Living Alone (kinda)

There are certain advantages to living by yourself, or at least to being the only adult in the house.

I get to decide what to make for dinner without anyone complaining. I don’t have to worry about other people’s clutter – sure, the kids have clutter, but I can bug them about it without an adult getting snippy or accusing me of anything. I also don’t have to worry about my clutter getting in anyone else’s way.

I decide how loud the music is, the temperature of the thermostat, and if the bedroom window is open or closed.

I decide which side of the bed to sit on, and how the kitchen table is angled.

I decide when to turn out the light, when to turn off the TV, and in the morning I don’t have to worry about waking anyone up if I need to find my socks.

But there are drawbacks to living alone, too.

Yesterday I was having a grand old time with Andrew. I had removed the air conditioner from the window in the den. It’s 30 degrees in the mornings and the room was frigid as the window was basically wide open. It took me a little while to figure it out, and a lot of lifting, pulling, maneuvering… that thing is really, really heavy. I tried to turn on the heater (the house heat isn’t hooked up to that room, which is over the garage) but the heater wouldn’t turn on, so I used the electric heaters on either side of the room. This required pulling the ugly white couch – which came from Steve’s old house and is currently stained yellow and brown from a dripping something – away from the far end of the room so it wouldn’t catch fire. I took a look around the room and though about how I was going to change it.  The couch would go along the wall currently occupied by the DVD’s. The DVD’s would go between the other windows. The cabinet would get filled with board games and other things…

Anyway, I had a lot on my mind.

At some point I ended up walking into the toy room, one day possibly Nate’s room, and sifting through the blankets and stuffed animals left on the floor.

I have to describe this room. It is a small room. Once there is a bed in there, the space will be even more crowded. But Nate likes it because there is a long, narrow hallway to nowhere along one side, with a slanted ceiling. It’s the perfect nook. Unless, however, you are tall, as in over 5 feet tall, and you are bending down to pick up blankets and stuffed animals and toys, and then you stand up thinking you are out of the hallway, only a lot of your head didn’t quite make it, and instead of bumping the top of your head, you whack the side of your head, mainly your ear and the spot right behind it, parallel to your ear canal if you are looking straight forward.

I went from being a normal human being to sobbing on the pile of blankets and stuffed animals in less than a second. But not until after I screamed how I hated this stupid house and hit the slanty part of the wall with my fist, knocking a chip of red-painted plaster to the floor.

But that’s not the scary part.

The scary part came hours later, after I had taken a nap and started dinner. I was in the parking lot at the karate dojo, trying to write, and I realized I felt ill. And also that I had a really bad headache. When I turned my head to speak to Andy, I realized that I had a pain behind my ear, and when I touched it, I felt an extremely very  tender lump the size of a large jelly bean.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

I had a concussion once, and the thing that made it really bad, aside from not being able to read anything printed and no one letting me sleep, was that I was throwing up all over the place.

And I immediately started freaking out about possibly having a head injury. What if I had a concussion? What if I needed to go to the hospital? What would I do, with the boys all at home? How would I manage? Who would I call? I could call Steve, but he was away for the weekend, and even if I called him, I’d need someone to take me to the hospital. I wouldn’t be able to drive myself.

And what if I ignored it and something happened to me later What if it was really late at night and suddenly I stopped being able to read and was all alone with the boys? They would be so scared! Would they remember how to call 911 if I didn’t wake up in the morning because I fell into a coma during the night?

In the end, I drove home, took some advil, made nachos and ice cream sundaes, and we watched a movie. Then I went to bed, fell asleep, and woke up. I was fine. But it did make me think about how I needed to add a few more numbers to my phone list. I should have some neighbors I can call in case I really do fall off a ladder and the boys need help.