Livin' la Vida Solo Rant

Single life just isn't fun.

Oh sure, I have unlimited access to the phone, bathroom, remote control... but it just doesn't make up for being able to cuddle up to a warm husband at night (or at least cuddle up to a warm husband sleeping one bed over).

Tonight, I stayed at work until 5:30. Not late, you might say. True, I admit, but late enough when you consider I arrived at 7:30. And I brought more work home with me. This is all part of Hell Week. Somehow, I roped myself into coordinating and chaperoning the seventh grade trip to Mackinac Island this year. We're having an organizational meeting for the 100+ participants on Wednesday evening. Did I mention I'm xenophobic? Not really, but there's a huge reason why I didn't go into business or sales, aside from my deep and abiding love for serving humanity in the non-profit sector. I once read an article on aish.com that talked about how singles should spend their time developing a love and yearning to serve the community. Yeah. Serve this.

And, parent-teacher conferences are this Thursday and next Tuesday evenings.

The long and short of it all: I hate dealing with adults (present company excluded since *most* of you are not idiots).

You see, I can excuse most acts of anti-genius in children. They are, well, children, after all and it's my job to develop and mold their little brains and generally beat the ingrained stupidity out of them. Are you scared, yet? The problem comes when I have to meet their parents. All year, I train them to not say "shut up"to each other and not to say "I ain't got none". When I meet Mom and Dad, they are inevitably yelling at their child, "Shut up! You know we ain't got nonna that at home! Oh wait, maybe I seen some yesterday in the TV room."

It's a lost cause. At least they'll all know the capital of Bolivia (quick - what is it?). Wait. Wait. La Paz. Ha, I knew you could do it.

Speaking of adults at the top of my fecal roster, I have again been bullied into eating Shabbos dinner at the house of woman in the community who will simultaneously ask you to help serve supper, try to sell you some clothes, and arrange for you to babysit for her ten (b'li ayin hara) lovely children on Shabbos afternoon so she and her husband can have a Shabbos shluf. Single girls, after all, have nothing better to do.

My inability to say no (translation: my inability to think up lies fast enough when caught unawares answering my phone at 10:30 p.m.) is woefully underdeveloped, but improving, generally-speaking. I was invited to the bar mitzvah of this woman's son a while back. She didn't have it catered and was relying on her guests to help serve the food (though she did manage to rent a hall). I snapped right before cholent. I had just sat down to eat my salad when she approached me and asked if I would go in and help serve the rest of the meal. WTF?!? Across the room sat an entire bevy of her female relatives who were in town from New York. Did they lift one jappy little finger? No. I, on the other hand, developed sudden, violent stomach cramps and had to excuse myself immediately to flee the scene.

The lamprey eel is an invasive species in the Great Lakes. "When attacking, the lamprey fastens onto its prey and rasps out a hole with its rough tongue.An anticoagulant in the lamprey's saliva keeps the wound open for hours or weeks, until the lamprey is satiated or the host fish dies." Sea Lamprey/Fish of the Great Lakes by Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Draw your own parallels.

This time, however, I'm taking a friend. Two is stronger than one.

Which brings me back to my original statement: single life just isn't fun. There was no one to help me carry in the groceries tonight, no one to get excited about the yummy soups I'm going to make tomorrow, no one to rub my neck and shoulders (at this point, I'd trade any possibility of ever having sex for a good neck/shoulder rub). I know I can pay to have this done (the massage, that is), but at this point I need it so badly that it would be like hiring a prostitute and would be woefully unsatisfying in so many, many ways.

Ah, at least I have my feather bed and a nice dog warming it for me as I sit here and type this (moving her will require a forklift, but will be well worth it once accomplished).

Ta ta. I'm going to bed.