Home Alone with Nothing to DO? Listen to your inner voice...

I had a very strange thing happen to me yesterday. Something that hasn't happened in recent memory. Maybe not even since I was single, all those years ago.

My husband was away at an all day seminar. My mom came and got the kids for a sleepover.

I was alone. In my house. For a whole afternoon.

No, really. I even made the dog go outside.

I understand that this kind of solitude isn't for every woman. In fact, a neighbor of mine recently admitted that she doesn't like being away from her family at all. But in my book, that's just crazy talk. I love my family hugely and fiercely, but even Mama needs a break once in awhile.

Which brings me back to an unsettling discovery I made once all the doors had closed and the house was all mine yesterday: I had NOTHING to do!

Yes, I could have cleaned out my closet or scrubbed down that mystery spot in my son's room or reorganized a sock drawer. But I wasn't so inclined. I could have worked (my usual free-time fallback) but my computer was busy projecting powerpoint presentations at my husband's seminar. I could have read (my other fallback) but I had finished my book the night before.

So with no way to work, and no desire to clean, and nothing to read, I was stuck. What to do?

One friend suggested I treat myself to a homemade spa day. But it was a nice day out — for once free of snow, sunny and not bitingly cold. My dog suggested that I take her for a walk. My conscience said that was a good idea and that I should also tack on some yoga afterward. My house said that I should make a list of all the nagging little projects that needed to be done and maybe even tackle a few of them. (I told the house to f@#k off.)

What to do? What to do?

Thankfully, I listened carefully to my inner voice (okay, voices) and the loudest and clearest message came straight from the SLUTS within. "Call up a friend and go antiquing." So I did. We browsed, we laughed, we dreamed.

Then, we just happened to upon a free wine tasting.

Guess that inner voice was right on.

Strictly Need-to-Know

Late fall and winter are what I think of as "airplane season." It's about the only time of year I fly for work, and when I do, I always like a window seat. I like to see what's down below as we zoom overhead, and imagine the lives of the people down there.

But I've also found that I'd like to know exactly what I'm flying over as I pass. What's the name of that town? What's that river? Who's crop circles are those? (I'm sure there's an app for that, but I'm not exactly a "first adopter" for technology.)

I'm not sure where this need to know comes from. Maybe I just like to have my bearings. But I do find that I'm more interested in what I'm passing as I travel than what's going to happen when I get there. Is this a "live for the moment" mentality? A fear of the future? Or am I just usually too preoccupied with the lingering questions from the homefront to think too far ahead?

"Did I leave the milk out? Is the coffee pot on? Did my family get to their respective daily destinations without breaking anything?" These are the questions that rattle quietly around in the back of my mind as I travel. On this last trip, the break count was two items — my daughter's soap dispenser and my husband's ankle. Par for the course.

I think perhaps my focus on the present also comes from a healthy realization that I don't want to know what's going to happen next. Information about the future is indeed a stressful thing, whether it's keeping a surprise party a secret, not telling co-workers that you overheard they're being laid off, realizing that you're responsible for classroom snacks for an entire week next month, knowing that your best friend has a little spinach in her teeth and not being able to signal to her across a crowded room before she goes to talk to that great-looking man.

These are all small things, so the knowledge of knowing the big things in advance, like when you will die, would be too overwhelming. Talk about the stress of planning the perfect outfit!

No, I prefer to coast. Do I have hopes for the future? Of course. Do I plan for it? You bet. Would I want to see into the future, given the chance? No way.

I like to know as much as possible about the here and now, and the week or two to come. But as for the bigger future, I'm happy with a strictly need-to-know basis.

The Subconscious Deadline

In order to get my child out of the house on time, I move up the deadline of dressing, eating. and brushing teeth. The kitchen clock runs 5 minutes ahead of itself.

Accepting that I will want to snuggle in for at least 10 minutes with the warm body of my husband in bed every weekday morning – I set the white noise on the alarm that far ahead of the actual alarm to get me to the lala state of feeling but not knowing.  The deadline of rising is moved up to fool myself.

During the month of August, I won a large battle to relocate my daughter to Asheville, NC, and marry my high school sweetheart.  I could do nothing to move that clock ahead; it took 1 1/2 years to just be heard in front of the judge.   I had 1 week to move us and our furniture up here, merge it with someone who already had 3 children, and get my daughter settled into a brand new school.  (Did I say get it on the moving truck and unpack? Did I tell you I also got married?)  After that deadline, which would not budge, I had the due date of October 1 to contend with:  the birth of my second cookbook.  Could I move it back?  I did not dare.

So in 6 weeks, basically, I developed and tested and edited and blurbed 140 recipes.  That is a lot of energy expended along with settling down, getting married, and transitioning a child from private to wonderful public schools.  I pretty much said, “Honey I love you but we’ll catch up after October 1.”

In some ways, having that work deadline helped me not freak out about all of the other personal issues that were swirling around.  I was able to claim absolute tiredness under the guise of all that physical recipe testing.

So, after all of that trauma that I put my family through with my book deadline of Oct. 1., I read the contract again today, because I wanted to see the format I was to send in the manuscript.

And the deadline is October 31, not October 1.  All of the theatrics of “my having to work” and “y’all have to go out for dinner “was for naught.

Or was it?  Did I unintentionally move that deadline in my head to October 1, knowing it would keep me in work up to my eyeballs and I would not have time to worry about what sofa went where?  It was almost a ploy for me to help me keep my sanity.

And I will tell you that nothing feels better than to finish a major project 1 month before the deadline.  I like pushing deadlines ahead; that way you are ready for everything that comes along.


- A. Diva