Secrets of the Single Life

I was recently at a wedding reception with a friend. She is married, and I am decidedly . . . not. A woman and her daughter asked if they could sit with us. Sure! I’d already identified the wife as a hippie throwback with her graying hair pulled back and flowing more than halfway down her back. The fact we were in Austin, Texas only helped support that notion.

Turns out they were the wife and daughter of the preacher who had done the service. The wife was chatty and asking my friend all about her husband and how they had met (he wasn’t there with us because he is deployed in Afghanistan right now).

The wife turned her attention to me. “Are you married?”

I smiled sweetly and said, “No.”

“Do you have a special significant other?”

I smiled sweetly and replied again, “No.”

If I’d had a business card for my blog, I would have given it to her so she could read about how I became so suddenly single.

Right after that, the DJ played “Into the Mystic,” which was the first song my ex and I had ever danced to..

As much as I may not like how I found myself in this current state of singleness, I can roll with these punches because I know a few secrets.

Being single means I can focus on my own joy without someone else’s junk getting in the way. Thank you, but I have enough junk of my own. Especially in my trunk.

I can set the temperature to whatever I want when I sleep at night.

I can post tweets like this with little to no repercussion.

I can eat pizza in bed at 10pm. Thin crust with all the toppings I like, no negotiation necessary.

I know that in the morning, no one will have eaten the leftover pizza I was planning on for breakfast.

I know that if I have an orgasm before I go to sleep, there won’t be a wet spot to dodge and laundry in the morning.

I know no one will ever steal the batteries from my vibrator to put in the PlayStation controller.

I can hang hot photos of myself in my bathroom.

(My purple bathroom. Where the toilet seat is never left up. Next to my purple flowered bedroom. Down the hall from my yellow and blue kitchen.)

I can watch all the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes I want. Even if the dishes are dirty. Especially if the dishes are dirty. And the laundry.

If I am mid-crafty project and want to take a break, no one will move my stuff or complain if it is still there two days later.

No one farts and blames it on the cat. (Except me.)

No one belches and then grunts, “Oh sorry, you get some o’ that?”

And, best of all, I can walk into an Austin, Texas hair salon looking like this…

And, walk out looking like this…

No one will care how much I spent, how much I tipped, or “OMG you cut off all your long hair!”

Now, I wonder if the preacher’s wife could do that?