Empty Nest Envy Syndrome

Wait, wasn't I supposed to be sipping a demitasse at a Paris cafe this morning?

I checked my schedule and, indeed, my children were supposed to be gone already. Well, one of them. The other one is never here anyway so it doesn't matter. But the 20 year old? She's still sleeping in her room which, in French, is pronounced My Office.

But she has a job and she's going to go to school. I think. She said she was. I'm not sure which school she's going to. Maybe she's going to the school of sleep-all-day-go-out-all night and wear that one dress that makes me want to drape a blanket over her.

I willingly gave up my hip years to raise kids. I could've been a slightly bearded wordsman waiting tables in a boutique pork shop while spending all night smoking Gitanes, drinking coffee, writing 700 page oubliettes while never using the letter e.  But no, I was hip deep in dirty laundry, spent Pampers, and old pizza boxes. Instead of chilling out to jazz in Prague, I was learning all the words to the Sponge Bob theme song.

Which is all fine, because of the unspoken contract between I and my progeny in which, pursuant to page 89, paragraph 16, sub section MN, which states: "you will leapt from the premises as you turn 18 with a job in one hand and apartment keys in the other, forsooth."

Hasn't happened yet.

My friend's nest is empty as a Church on Saturday. He's renovated his daughter's room into a den and turned the other kid's room into a mancave. His empty nest is like a lair. He's currently teaching his dog how to open a beer.

 

Cleaning Tips for the Very Laz...ehh, I'll finish this headline tomorrow.

[My Attorney] is away for three weeks on an all expense paid cruise on the fourth floor of a Motel 6 in D.C. along with nine million other lawyers all trying to prove a very complicated version of "nuh uh." They're working, literally, around the clock, sleeping in shifts, surviving on nothing but sirloin and pinot noir (domestic—the cruelty!). Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I'm working so hard I can barely . . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Oh my god I am on a titanic laze. I haven't gotten out of my chair for four days. I'm surrounded by spent cheetoes bags and pizza boxes. The kids are surviving on Ramen noodles and canned corn. I'm managing to keep them on schedule. They're taking showers but they're drying off with old t-shirts and handfuls of dirty socks.

It. Is. Awesome.

Or it was. Until we discovered [something horrible] and I had to pry myself off the chair to call Orkin. Suddenly it occurred to me that a stranger was going to enter my lair and I looked around at the piles of dog hair and chicken bone chains and threw up. The I went ape shit on the house. I cleaned everything. I cleaned under the lazy susan. You know, in case this guy walks in and says "I need to look under your lazy susan in case there's [something horrible] under there. Under the lazy susan."