In The Right Nest

My mother, The Phone Harpy Whom I Love Very Very Much and my dad, The Great Stoic Wonder blew through L.A. for a few days on their way to a Tahitian cruise. They wanted to see the new place and so we spent all of Friday together.

Though I’m far too old for them to be worried about such things, I knew they wanted to see the place in the daytime, to assuage any fears they might have of their little girl living in a safe place.

And their fears were pretty much blown out of the water. Here’s the Phone Harpy herself, in all her Shorty Glory, checking out the front yard. Which is on a hill above L.A. So any tsunamis will not get me. Cross that one off the list.

They saw the front yard, the gate I live behind. They saw the back yard, and the fence around the pool. They met Pepe and Pembleton, the Dalmatian landlords, and their human owners.

And we all squeezed into the Shabby Shack, to which they said “it might seem cramped, but the rest of the stuff that you get with it makes it worth it.”

Which is true.

The Shabby Shack is actually coming along these days. Wella and Augustus came over last weekend to mount the flatscreen on the wall and the blinds over the back window, and with the straightening and last minute aesthetic details I threw into place to make the place seem organized to my folks (the 99 cent store is a GODSEND, people!) the place does seem bigger than before.

I love living by myself (or as much by myself with my Dalmatian landlords next door as I can be.) And though I will continue to argue with God to my dying day that yes, I do need a bathtub. Happy for the shower, but a bathtub is something I want and need. I will concede Him the point about the mini fridge being big enough, and the new toaster oven baking as well as a full sized oven.

Living by myself combined with stepping down from the various non-profit boards I was on has been jaw dropping. Look at all this free time I have to write!

And this is the metaphor I came up with. People have 100 % reserve of energy to get through each day. And various things require x amount of energy to deal with, like work, traffic, laundry, meeting writing deadlines, etc.

But living with Roomie Heckle and Roomie Jekyll, I was leaking unconscious energy and didn’t know it. Every day that I came through the door and Roomie Heckle was on the couch, where he’d been for four hours, sucking up TV time, drained energy out of me. Every day that a simple “How was your day” question to Roomie Jekyll sucked away 30 minutes of my life while she vented about how much she hated her job drained energy from me. Waking up in the morning and listening for the sound of other stirring souls, trying to calculate how much free time I had left before someone else’s girlfriend got into the bathroom drained energy out of me.

All of that is gone now. Dare I say I’m...content?

Sure, there are things missing in my life, like a man, like a full time writing career. But I have more energy, and I have the Shabby Shack, and amazing views, and Dalmatians for landlords and they can be awfully cute.

It’s not me busting out all over with puppies and rainbows. It’s just me feeling like, finally, finally, I’m on the path I’m supposed to be on. Or at the very least, I’m in the right nest. Maybe.