Don't Feel Sorry for Me

Last week several people at work at different times asked me if I was going anywhere on vacation this year, and I told them all the same thing, that Lisa and the girls were leaving [last Thursday] to go to Mississippi to visit her mother, but that I was going to stay home to paint the basement. To a person each of them looked at me with these sad, puppy dog eyes and said how terrible that was, and then after a moment, their eyes grew wide and they said, "That means you'll be alone on the 4th, doesn't it?" When I told them that was correct, they seemed alarmed.

I told them what I'm telling you now: Don't feel sorry for me. By nature I think I'm a person who enjoys more solitude than the average person, and I've really been enjoying the time alone. The house is completely quiet when I want it quiet. I can eat what I want when I want, I can walk around in my underwear if I want, and I can (and have been doing so) listen to a radio/CD players as loudly as I want.

For the last 48 hours I have listened to a portable stereo for probably 24 of those hours. Here's what I've listened to:

1. The entire Friday broadcast of All Things Considered
2. My new Indigo Girls cd, which has been out since March but which I just found out about Friday morning listening to Pandora on the computer. The CD is entitled Poseidon and the Bitter Bug, and as soon as I found out about it I quickly downloaded it off of Amazon.com's website. It's a CD that I'm liking more and more with each hearing.
3. Nickelback's latest CD, which I'm liking LESS and LESS with each hearing.
4. Two Over the Rhine cd's. Over the Rhine is a local band that I've heard on the radio several times before and always liked, and I did purchase about four of their songs from Amazon.com a few years ago. I'd always liked them, but I hadn't really given them much attention. That was a mistake. There are almost 30 songs on these two cd's (one of them is a double disc and may be--in my humble opinion of course--one of the best cd's EVER) and I like EVERY song. This may be one of those ah-ha moments where they become one of my favorite bands now.
5. The last four monologues of Garrison Keillor, which I downloaded off of A Prairie Home Companion's website and then burned to CD Friday morning.
6. An unabridged audio book entitled The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus Christ by Peter J. Gomes. It's definitely not light "reading" as it's much more intellectual than I was expecting when I pulled it off the shelf at our local library, but that's not a bad thing. Of all of the above, I am enjoying this the most. I'm about halfway through it and should finish it tomorrow.

I still have two more days of solitude, though, so when the family arrives home either late afternoon or early evening Monday I'll probably be VERY glad to see them all. But between now and then, don't feel sorry for me.