Living Alone

I was reading an article on MSN by the girl who plays Kelly Kapoor on "The Office" this morning and it was about living alone. You can check it out here if you want to: http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/bigger-picture/articlemc.aspx?cp-documentid=9128041&GT1=32001. I thought that I could blog about living alone, since I feel like I've been living alone pretty much this whole summer, and will live alone for 3 weeks before Rob and I enter into nuptual bliss. I need to emphasize that, although I am moving into the condo currently occupied by Rob, he and I will not be co-habitating during the 3 weeks that I will be living there before the wedding. There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding that, so I thought I'd clear it up once and for all!

So, Mindy, aka Kelly Kapoor, says that she got so scared one night in her bed that she actually wet the bed. If she had been living with someone, maybe she wouldn't have been so scared and then wouldn't have wet her bed. I say that it was good that she was alone, so that no one would have to know that she peed in bed. Once, I had a dream that I was going to the bathroom, only to wake up and realize that I was really going to the bathroom... in my bed. Trying to explain to my roommate why I was changing my sheets in the middle of the night was embarrassing.

While we're on the theme of potty talk, living alone has its advantages when you run out of toilet paper or forget to bring a towel into the bathroom with you. You can streak to the hall closet without anyone else seeing you... unless, of course, your roommate left the blinds wide open in her bedroom and you run past the window. True story.

Sometimes I get scared while I'm in the house alone. I have this internal dialogue every night before I go to bed on whether I should sleep with my bedroom door open or shut. If I leave it shut, I might not be able to hear someone breaking into the house, and therefore, would not be able to hide somewhere or call 911 in time. On the flip side, If I leave the door open I would be more vulnerable to a possible attack if they sneak into my bedroom. If the door were shut I could have time to grab a high-heeled boot or nail clippers to defend myself before they open the door. I really do think about this every night.

I can be as sloppy as I want to be when I'm by myself. I don't have to do my dishes until I run out of clean ones. I don't have to pick my hair up off the bathroom counter if I don't want to, I can leave my shoes wherever I want to, and I can leave the shampoo bottle I dropped in the shower just sitting on the floor of the tub until I want to bend over and get it. And then I hear my mother's voice in my head, saying things like, "cleanliness is next to Godliness," and "the Spirit cannot dwell in unclean places," and "always wear nice underwear, even though no one is going to see it, because you just never know." I'm beginning to wonder why I even bother with the nice underwear thing, because no one has seen my underpants. But I keep hearing "you just never know...."

Another thing about living alone is that I can take my sweet time in the shower, and I can even sing Umbrella as loud as I want to while I am lathering, rinsing and repeating. I could never sing Umbrella in anyone else's presence because it is just embarrasing... "You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh, under my umbrella...."

And even better than singing, I can watch all sorts of socially unacceptable things on TV, like Ice Road Truckers, Dawg the Bounty Hunter, My Super Sweet Sixteen, Hanna Montana, and Rob and Big.

I also become suspicious of everyone and everything when I am living alone. One might say I become paranoid. The recluse neighbor suddenly becomes a creepy old man, a la Ted Kaczynski, who makes bombs and is getting ready to blow something up. Ice dropping in the ice maker is someone trying to break in through the sliding glass door, and my Jack Bauer alarm clock is really Jack Bauer, in my house, about to torture me with the frayed ends of a lamp cord. Scary!

Am I going to miss living alone? Probably not. I might miss Ice Road Truckers, but I'll get over it when I roll over in bed at night and see a 6'2", 225 lb (I hope he's not sensitive about anyone knowing his weight) man who could crush any intruders with a swift kick to the groin area in .5 seconds flat. I'm gonna love that part.