Ding Dong, the Wife is Gone

To make up for the following post, I have allowed my wife to write the title. She still was not impressed.

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I’ve been staring at the clock all day, counting down the hours. I’ve become like a kid in the last hours before summer vacation. It’s hard to stay focused and on task when you know that you have mere hours until a break.

The sound of the clock ticking seems to be getting slower and slower. I’m starting to get itchy, ready to head out the door, to my car, and get home. I am in absolutely no condition to work right now. None of the tasks I have been assigned have even a prayer of getting finished this fine day.

How am I supposed to get anything done when I know that tonight, I get to be a bachelor?

As a married man, there are very few things in life as exciting as an evening alone in my own house. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of my wife. She’s very good at many things and adequate at everything else. I can’t recall a single time when her personal appearance suffered greatly. She has excellent hygiene and usually smells very good. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, never once following through on her threats of physical violence.

That being said, she does have one major flaw.

She takes up space.

You would think that a person who is only 5’2” with heels on would take up a limited amount of area. This is not the case. She, in fact, manages to spread out over a space that even Shaquille O’Neal would think was roomy.

Most evenings, I find myself confined to one corner of the couch. Somehow, this pocket-sized human being has taken up enough space for two. It makes no sense. From a distance, it looks like she is taking up a reasonable amount of room, but on that couch you would swear you were sitting next to a She-Hulk.

She might scoot over, and for a brief second I think I might have space to move. Instead, I find a pile of knitting supplies have somehow immediately filled that void. I am forced back into my corner, knowing that I could find myself impaled on a knitting needle if I scoot over.

The problem only gets worse as bedtime arrives. I remember a time in my life where I could lay anywhere I wanted in my bed. I chose the very middle, evenly spaced from all sides. It was the perfect situation, the most comfortable a person could even dream of being.

Then marriage arrived.

Now, I spend my nights fighting for a corner of the comforter, praying that I don’t fall off of the edge of our queen-sized bed. I try my best to avoid flying appendages and hold on for dear life as my blankets are nearly ripped away. It’s almost enough for me to try out the Lucy and Ricky Ricardo separate beds technique.

If I were to guess, I would say that roughly 92% of my life is spent in tiny, cramped areas because of my wife’s ability to ooze into places. That’s a fairly large percentage of time.

When she is gone, though, all of that changes.

Tonight, my wife will head out the door, on her way to an overnight babysitting job. I will say a few nice words, wave goodbye to her, then immediately rush to the couch and stretch out as much as a human being can. My dog and cat will try to get on my lap, but not tonight. Tonight is Nathan’s Freedom to Move Night.

In bed, I won’t worry about the covers. I won’t have to sleep all night sans blanket, only to be told in the morning that I was hogging the covers all night. No, I will lie directly in the center of the bed, using the covers as a cocoon of warmth and comfort. Once again my dog and cat will try their best to lie on me. They don’t seem to fully appreciate the rarity of this event.

Do I get lonely? Of course. That is a very small price to pay for elbow room, though.

I should probably feel guilty for the joy I feel being home by myself. Maybe I’ll have breakfast ready for my wife to make up for my unadulterated happiness.

I’ll have plenty of time to plan that out while I sit here and wait.