Empty Nest: Missing the Chickling

(Not able to think of what kind of picture would best suit what I'm going to talk about gave me a convenient excuse to use another photo of those purple flowers on the trees here. Hm, I guess if you're really imaginative, it fits; you know, spring, change, the branches all twisty turny...)

I'm ecstatic right now. I also don't want to keep moving to finish my list of chores, so I'll write about it to ease the guilty feeling. OK?

It was a crazy, insane week. The redundancy fits, trust me. The thing that made it crazy and insane was the little things going wrong behind the scenes, so to speak. I'm ecstatic because I solved one of those little things, and I Did a Good Job. Now, to be honest, I thought I solved this little problem last weekend, only to be rudely proven wrong on Monday. It's no wonder Mondays aren't anyone's favorite day of the week.

Oh, it was war! I have a cat that decided she no longer wanted to be an outside cat, and that succeeded in pushing her way into the house along side the clothes dryer vent tubing stuff, whatever it's called. I pulled the dryer out, climbed down behind there (a minor miracle in itself) and reattached the vent tubing stuff to the back of the dryer, thinking I did it really well, no problem.

Well, it was no problem, but only for a few hours when the cat decided to use her newly discovered personal doorway again. So, dryer out, go through the gymnastics of getting down behind it again, and Jimmy-rigged it up good. Or so I thought. When that didn't work, I just tried to find some way to block that hole until I could get to the store to buy heavy-duty stuff.

I'm ecstatic because I just installed that heavy-duty stuff and am now drying a load of laundry. Yeah! Solid metal won't be so easy for that cat to mess with. (Keep your fingers crossed for me.)

Karen, my friend here in Arkansas, asked me the other day what kinds of things I'm doing differently now that Tim (my son) has moved out and I'm Empty Nesting it. It's one of those things I've been avoiding thinking about, and it's not that difficult to do since Tim works nights and sleeps all day and wasn't very present here anyway, if you know what I mean.

So, here's the list of things that are different, now that my son has moved on and I'm living alone. These are in no particular order:

1. The latest electric bill is just about half what it was.
2. The grocery bill is a lot less than half of what it was.
3. My diet has improved tremendously, meaning I'm no longer eating the junk that was always in the house before.
4. I can now find things again. They are still there where I put them.
5. I now only have to run the dishwasher once a week.
6. The kitchen stays clean, and so does the rest of the house.

That's all the mundane, superficial crap. During this week's war with the cat, I would've asked Tim to do the climbing behind the dryer! All mother/son emotions aside, I mean, looking at the budgetary side of things, was that occasional assistance a good value? Let me see...

If I asked Tim, it's likely that he wouldn't remember I asked, or he'd just plain blow it off and blow it off on purpose. If I asked again, same thing, and same with 5 or 6 times of repeating myself. By then, I'm exploding with frustration and I'd tell him to do what I asked. He'd get angry that I told him instead of asking, and wouldn't do it anyway. Finally, I'd be so angry at him that I'd start threatening and saying all the things angry people say that they regret later, and he'd finally do what I asked. That's the way it was with Tim and I since he learned to walk, no matter what I tried to break that vicious cycle of ours. The good thing is, we both lived through it. And, I'd say that was the only major hitch in our mother/son relationship.

Yeah, I miss the little chickling. He turned out to be a good person and I'm proud of him. And he was great company, except for right when he woke up.

You see, the part of being alone that gets to me is when those physically intensive little emergencies pop up out of nowhere and smack me upside the head. I'm ecstatic because, age aside, I can do just fine fixing things all by myself. Even if I don't succeed at first, I just try again. No problem. It's a confidence issue.

Oh, last weekend, I put my all-time favorite CD into the stereo, cranked it up loud and sang and danced while vacuuming the house. I had the stereo so loud you couldn't hear the vacuum! Now, that was fun!

I'm sure glad the walls can't talk...