a small one for me and a large one for PiC and JB when they return), and spaghetti. I subsisted on them, and quesadillas for lunch, the whole week.

It’s much easier to have a little bit of social life when it’s just me and the dog but it’s also incredibly easy for me to overestimate how much energy I have.

I still haven’t gotten to that pile of mending so while I’m super-productive in some areas, I’m less so in others. It’s good to have PiC around as a partner who helps me take care of the rest.

:: Do you get regular alone time? How do you carve out space that you might need?

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