Last night was an experience, to say the least. I never knew that Amanda Sleeping By Herself would be such a production. I'd like to consider it a dramedy.
Upon reaching my apartment and getting the whole pee fiasco as previously mentioned out of the way, my first order of business was dealing with the cat. He had something to say, and he was saying it in the way that I'm certain if it could be translated to human speak it would be "WOMAN! HEAR THIS! What the hell have you done with my Daddy?" There was about 10 solid minutes of him meowing at the top of his little kitty lungs at me, and considering the fact that kitty lungs are quite small (I know this to be true, we had to dissect a cat in Anatomy Class my junior year in high school), I have no idea how he managed to make that much sound. The sound, along with the constantly throwing his body to the floor in front of me with each step that I tried to take. It took a lot of convincing, but I finally got the idea through his thick kitty skull that his Daddy would not be coming home that night. At which point he decided firmly to ignore me and curled up, glaring daggers, on the dining room table for the rest of the evening.
When you're acutely aware that you are by yourself, when you have not lived by yourself in years, you become hyper-sensitive to noise that you hear. Noise that you would normally write off. Such as the front door of the neighbor's apartment slamming shut. All of a sudden you sit bolt upright with fear, "Was that my door? Did some one come in here? AM I ABOUT TO BE MURDERED WHILE I SIT HERE DRINKING CHARDONNAY AND EATING STARBURST?" The fact that we do not have a deadbolt or chain on our front door is now a constant worry on my mind, and will be until 6:00 pm on Friday. I kept creeping down the stairs from the loft to the front door and peering out the peephole to make sure some one was not trying to get in my front door when in reality the noise I heard was just a mouse walking by on the street outside of my code-needed-for-entry apartment building. That chardonnay probably wasn't helping the paranoia, either.
My brother-in-law called me around 8:00 to see how I was doing, which was greatly appreciated. Sure, it does nothing to combat the lonliness, but it was nice to know that someone cared. He even told me that if I needed anything at all to give him a call. Which is such a nice and generous and selfless thing to do, which made me realize that it's something I never would have thought to do for someone else. Ah, well, can't win 'em all.
On the plus side, my inability to sleep helped me watch 4 episodes of the backlog of classic Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes on the bedroom TiVo.
When it came time to sleep (which I feared would never come because, oh no! the back of the chairs from the dining room table aren't high enough to wedge under the front door handle!), the bed was looming large and scary. We have a long body pillow that I like to use when I'm sitting up in bed reading or watching TV, so I laid it length-wise on Edgar's side of the bed to simulate him actually being there. And the cat seemed to like that; he plopped himself down right in between my hip and the pillow like this was all totally normal and he had resigned himself to the fact that he would never see his Daddy again, at least not until 6:00 pm on Friday. Falling asleep was for me, of course, a lot harder. Body pillows do not snuggle or move or give off body heat or hold your hand or give you a kiss goodnight or save you from the scary monsters that are waiting for you to fall asleep so that they can bust through the flimsy ONE LOCK on your apartment door and murder you. I'm not sure what time I ultimately fell asleep, but I'm sure that it was not early because I felt like I could hardly hold my eyes open when the alarm clock went off this morning.
Luckily, my dear husband called me right after my alarm went off to tell me to get my ass out of bed. Does he know me, or does he know me? And apparently Fiyero hadn't quite forgotten about him, because he kept biting my elbow the whole time we were on the phone, and meowing "WOMAN! HEAR THIS! I want to talk to my Daddy, and I want to talk to him now!" He has priorities, and I am not one of them. I accept this.
Forty-five hours to go.
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