So, what did I end up doing with all that free time?

I actually surprised myself. I thought I would need to be out and about a lot because otherwise I would get bored, blue, and lonesome. But, and this is the surprise, I ended up not really wanting to go anywhere. Aren’t you shocked? All I wanted to do was park my butt by the fire and write. Am I not boring?

My days fell into a pattern: wake up, lay in bed for a little while and make lists or read, pad downstairs, turn on the Christmas tree lights and radio, light candles, make coffee, and haul the computer into the living room to write for the rest of the morning, taking breaks only to feed animals and hang up laundry. Around about eleven o’clock or so I went out for a walk, got a shower, and then headed into town—one afternoon I had coffee with our pastor, and another afternoon I helped a friend start a blog. (I also picked up a bunch of books from the library, browsed a thrift store, and bought laundry detergent at Dollar General.) I picked up Chinese takeout on my way out of town, trying to get home while it was still light out so I had time to bring in wood for the fire and batten down the hatches before the dark overtook and all the scary creatures came to life.

Of course evenings were the worst, no surprises there. Once the sun sank below the hills, my nerves became ultra-sensitized. I managed okay, as in I did not hurl myself into the car and zip into town to camp out on a friend’s sofa, but it took mental feats of super-human strength to steer my mind away from fixating on all things spine-tingling and breath-zapping. I usually ended up talking on the phone, writing a bit more, and then heading up to bed with a bowl of popcorn to watch a movie: the first night it was Corrina, Corrina, the second night it was Dirty Dancing, and the third night it was The Preacher’s Wife, all certifiably non-scary movies (I first researched them on Wikipedia). As soon as the movies ended, I switched on the noise machine and slept with my head right next to it. If robbers were going to break into my house, I sure didn’t want to hear them.

And that’s about it. Oh yeah, except I forgot the part about nearly burning the house down. That, “burning the house down”, might be a bit of an exaggeration, but there is a chance it could’ve happened, I suppose, if I hadn’t discovered the problem in time. Here’s the tale, which I will now happily tell you—“happily” because I emerged unscathed.

Saturday night, about 7:30 or so, pre run-upstairs-and-watch-a-movie, I was curled up on the sofa reading Eat, Pray, Love (of which there is an excellent, I think, review here; I say “I think” because I haven’t finished the book yet, but I have a hunch that Kate, my future cousin-in-law, is on to something) in front of the fire. Two votive candles were burning on the kitchen table, and one big candle (it smells like pancake syrup) was burning on the diningroom table. This, the candles burning, is totally normal for me—I am forever burning candles—I buy them in bulk.

It was then that I noticed a burning smell. A chemically burning smell. My scalp shivered, and I’m pretty sure that the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I plopped the book down, trying my best to act casual and in control. What? Something’s burning? No big deal. Just show me the problem and I’ll take care of it. I peered closely at the diningroom table’s candle. It looked fine; I sniffed it, and it smelled just like pancakes and syrup.

I calmly proceeded a couple more steps over to the kitchen table, and there my stomach thudded. The votive candles had both burned out, but the one votive was totally black. What does this mean? Am I okay? Do I call 911 now? I tried to pick it up, but it was stuck to the table, and, oh no!, the table was black, too. I got a hot pad and pried up the votive. There, underneath where the votive had been, was a perfect-circle burn mark. I laid my hand on it—it, and the surrounding table, were hot, hot to the touch. I stooped and peered under the table, just to make sure the charring hadn’t seeped through. I stood back up quickly, shocked at what I had just done (looking under tables is not what scaredy-cats are supposed to do), relieved that there weren’t any snakes curled up in the upside-down table corners.

I set the hot votive on a towel on the counter (I didn’t want to set it directly on the concrete counter because I was afraid the cold might cause the piping hot votive to shatter, which would’ve most certainly been more than my fragile nerves could handle), wetted a washcloth and laid it over the crispy circle in the tabletop. Then I serenely walked back to the sofa.

After about fifteen more minutes (in which I tried valiantly to focus on what I was reading and not on an escape plan for later that night when I might find myself trapped in my room, house aflame), I checked the table again; it was still warm, but not hot, so I turned off some of the lights (not all) and went upstairs to wait for daylight to come.

The other bad thing that happened was that I tried to stuff a too-big log into the burning woodstove (this was the night before the burned-table incident) and then had to carry the partially lit and smoldering (ie, smoking—please, fire alarms, please, do not go off, please) log out of the house and lay it on the concrete porch, douse it with water, let it set for awhile, and then stick it in a five-gallon plastic bucket before I went upstairs to bed, just to make sure that if a wind blew up, it wouldn’t be able to fan any non-doused sparks into flames and blow them up against the house. Precautions, precautions.

And the other bad thing was that I had a nightmare one night and so I woke up and then couldn’t go back to sleep for awhile. I huddled by my dear noise machine and tried to think of scriptures to recite, but, alas, alack, I couldn’t come up with any. Somehow it never occurred to me to recite the words from hymns…

So, there’s the story of my jackpot weekend, all the ups and downs. There were more ups than downs, definitely. I learned that I can live by myself, and that it’s actually a lot of fun, more fun than I thought it would be. I also learned that I much prefer to have people with me at night. But then, that was no surprise—I knew that all along.

Mr. Handsome has fairly outdone himself. He packed the van, loaded up the kids, and took off for his parents’ place … and left me here, at home, with nary a child in sight.

I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT, WHENEVER I WANT, HOWEVER I WANT!!! I CAN SET MY COFFEE CUP ON THE FLOOR! I CAN LAY PILES OF PHOTOS ALL OVER THE HOUSE! I CAN KICK OFF MY SHOES AND LET THEM LAY WHEREVER THEY LAND! I VACUUMED THE FLOORS AND I WILL NOT DO IT AGAIN FOR AT LEAST SEVERAL DAYS! I CAN WATCH MOVIES, EAT CHOCOLATE, GO SHOPPING, TALK ON THE PHONE, GO FOR A WALK, WRITE/BLOG WHENEVER MY LITTLE HEART DESIRES!

Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to YELL in your face. I’m not trying to FLAUNT my good fortune, or anything.

BUT I AM SO EXCITED! I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF!

Here’s what happened. Yesterday my girlfriend Shannon called me to tell me that her girlfriend Karen called Shannon to tell her that Karen’s husband had just left with all four of their boys to go visit his family for several days. (Too many pronouns, sorry–are you still with me?) Shannon and I sighed wistfully over Karen’s good fortune, and then, after I hung up the phone with Shannon, I called up Mr. Handsome at work and told him what Shannon had just told me about Karen. I said, “You know, you could do that if you wanted, now that The Baby Nickel is weaned. You could take all the kids away. Go visit my parents for the weekend. Or even just for a day. You know?”

Mr. Handsome grunted.

I continued, “I’ve taken the kids away before, on multiple occasions. You’ve had time to be at home, by yourself, to work on projects. And now, you could do it for me!”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could even go to your parents’ if you wanted!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, that’s all. I just wanted you to know that. Bye now.”

“Bye.”

About a half hour later the phone rang. It was Mr. Handsome. “I just talked to my mom. They’re having a snowstorm. Do you think you could pack up the kids’ things this afternoon? We would leave in the morning.”

I was floored, totally speechless. I found myself gasping for breath, doing an excellent imitation of a guppy fish. Panic and elation were duking it out in the confines of my ribcage.

Did I want them to leave me, all alone, for several days? What would I do? Who would I talk to? Could I stand to be with myself, just myself, for that long? I’m really not a very exciting person.

I called Shannon and explained my good fortune/dilemma. “Are you crazy? Say YES!” she said. “Let’s think for a minute. Do you have good chocolate on hand? Lots of coffee? What projects do you want to work on? You can go shopping! You can do whatever you want! Say yes!”

So I said yes, and now they are gone.

I first went for a walk. Just like that. I didn’t have to tell anyone I was going. I just put on my coat and gloves and scarf and walked out the door and down the road. It was kind of freaky.

Back at the house again, I hung up the remaining hats and coats that were lying on the floor. They will stay put on their hooks for the next several days. Weird.

Then I listened to a talk show on the radio. I cranked it up loud, and while I listened I ate a grapefruit and wrote on January’s new calendar page. No one asked for a bite of my grapefruit. No one tried to scribble on my calendar. No one yelled, drowning out the radio people. I listened to the program all the way through, from start to finish. And when I was done I turned it off and switched on the computer.

So far, I have dirtied one plate, one bowl, and my coffee cup. After I peeled my grapefruit I put the rind in the compost, so there is no mess in the sink.

I’m not used to all this silence. It’s deafening. I think I’ll go turn on the radio back on now… that’s better.

You know, it is odd how I constantly ache for extended time alone and then when my wish comes true, I develop an ache for my children and husband. At the same time that I’m basking in the solitude, I am missing them. Can I never be content?

Life is a balancing act. I’m always leaning to one side more than the other, so then when I lean the other way, trying to right myself, I go too far in that direction. Sometimes, I slip and totally fall off (that’s called Going Off The Deep End) and flop around for a bit before clambering back on and trying once again to regain my footing. Every now and then I do reach an equilibrium, which means that I feel productive and rejuvenated and generous, all at one time, but that only lasts for about nine minutes and then I’m off-kilter again.

I’m trying to take this gift of alone-time and maximize it, without feeling too alone or sad. It’s just kind of difficult, because when you are so used to fighting to get one blessed minute to yourself—to all of a sudden have all the minutes to yourself, with no one to orchestrate but yourself, well, it kind of leaves you shaking your head, befuddled and confused. Um, what am I supposed to do? How do I act? Who am I, anyway?

Here’s how I plan to spend my jackpot of free-time. I may do any, all, or none of the following: blog, write an article, go for walks, eat Chinese take-out, go shopping for a long flow-y skirt and some new underwear, read books, watch a movie, work on updating the sorely-out-of-date photo albums, write in the kids’ baby books, go to the library, browse the thrift stores, visit friends, lounge about at Barnes and Noble, and get my seed order ready.

I will not, most definitely not, clean up other people’s messes or put anyone on time-out. And when these few days are over, I will be totally and absolutely thrilled to see my children and husband once again. When it comes down to it, they are the best gift I’ve ever received—a jackpot like none other.

Note: I’ve waited to publish this post until now, after Mr. Handsome called to tell me they are on their way home. It was kind of freaky being alone in my house, and I didn’t want any crazies to come and get me.