I May Be Childless and Alone, but at Least I Have Time to Organize My Spice Rack
Sure, you’ve got a family, but I’ve got time. Lots and lots of time.
People pity me because I don’t have kids. “Don’t you regret not having children?” they ask with the same sort of look on their face they get when they see a three-legged dog.
But while they’re emptying their bank accounts for two days at Cedar Point, where they’ll make treasured memories that will last at least a week, do you know what I’m doing?
I’m cleaning the grout in my bathroom.
Is there anything more satisfying then taking out all your repressed anger and disappointment on an unfeeling wall of ceramic tile?
Where once there was soap scum and possibly black mold, now there is gleaming white grout that should really be re-grouted. And as soon as my depression lifts, that’s at the top, or maybe somewhere in the lower middle, of my list.
Sure, people with kids get to go to graduation parties and picnics, where they’ll suffer sunburns that will age them prematurely and they’ll spend hours Googling “how remove tick?”
But do you know where I get to go?
I get to go to Aldi’s at 8:00 in the morning still wearing my pajamas because I’ve lost the will to live. No waiting for kids to get ready, no brushing of teeth or combing of hair. No cleaning up spilled cereal or fielding complaints about the variety of fruit snacks available at any given moment. No plaintive cries of “Mooooommm!” to disturb the deathly, tomb-like silence of my home.
I can roll straight out of bed into a pair of mismatched flip-flops and I’m ready to go.
And just look at my kitchen floor. You could eat off that floor, and sometimes I do.
The key to a fulfilling life without friends, family, or even a rough approximation of a future isn’t asking, “Why?” It’s asking, “Why the hell not?”
And just look at my spice rack. While people with families are curled up in companionable silence eating popcorn and watching Cars for the 15th millionth time, I’m arranging my spices by alphabet, color, and atomic weight.
Did you know that you’re supposed to buy new spices every few months and not every few decades, which is what I thought before I had all of this time on my hands? Who knew?
I thought spices were like Dick Van Dyke. They just live forever.
So if anybody needs me, which they won’t because I’m childless and alone, I’ll be sorting the collection of cardboard boxes I keep on hand from all the online shopping I do to fill the empty void of my existence, and also in case I need to return something.
You never know when you might need a box.
I have grout envy