Top Ten Things to do When the Family Leaves you Home Alone

 1. Buy the water loving cat a pool.  For eleven dollars it can sub as a cooler with ice and beer at the next summer party. 
When the big Cat's away.. the little cats play.  Please note, I stopped short of buying him a goldfish to chase around.  I thought about it though.  I have a few hours left here alone, so you never know.

2. Rent movie made by Disney that husband would never sit through.  Big Hero 6 was a delight.  I'm sure it is a delight to everyone under the age of 8 as well.  I could chatter about how the animation was spectacular, but I come from the generation of the Jetsons.  Rosie, the maid was pretty much the same character with a dose of sarcasm that I prefer in my robots.   

3. Control the controls.  There's a creepy power trip going on here. I vacillate between listening only to the sound of my own voice (in my head....I've not been alone long enough to talk out loud to myself...but hey....that could be fun) and turning on the TV with the remote.   Suffice to say I can watch Modern Family reruns pretty much all day and no one else around here can. 
Around here I awake to the cockney sounds of Phil Liggett, every morning as the Fireman watches the Tour De France in July.  I don't like golf or lengthy cyclists or race cars because the coverage rotates at a crazy rate.  I want to watch one golfer only through 18 holes.  I want the car race to be in a straight line.  I don't want to watch a scroll across the top of the screen to figure out whose in front.  If the guy with the yellow jersey is not the guy who is in front, then they are just  confusing me for the sport of it.   I have enough to do to keep gauge. 

4. Not cook.  You all know exactly what those two words mean. 
They mean not plan, not prepare, not ask the rest of those who eat here if they want my plan and my preparation.  It also means ice cream could be dinner.  Let's not go there.

5.  Put hair in comfortable barrettes that otherwise look ridiculous.

6.  Knit my new purse pattern without interruption.  Fireman has this new saying.  It goes like this, 'You aren't listening to me, are you?" Well no.  I'm knitting or posting or reading emails or otherwise focusing on the one thing my brain can handle at a time. 
I think I'd be much more into listening if the people around here said, 
"Hey I noticed you are clearly punishing that keyboard at a smoking rate, but can you stop for a minute, I have a question.
When did we say we were going to meet at my sister's house tomorrow?  Did we say 3 or 4? "
I've gotten much nicer in my 50s. In my 30s, I would say, 
"pretend I'm dead, what would you do?"  I really did say that. I was sassy in my thirties.  Now I just say, 'I wasn't listening you are right'.    Because he's pretty wonderful otherwise. 

7.  Think about things you could do that involve leaving the screen porch, and not do them.  I only have 24 hours people, in my little castle, all alone with 4 cats.  If I had a week,  I might get off the porch.  I don't.  I have 24 hours.  There's no place like home.

8.  Relish the thought that Fireman wanted to go camping and I did not.  Think of a way to thank the son who fulfilled his father's summer dream to sit with the bugs in a tent on the hottest day of this summer.  

9. Read till I fall asleep.  This never happens.  I don't know why. Fireman is not opposed to my reading.  It has been ages and ages and many babies ago that I fell asleep with a book in my hands.  Perhaps because I don't read in bed, and it is a hassle to put the book down and climb stairs.  Last night, due to the extreme heat, I slept on the couch.  Next to the air conditioner.  When I was done reading, all I had to do was close the book.....and drop it. 

10.  Wear your shirt inside out.  Because, no one was there to tell me it was inside out and I didnt notice until I was going to the couch to sleep.  Hey, it was my 24 hours and no one saw me. I did not embarrass my husband in public.  Had I stumbled and required medical assistance in the form of his former colleagues in an ambulance, I can assure you I would have taken out the barrettes, put a new shirt on and maybe some lipstick.   I'm not sure how I would have explained the cat in the pool, however....