I really shouldn’t be left alone.

Cathy and the kids are out of town this weekend.  I had to work, so I was unable to go with them.

That means I’m home.

All by myself.

Now, if you were watching a sitcom, there would be images of wild parties, road trips, mistaken identity, time spent in a foreign jail, a mad dash back home, frantic cleaning, and a collapse in my easy chair just as the family walks through the door.

This is not a sitcom.

This is my life, and apparently I am boring.

So, you can pretty much fast forward to the “collapse in my easy chair” part of the story.

I’m not saying it isn’t exciting.  I watch movies I have already seen (that way if when I fall asleep, I don’t miss anything).  I do dishes.  I read “Youth Fiction” adventure novels and wish I were there.  I have serious bonding time with the dog, sitting and staring at the front door…waiting…

So, yeah, I’m saying it isn’t exciting.

I’m afraid that after nearly twenty years of being part of an “us,” the whole bachelor weekend thing is pretty much wasted on me.  I always have these grand plans about how much I am going to accomplish with the place to myself, but when I’m alone, I mostly wander the house… “checking.”  I don’t know what I’m even checking for—I mean, what, do I think my son will have magically reappeared in his room?  That would be a spooky.

Here’s another weirdness.  Being alone makes me feel vulnerable in a way I never feel when the family is here.  It makes no sense—I mean, in theory I’m the one most capable of defending the home, and I don’t have the added worry of protecting my lovelies.  All I can tell you is that when I am alone in the house I jump at every sound and, on at least two occasions, I have shrieked like a little girl.  This never happened back in the days when I actually lived alone.  I mean, I used to live in a cabin in the mountains, totally isolated from civilization, kinda.  I never got scared.

Except for the raccoon incident, but that’s another story for another time.  And besides, that thing was huge.

And what happens if I get hurt?  Just now, I went upstairs to check—I know—and I tripped going up the stairs.  Actually, it wasn’t so much a trip as it was a foot malfunction.  I mean, I didn’t step far enough, and only my toes made contact with the step, so when I put weight on my foot I hyperextended my toes and fell flat on my face.

Seriously, this just happened, not three minutes ago.  It still hurts.

So what if I had been going down the stairs, instead of up?  Who would have been there to scrape my broken bits off the tile?  The dog?  First of all, the dog is the cause of most of my stumbles, between ill-placed chew toys and an affinity for sleeping on the stairs.  Second, you should see the dog right now.  She is lying on the floor, facing the front door, one eye open and one ear cocked.  She wouldn’t come looking for me until she got really hungry—and you can take that any way you want.

It occurs to me that my posts are better when the family is here.  No doubt I have made some grammatical errors that my beloved would have caught.  My daughter would have asked why I wrote about something as humiliating as falling up the stairs, prompting me to remove that bit, and my boy would be pushing me to tell the raccoon story, which I probably would have told but which is even more embarrassing than falling up the stairs.

Fortunately for you, the family will be home next week.

I suppose I could get deep and reflective here, and talk about how my identity as Husband and Father has filled me to the point that I have difficulty functioning in any other context.  I could provide relevant data as to the commonality of this condition, and discuss the social and psychoemotional consequences—both positive and negative—associated with it.

I could.  And it would be fascinating.  But I’m going to leave you to work that part out for yourself.  I have pressing business.

I have go stare at the front door.