Bachelor Life

The Wife is in California, looking for a place for us to live. She flew out early this morning and she won’t be back until Monday. This will be the longest period of time we have spent apart since about our fourth date.

So how am I spending my five days as a quasi-bachelor? Have I called over the girls from Chi Delta to help me dust? Did I order an extra-large cheesesteak pizza and demolish a twelve-pack of beer? Has the house been accidentally lit on fire yet? Just how messy can the house get in fourteen hours? (Actually, I hesitate to ask the last rhetorical question, because The Wife has the uncanny ability to look at the house and see dirty where I see nothing.)

I spent close to all of the day teaching and surfing the net. I found out that I have another online class that started yesterday, about which I had completely forgotten. So I got that set up as quickly as I could and once again I have to contend with a multiplicity of student concerns, which are compounded by the fact that I showed up a day late and have suffered a loss of credibility with my students as a result. I’ve been talking about quitting the online teaching because it isn’t much fun anymore; I’ve been talking about doing it but not caring too much about doing a good job But I find now that I just don’t have it in me to stop teaching, or to stop doing it right.

When I wasn’t online teaching or becoming alarmed at unhappy news from Mesopotamia, I cleaned out the fridge, changed the cat litter, did some laundry, played with the dogs and cats, threw out all the garbage, made tortellini and sausage, unloaded the dishwasher and washed more dishes. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll even cut the grass while I’m being really dull and boring on my own.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.