The wife has been traveling a lot more with work, leaving me and the kids to fend for ourselves—one lonely week at a time.
It’s exhausting being a single mom. The kids want food and walks twice a day. They want to go outside, so they can come back inside. And of course, they want treats all-day-long! I told them they don’t need food to feel my love, but something tells me that they have a hidden agenda. I mean, no one is giving me any treats. Where’s my treats?
Instead, I have the crappy jobs to do. And I’m not talking about picking up the kids’ lawn remnants after all those meals. So, I texted the wife, asking her to stop by the house real quick because there’s dishes on the counter, hair in the shower drain, and food chunks in the filter thingy in the kitchen sink. She reminded me that she’s 4000+ miles away with an ocean separating us. The nerve of her.
So there it is…I eat alone. Stare at the firepit alone. Read alone. Drink alone. Clean hair out of the drain alone…
Okay, I can’t keep up this debby-downer charade any longer; it’s not actually lonely. I’m having a whale of a good time—except for the hair thing.
One neighbor brought over a freshly baked loaf of sourdough and a bushel of homegrown tomatoes to jar. The other neighbors took me out to all their favorite watering holes for a day. And the neighbor down yonder still yells at me daily for picking up my dogs’ poop off her lawn. You read that correctly. I pick up after the dog and she yells at me for it. I seriously told her she has a lot more issues than someone pooping on her lawn. But that’s neither here or there.
Anyway, when I told a writer friend of mine that I was a bachelor for a week while the wife galivanted around Europe, she explained that I was a grass widow. And while I know a lot of weird facts, grass widow was not in my vocabulary.
The term dates back to the 16th century, stating that grass, refers to a woman being left alone to do her own gardening (referencing independence). Widow is based on the woman’s separation from her spouse, though not due to death. A more recent concept utilizes the old cliché, the grass is greener on the other side. So, if I were taking a wild guess, I’d infer that the spouse left for greener “lawn” (he he) and the woman was left with a big back yard—to run naked around poop piles while playing loud music and offending the neighbors.
Go Green!