Dan is away on a business trip this weekend. On the one hand, how dare he abandon his family? I thought we were safe because he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t drink milk, so I was never going to have to tell the Baby that his daddy left for a pack of smokes or to buy some milk, but I guess I have to tell him that his dad works for a living to pay for a soft life where we are enveloped in love and luxury LIKE AN ASSHOLE.
If anyone sees Dan, let him know he’s on thin ice.
On the other hand, much like when we were in Miami, I have found that I very much enjoy single motherhood, and once again find myself likening this whole experience to working in a bar.
There is nothing quite like a coworker who just Gets It, with whom you are so in sync that every shift feels like a dance, every task getting done exactly when it needs to be in exactly the way it needs to be. The flow state of those nights are magical, and worthy of many celebratory drinks at the end (as opposed to the shit nights, which are shit, and worthy of many non-celebratory drinks at the end).
As magical as they are, there is also nothing quite like getting to run the bar yourself, knowing you’re the boss, the employee, and—well, that’s pretty much all there is.
Because Dan left us alone in the woods, naturally there is a tornado warning in Buncombe County, which is fine because we are in Henderson County (suck it, Buncombe). But there is a biblical amount of rain, which is rather romantic if you know how to swim. Sitting around with this baby feels very much like days where I worked at a little dive bar called Twelve22 in Portland, OR, a neighborhood joint where people smoked crack in the bathrooms and came in exceedingly hammered and everyone insisted on calling me Burrito because if I wasn’t black then I must be Mexican.
I will say that our house smells slightly better than Twelve22, but the elements are all there. It is me standing around the kitchen instead of behind the bar, watching the rain come down and also keeping my eye on the two insane patrons who have decided to make their home here for the day. One of them is clearly on drugs, because he’s wobbling around the house naked and babbling and I know serving him will be easier than explaining to him why he needs to get help. The other one is a freeloading bitch with an anger management problem who seems to have a soft spot for the babbling naked guy, and they’ve formed an unlikely friendship trading an old fish they’ve found back and forth.
I keep my eye on them from a distance and make sure they don’t kill themselves or each other and occasionally I make sure they are fed and watered and that their feelings are validated because that is my job. I do the dishes and the side work in between serving them, and occasionally I break up a disagreement about to whom the fish belongs, which I solve by explaining it is GARBAGE and they are IDIOTS, but of course they are incoherent so they do not understand what I am saying to them and one of them giggles and the other one sticks her tongue out and stares at me and I am not exaggerating when I say that this is truly reminiscent of working at a dive bar except, again, for the smell, until the naked one pees himself and then it’s all exactly the same.
If I see Dan I’ll let him know ;)