Brace yourselves. There is a very good chance this is going to get ugly, quick.
How ugly? Very, very ugly. The "what was that noise I just heard because I'm suddenly the only adult in the house and I'm awake at 2 a.m., and why haven't I ever heard it before?," sauce pans in the microwave, binge-watching "Bourne" movies kind of ugly. The kind of ugly that kills productivity, lucidity and any pretense of a civilized, adult diet.
The "underwater the flowers, overfeed the pets, leave all the lights on and the dishwasher off" kind of ugly. The "peanut butter and jelly with waffles for dinner" kind of ugly. The "Why don't I have any clean towels or boxers? Oh, you mean someone has to actually DO the laundry?" kind of ugly. The "the only things around here obviously housebroken are the dogs" kind of ugly. The "years of evolution and civilization vanishing in the face of the complexity of the instructions for making instant rice" kind of ugly.
The "Here I stand at the intersection of my ineptitude and my inability to follow even the most simple and basic directions," kind of ugly.
Like I said, very, very, very ugly.
The Lovely Mrs. Smith went out of town.
All right, so it's not going to be for long. A couple of days, on business. In fact, by the time you read this, she will have returned to discover that we've either succumbed to my inability to prepare a meal or realized the one basic truth of being on our own -- namely that there are an awful lot of fast food restaurants in our town.
Now in the interest of fairness and accuracy, and in a blatant but probably ineffective attempt to keep you from thinking I'm the world's greatest doofus, let me say I am somewhat domesticated.
I do laundry. I iron. I know what that whirring sound that comes out of the vacuum cleaner when you flip the on-off switch means.
In fact, I would venture to say that, when The Lovely Mrs. Smith returns, the house will be just as clean and tidy as it was before she left. Mostly because when she's gone, the last progeny left at home and I exist in basically three rooms -- the kitchen, the master bedroom (me) and his bedroom (that would be him). That's because we eat whatever pitiful offering I've come up with for dinner with our fingers, standing over the kitchen sink. Then we retire to our respective bedrooms, where he does homework (yeah, I mean, probably) and I watch either Jason Borne blow up things or anything even remotely resembling a sporting event.
By the way, did you know there is an International Arm Wrestling Championship? OK, I think they're "international" because a couple of Canadians were in Las Vegas and decided to give it a go, but the point is, well, there is one. In fact, someone was referred to as a "rising star" of the arm wrestling world. I mean, wow, they've got an international tournament and everything, and all this time I thought arm wrestling was just how you decided who got the last piece of pizza.
But I digress ...
Anyway, the fact that my wife will be out of town for less than a full week, leaving two near-adults (remember, I've helped raise four children. My wife has helped raise five) on their own with a safety net as big as all of Northwest Arkansas (because it is, in fact, all of Northwest Arkansas. Or at least all the service providers located therein), isn't really a reason to call out the National Guard.
However, it does transform a fairly middle-class life full of all sorts of cool things like well-prepared meals and some semblance of balance and order into, basically, a bomb-shelter existence. If, you know, bomb shelters had cable TV. And no one was actually dropping bombs.
We will survive this. After all, we've not exactly been left to forge in the woods for sustenance. Besides, those occasions when The Lovely Mrs. Smith is out of town only serves to remind us just how important she is to the day-to-day operation of things around here, all while providing us with the chance to appreciate the (very) occasional joys of solitude, the sense of satisfaction that comes from fending for ourselves, the subtle but profound beauty of ramen soup.
You make that with water, right? From that bendy thing in the sink. And in one of those round things that looks like an ice cream bowl with a handle on that big thing with nobs and flame ...
See, I'm not totally helpless.
Gary Smith is a recovering journalist living in Rogers.
Commentary on 08/28/2015