Home Alone

Attention All Villains and People of Unsavory Character: 

Just to make something clear, I waited to publish this and am no longer home alone. I may be dumb enough to add the sauce packet to the macaroni noodles while they're still in the strainer but I'm not dumb enough to advertise to the internet that i'm home alone. Just to be clear to any would-be robbers who got really excited for a second. I'm not sure what you would want to steal since the main and most notable contents of my living room right now is my mother's growing family of kombucha in mason jars and the house plant that is slowly but surely eating our piano. Actually, please do take some of the kombucha jars off our hands, they've grown into the double digits and the floating bacteria sponges are a little freaky.

Ahem, onto the blog.

                                             

You think differently when you live alone than when you live with people. I've found this out this last week when my family went on vacation and I, the studious student who couldn't skip her college classes because of tests, stayed behind to hold down the fort and take care of the house. This has given me a window into the world of living alone, and here is what I've found:

                              
The first thing to change when you're home alone is that as other people leave, paranoia moves in. Every unidentified creak and gurgle of an empty house becomes suspect. As time progresses your paranoia increases until you've half convinced yourself that there is a stranger secretly living in the air ducts sneaking food and watching movies on your Netflix account. How else am I supposed to explain to my parents where the gallon-size ziplock bag of chocolate chips disappeared to last week?



Another thing that changes is my relationship with my dog. Generally we keep to ourselves; I peacefully live my life and he lays in a comatose state on his doggy bed, snoring. Like many pets and their owners we enjoy a symbiotic relationship where he leaves me alone and I let him eat food that falls on the floor.

This week, though, as the only other living being in the house (not counting my little sister's fish and our equally-intelligent house plants), he has become my loyal (albeit old and lumpy) bodyguard. I go outside, he goes outside. I sleep upstairs, he sleeps upstairs. I turn Pandora way too loud while doing dishes, he pees his pants in surprise.

Speaking of health and safety, you've got to be more cautious living alone. Every time I reach for milk in the fridge and nearly graze my hand on the edge of an open can of coconut cream I have a surreal vision of being found, dead, and how horrible it would be for my cause of death to be a Trader Joe's Coconut Cream can. Does this give me enough motivation to move the can? No. But its ok, I'll probably just melt the coconut cream with some chocolate chips for lunch.

                

Doors become unnecessary and clothing, optional. Your home had become a judgement-free zone and there is no one to tell you to not wear your sweatpants all day. Or pants at all.  After a few days of living alone your brain will begin to entertain thoughts such as, "What are pants, really? Society-contrived prisons that we only wear to satisfy the demands of others, thats what! The only good thing pants are for is not skidding when you go down slides."

                                                
Thats what I was beginning to think until I was making dinner and the doorbell rang. My heart zoomed up into my throat and I hit the floor, rolling out of sight behind the counter in about 2 seconds, flat, and then hid there until they went away. You have never experienced fear until you're making tacos in your skivvies and someone rings the doorbell.

                         

My already strange eating habits were only magnified by eating alone. You stop having to worry about adjusting your eating habits to other people's schedules and its a dangerously liberating feeling. Pickles and peanut butter for breakfast? Why not! Cinnamon roles and popcorn for lunch? Sounds delicious!Chilli eaten out of a teacup? I'M A FREE WOMAN!

                       

I tend to talk when i'm alone. To my dog, to the computer, to various inanimate objects. Every meal becomes a Rachel Ray worthy cooking show episode, every mundane household task is a narrated thriller, and I've had some very deep conversations with the plastic duck on the piano (Whoops, there I go tempting thieves again.) Stop looking at me like a crazy person, you know you do it too. When my family returned home from vacation it took some effort to stop including Amos into our conversations.

                  
Let me start by saying I got a lot of work done this week. Without screaming sisters and the white noise of co-habitation I managed to do all of my homework and write a kick-butt English paper. But I think I also watched every feel-good dance movie ever made and made the mistake of watching a Ted Talks video on youtube while inevitably led to an hour of learning bizarre, interesting things that made me feel smarter but actually accomplished nothing. If anything it just made me very contemplative and wonder about the mysteries of the universe, like why yogurt is only marketed to women.

I must depart. My fearless guard dog has wedged himself behind the couch for some unknown reason, probably because he saw the mystery person living in the air ducts. Scratch that, he is now rolling on my feet in fear. The air duct person is getting closer, its the only explanation. Still, even with the freaky sounds my fridge makes, my invisible house guest, my cowardly bodyguard, nosy neighbors, eclectic diet, and newly developed 2nd personality to hold conversations with, I love living alone. The real concern is how many times I'm going to sing Phantom of the Opera ballads before I remember that my family is back from vacation.

Talking to myself,
- Hannah