Crazy for Living With Me

I’ve come to the conclusion that spending a lot of time alone has not made me more introspective or productive; it just makes me a little crazier every day. After many years of spending most of my time in my home office or wandering around the house trying to avoid my home office, I’ve finally not only gotten to the point of talking out loud to myself; I can now tune myself out because I’m tired of listening. The other night my son and his girlfriend were over when I mumbled something about not taking the garbage out because I was in flip-flops and it was dark, would probably step on something appalling, have a heart attack, and they’d find me the next day, thus ruining the rest of the weekend. “What?!” she said.

“Did I say that out loud?”

I’ve worked primarily from home either fully or partially employed for the past 20 years and though most people say, “Oh that would be wonderful!” they obviously don’t understand the reality of it all. For one thing friends and family see you as the point person for every occasion and think that you don’t really work for a living. Employers can be pretty stupid in this respect as well, not realizing that studies show that most people who work from home are at least 20 percent more productive than people who have to get dressed, commute, and spend a good part of the day being interrupted by co-workers and managers who have nothing better to do than check on what everybody else is doing. We work-at-home people have to actually produce something. All that aside, I have noticed that working from home can encourage the odd tendency to converse with just about anybody about anything.

The UPS man waves to me when we pass on the road, which husband Jack, thinks is odd. UPS man and I came to know each other better when I became obsessed with ordering a carved lizard sculpture from Mexico (at sale price) from a catalog. Trouble was that every time I received a lizard, it was damaged (broken tail, broken toes, battered nose). I started showing this to the UPS man every time he delivered or picked up one of the reptiles. Finally after about a dozen or so episodes, he recognized my Jeep on a nearby road, waved me down, shoved a package at me and yelled, “Here’s your damn lizard!”

“How are the piano lessons going?” I asked.

As the UPS man drove off I turned to Jack and said, “He’s always wanted to take piano lessons and now he’s finally doing it. Isn’t that great?”

Jack didn’t reply.

My bookshelves are lined with home cures for every malady and disease known to man, because when a person is constantly alone, they seem to become open to suggestions that they may be dying of, well, there are a myriad of possibilities. Of course, I don’t want to go to a doctor because this would require me to be among…the others. One day I read that constantly working at a computer screen could degenerate one’s pupils, so I found a pair of old sunglasses with only one earpiece. I was doing some repetitive research work so I cranked up Pink Floyd on the stereo, when lo and behold, the Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door. I answered and despite the blaring music and my odd eyewear they asked me if I wanted to pray. “Sure!” I replied. It must have been the shortest prayer in the history of door-to-door religion.

Most strangers who contact me at home are trying to either save my soul or bury my body. One funeral plot salesman (FPS) called and we had the following conversation:

FPS: Have you prepared for the inevitability of your death?
Me: And how do you suggest I do that?
FPS: Have you purchased a grave plot to spare your loved ones the grief and trouble of doing so?
Me: No, because I’m going to be cremated.
FPS: Well, that requires planning and expense as well, you know.
Me: I have it all planned. We’re going to have a big party, a funeral pyre like the Indians used to do, and they’re just going to light me up in the back yard.
FPS: (Pause) That would be illegal.
Me: What do I care? I’ll be dead.

He hung up, not realizing that backyard funeral pyres could be a very lucrative future fad.