the not-so-fabulous adventures of a wannabe Single Me

I'm on day five of Temporarily Suspending Reality So That I Can Pretend To Be Single Me Again. I'm tired. Being a Single Me is tiring. And expensive. And did I mention tiring?

So.

Tiring.

The warm nest I've created for myself is disrupted. Dirty dishes grow mold on the kitchen counter, and instead of neatly folding my trousers to hang them back on the hanger so as to get another wear out of them before requiring a wash, my pants are scattered all over the bedroom floor, legs inside out, panties still inside of them, a consequence of late nights that push me into slumber before I can properly undress.

I've slept with my makeup on twice in the last two days. I haven't done that for two years.

There's a whole different side to Ottawa that I wasn't aware existed. It's an Ottawa where you go from an eight p.m. office departure straight to a downtown pub and then straight into a cab to speed you home so that you can go straight to bed and wake up five hours later to do it all again. It's an Ottawa where you listen to a smartly dressed young whipper-snapper tell you about her bad date with Paul Wells. ("I don't think of myself as Paul Wells, prominent writer for a major national newspaper and magazine, I think of myself as Paul Wells, little guy from Sarnia trying to interpret the world for others." RIGHT. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK OF YOURSELF.) It's an Ottawa where, if I were really a Single Me, and not just pretending to be one during the couple of days that the Babe gets to bond with his Grandpa and Grandma, I would live in a small one-bedroom apartment at the corner of Metcalfe and O'Connor, with an overweight apartment cat and a dead houseplant, and my Friday nights would all be about Thai food and cheesy chick flicks and awkward dates with random dudes who got gift certificates to LavaLife from their mothers for Christmas. The parallel universe is sexy for about two hours, and then you wake up the next day with a hangover and a need to buy two or three Starbucks just to make it through the day. And you remember that the steak and salmon you share with the love of your life over a nice bottle of red on Fridays is so much healthier for you than take-out Thai. Honestly, who knows how much MSG goes into that shit?

Fun is fun. And life is life. I look forward to the return of my guys tomorrow. The nest is cold without them. (But don't worry girls. Single Me has it within her to make one final appearance tonight in the Market. Be there or be square.)