OPINION? EVERYBODY HAS ONE: I’m free but not really free to enjoy it

Here I sit alone and not actually broken hearted!

My home is my castle and, even if I do not have a moat around it, I figure I am pretty safe from marauding insurance and feed salesmen. I have plenty of coffee, a package of Jimmy Dean sausage and egg biscuits and a new jar of honey roasted peanuts all to myself. My close relative has left me and gone on a mission trip!

That close relative of mine is one in a million! I wouldn’t put her up beside Mother Teresa as a mirror image, but she is pretty close. She cooks, cleans and sorts out the bad and sticky stuff that comes into our daily lives. I am not kidding; she can take a problem and in two hours reduce it to a small bump on the nose. I do not know how she does what she does but I do not want her job. I have always liked to take over the house once in awhile but not over a couple of days at a time.

That said, I probably ought to explain what kind of mission trip she has taken. She is on a mission with her cousin and our female offspring to the city for shopping for school clothes for the Grands! They have a reserved hotel room, a city map and an itinerary written in shorthand. I guess that was to keep me from knowing what they had planned; like I was gonna care!

I had to take the car to town for oil change, tire rotation and filling up with gas. Then off to the car wash and vacuum cleaners that run three minutes on 75 cents! I spent time and had skinned knuckles by the time I had the carriage ready to haul the three off on their mission! I stopped in the feed store and hung around for a story or two.

The weather is hot and humidity is high, hay is in the barn and no one wants to get out and work. I sure am thankful for that little window air conditioner in the office of the feed store; but it couldn’t work hard enough with all the hot air being sprayed around by the loafers, so I left fairly quickly. The trials and tribulations going on in Washington, D.C., were being discussed and, therefore, a feller with my opinions would have had to stand on the table to be heard anyway.

I got back to headquarters in time to load the suitcases. I don’t mean the suitcase, as in one large bag. I mean it took one large, one medium and a makeup bag to be gone two nights and three days. I hope there is enough room in the trunk to haul home their purchases! I was adjusting the bags when my close relative appeared at my elbow with a bag of my cookies. She said she made extra to take. I sure hope so!

I am a free man, no one to tell me when to go to bed tonight. And I can eat what I want, and where I want, for supper. There is one problem. I have been doing this sort of thing for so many years that I am trained like a Pavlov dog! I will eat at the table, afraid to make a crummy mess in my chair in the living room, clean up the dishes and shower and go to bed at the same time as usual. These days of complete freedom came too late in my life to give me any real wild oats to sow.

I can’t find the channel that I like on the TV, my newspaper is still in the paper box at the end of the drive, I do not know where she put the new jar of peanuts and the phone is beside her chair and rings every few minutes with telemarketers sensing I am home alone. I can’t enjoy the quiet because it is too quiet, and my ears are picking up all the strange sounds I never hear when she is here! The ice maker dumped ice and it sounded like a cannon going off!

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, I would like for my alone time to be enjoyed a little more. I would like to be having a good time, spreading crumbs, messing up the magazine rack, leaving socks on the floor and letting the mayo sit on the counter all night! Just can’t change the spots on an old leopard, and I wish that close relative was coming home tonight! I think a feller should maintain the he-man image to some degree; but I am not sure we shouldn’t let it be known that we don’t like the empty house, and especially for three days and two nights!

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Bill is a pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 07/31/2013