Bachelorhood Redux

My wife and kids have left me. They’re in Utah, I’m not. The apartment is empty of people, save for myself. It’s strange, but so far not as horrible as I’d expected. I feel less lonely than I’d anticipated. Of course, Melanie and the kids have only been gone for a few days now. We’ll see how I feel in a couple of weeks. But for now, I’m handling it well.

It’s strange, but one side effect of being alone is that, in some respects, I feel less motivated to work. I’m distracted by being alone. Perhaps it’s the same thing that makes it hard for me to work at my office at school. When there’s nothing to do but work, I don’t want to work. Even so, I have been working. Like I said, there’s not much else to do. I’ve already prepared some of this upcoming Thursday’s lecture, for crying out loud.

I’m trying to have fun, to look at the bright side of my situation. Every time I eat, I turn on Netflix Instant Viewing and watch something. Why not? For some reason, I’m drawn to all these crappy movies. Rather than watching something recent that looks pretty good, I feel compelled to watch all these movies I remember wanting to see as a kid but that I never did see. Of course, they’re terrible. And I suspect as much when I push play, but they still win out over something better-looking. I can now say that I’ve seen both Howard the Duck and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Crappy, yes, but the latter actually had some decent acting in it. Seriously.

You know, another funny side effect of Melanie being gone is that I’m easily distracted even from relaxing and having fun. Just as I feel less motivated to work, I feel less motivated to play. It’s hard for me to sit here and watch a movie by myself, even though I’d have no problem doing it if Melanie were with me. But by myself, my mind starts to wander. I start thinking I should work. I usually give in to temptation and pull out the laptop and try to work and watch the movie at the same time. At that point, I’m usually a better worker than movie-watcher, believe it or not. I end up only kind of seeing the movie. But because there’s no reason not to work in front of the TV, I keep the movies going. From Friday through Saturday, I watched (or at least sort of watched) a total of five movies. In addition to the two mentioned above, I saw Terminator Salvation (decent, for what it is), Splice (pretty good), and Airplane II (which I’d seen as a kid, but not for many years – I’ll blaspheme and say that I think it’s a worthy sequel).

In addition to movie-watching, I did entertain myself by taking a trip to Wal-Mart. I think I’d make a much better bachelor now than I did back when I really was a bachelor. I’d be more responsible. I stocked up on some fun bachelor food, but in a more health-informed way. I grabbed a pre-made pizza crust, but it’s wheat. I plan to load it up with turkey pepperoni, red peppers, black olives, and of course, sauce and cheese. It’ll be dinner tonight. I also got some fun sandwich-makings for lunch – roast beef from the deli, honey smoked turkey, and ham, stackable pickles, reduced fat provolone (at a boy!), and some good hoagie rolls. I tried to get whole grain hoagie rolls, but nothing was quite right. I had to splurge and go with squishy white rolls. They should be yummy. To accompany these sandwiches, I have a bag of fat-free potato chips (they’re not bad!) and some cold bottles of Stewart’s Diet Orange ’n Cream Soda. Oh yeah.

Speaking of which, I’m going to go eat one of these sandwiches and down one of those sodas (and eat some of those chips) right now. I’m also going to put a movie on. Visitors are welcome, but please call first. I might be naked. Why not?