Living the Dream

Living alone offers many benefits and challenges. It’s important to reach out to people, stay safe and rely on Google. 

I am used to living alone now, but there were some growing pains throughout the past 6 years. Or maybe that was just pain from moving heavy oversized furniture on my own. 

Throughout this time I’ve determined my decorating style, realized budgeting is not a strength and have enjoyed the journey of self discovery such as:

• Am I a tidy person or am I only tidy when visitors are coming?
• Do I need to order another cart full online or am I just bored?
• Is this show actually sad or am I just at that point in my menstrual cycle?
• Am I terrible at cooking or do I just prefer not to cook?

I have created some bad habits since living alone like clothing has become optional, eating on the floor has become comfortable and the bathroom door has become pointless. 

However, the beauty of the situation is no one has to know. 

Living alone is more costly and more responsibility, but it is less sharing and less interrupted sleep….

In Don’t go Breaking my Ornament, ornaments were broken. Today, I broke the record time for getting ready. 

Recently, I found myself in a familiar boat or should I say bed because once again, I struggled with an alarm clock. Just call me one of Kevin McCallister’s parents.

I had been using a new sleep app. Key word had. This particular app tracks and analyzes your sleep – duration, quality and sounds (that snoring is clearly my cat). The alarm clock aspect provides a 30 minute window. Meaning, it will wake you during your lightest sleep phase within the 30 minutes prior to your set alarm time. 

Which often resulted in being woken up 30 minutes earlier than I would have liked. 

However, one peaceful morning I heard an alert for a text message. Annoyed I thought, surely that can wait and never gave it another thought. Similar to how I never give my online purchases another thought after I click ‘check out.’ 

Moments later I heard another ding. This time I slowly rolled over to grab my phone. I then realized there was sunlight beaming into my room and suddenly, I was not beaming. 

It was a message from my co-recreation therapist that asked, “Are you alive/okay?”

My eyes darted to the time. It was 8:56am. My shift began at 8:45am. I was alive, but I was not okay. 

I darted to the washroom while dialing my manager’s number. Through panic and the classic ‘pee dance’, I left a message informing her of my situation and embarrassment. 

I threw my hair in a bun, blush on my face, fresh underwear on my body and sprinted to the door quicker than when my take out arrives.

I pulled into the parkade at exactly 9:24am and raced up the stairs to my manager’s office. Only to find her door closed with the lights out. Or maybe I was just passing out from running up those stairs.

Since she wasn’t there, I headed to my office to inform my co-recreation therapist of my arrival. I needed to brag to someone how quickly I put my face on. 

A few minutes later, a nurse approached me and said, “my, you look so nice today!”

But my question was, how do I smell..?

Apparently, living alone has been about finding myself… in bed.