I write when I’m bored
So, I haven’t posted anything in months and months because apparently my life has been just peachy and I’ve had nothing to write about. Does this mean I only complain? I refuse to read through the pages and pages of previous entries to find out if this is true or not.
In case you are the only person who reads this, and you read about how I was going to get surgery on my jaw, and you’ve been checking on a daily basis to see how that went, the answer is that it went great. I had my surgery on February 18th and everything went “by the book” or so my surgeons told me. I had a completely painless (though tedious) recovery, during which i could only eat foods I didn’t need to chew. Culinary creativity saved me from a total food meltdown, and this was good.
Why am I bored today, having not been bored enough to write for half a year, you ask? It all started a few months (was it a full year?) ago when my brother-in-law and his long-time girlfriend decided to get married. Because it’s what brother’s do, he asked my husband to be his best man.
My husband decided that the bachelor party would be on the Saturday before the wedding, July 2nd. We had these plans to drive down to Madison, WI (where the wedding will be) on that Saturday morning, bringing our dog with us and spend a full week with the family prior to the wedding, and then return the following Sunday. This plan was flawless. Everything was under control and the only things we had to worry about were how to clothe ourselves, who would feed the cats, and what to get as a gift.
Three weeks ago, disaster struck. Okay, it wasn’t really a disaster, it was just a huge inconvenience. Husband was informed that if Ludo (the dog) came with us, he would have to stay in a kennel all week. Also, instead of sleeping in the usual basement room, we would either be sleeping in a camper that no one had seen, or at his grandpa’s house.
I should back up a second here, and mention that I’m more than a little neurotic, and I value sleep slightly higher than life itself. I would rather not eat than sleep somewhere unpleasant. The normal sleeping arrangements at the in-laws are far from ideal, as they have this unusually sized bed, called a twin-and-a-half, which just was not meant to sleep two people, especially two adult people. Since we’re usually only in town for three or four days, I just sort of cope with it and end the trip incredibly sleep deprived and crabby. Maybe no one has noticed that. I hope not. Now, the idea of sleeping in a camper that has the potential to be anything from super awesome to mouse-infested and moldy was enough to make me panic. I would rather try really hard to sleep in my car than sleep in a place with mold and mice. Also, spiders. I would rather stay awake than sleep with spiders. With that in mind, I decided we needed a contingency plan, like a hotel, where I would not lay awake all night panicking about spiders, mice, mold, using a stranger’s bathroom in the middle of the night, how to roll over without waking up my husband, or anything else that weaseled its way into my exhausted brain.
I was planning to look for a hotel, but I was simultaneously crippled with the sudden task of finding some way to keep the dog cared for without driving him 250 miles and then abandoning him in a kennel for a week. As it happens, I’m loathe to do that anyway, but having to drive back home with him completely hyper after being penned up for a week would probably be enough to make me leave him in Madison. Avoiding 5 hours of a frantic 80 lb dog lunging at passing vehicles and trying to climb into the front seat while dripping spit everywhere is pretty motivating.
My thought process was that a hotel is at least $60/night and a local pet boarder is at least $35/day. We’d be looking at almost $1000 in lodging alone. That’s more than a mortgage payment for us. It had to be the last possible option. With that in mind, I called some friends, and found out that one of them could watch him… after the 4th. Since we had to leave by 9 am on the 2nd, that wasn’t really going to work. I was trying to come up with some elaborate plan where my parents could watch Ludo for two days, and then pass him off to my friend, and then she could watch the dog and the cats. Simultaneously, I was trying to find someone with no life who could come feed the cats over the holiday. It turns out most people I know are not willing to give up a holiday weekend to feed someone’s pets. Strange.
I continued to agonize about this while other things started to pile up. I started prodding Husband with things like “Have you ordered shoes yet? Are you going to get a wedding present? Do you even own brown pants? What tie are you supposed to wear? Why are you more worried about these things?!” and he would just say “I’ll take care of it. Say, when we’re down there, do you want to go to Noah’s Ark?” I tend to focus on problems until they are resolved, with no expectation whatsoever that things will magically resolve themselves, and I certainly don’t think about recreation when I’m considering how to best prepare to sleep in the wilderness after being driven out of a camper by small animals in the night. Husband’s lack of concern merely instilled more concern in me. I felt more or less abandoned to handle all of these things on my own. “Worrying won’t help,” he said, but what I felt was “if you don’t worry, we will end up at homeless drug addicts.”
About a week ago we were told that we could sleep in this vacant rental property for the week, so the lodging problem, at least, was resolved. I did ask if the house might smell like mold and be full of mice, but I think Husband was getting pretty tired of my nonsense by this point.
We borrowed an airbed from some friends on Friday, and Husband finally bought a wedding present on Thursday. If the house smelled bad, we’d just keep all of our clothes somewhere else.
Since no magic solution for dog care did present itself, I decided to stay home until tomorrow, and drive down separately. That way, if the camper was, in fact, unlivable, I could just buy a tent and we could live in the yard, or maybe rent a hotel and only spend $300 on lodging. I also felt that since Husband is totally unconcerned with sleeping in a mold-infested rat’s nest, he could sleep in that or on a couch or in his car until then.
It seemed like everything was sorted out, until I realized that I’ll probably still be sleep deprived by next Sunday, and I will not want to make the five hour drive back by myself. Since my overall level of anxiety regarding this trip is still unnecessarily high, I focused on that until I began seeking alternate methods to get down there, so I can ride back with Husband. I looked at plane tickets and found them too expensive ($400+ for a direct flight, $200 for a layover flight that takes as long as the drive). I briefly toyed with the idea of taking the bus, but it takes greyhound almost an hour longer than a regular drive, and they have weird luggage restrictions. Then, I remembered the Megabus! It turns out that they only charge $37 to get from here to there, and as long as there is room for more luggage, they’ll take whatever you’ve got.
I got myself a red-eye ticket and my friend who will be caring for the pets from Tuesday night on will drop me off. Now I just have to figure out how to get all my clothes and other items into one bag, in case the trip fills up somehow. I think I’ll be safe.
So that’s the story of why I’m home alone and therefore bored out of my mind, and felt the need to write this all down for no one to read.
Cheers!