Perhaps as part of my recovery from yesterday’s journey to watch Frozen. I and the oldest were about as lazy as it was possible to be today. We did somehow manage to wake up, change out of our pajamas (although the oldest had to be told several times) and feed ourselves, but neither of us could be bothered to actually venture out of the house.

This is a normal condition for me when She Who Must Be Obeyed is away. When the Cat’s away, this mouse gets lazy and sloppy and plays computer games. In other words, I revert to bachelor mode. The kitchen table becomes excess storage and the kitchen sink becomes a receptacle for dirty dishes which are cleaned as necessary but not before. The living room becomes a secondary Temple of Half-Finished Projects (i.e. an office), with appropriate stacks of half-finished projects set on the coffee table and balanced carefully on the sofa.

To rephrase a part of the Bible: By much slothfulness the bachelor decayeth;
and through idleness of the hands the house filleth up with crap through.

I have warned She Who Must Be Obeyed to never, ever, try to surprise me by coming home early without telling me. Were she to do so, I have no doubt she would immediately flee back to her parents’ house or go find a psychiatrist (for her) and a zoo keeper (for me).

The most amazing thing about bachelor mode is, after days of acting as if the washing of a single dish will somehow destroy me and doom my soul to hell for eternity (as if altering Bible verses won’t…), in those last few hours I can transform the house into a model room suitable for showing potential renters.

I always leave something undone though. I wash the dishes but don’t dry them and put them away. I leave the laundry hanging. I have to show She Who Must Be Obeyed some physical proof that, yes, I really do need her, if nothing else for some adult supervision and so the neighbors don’t think a bear moved into our apartment.

Now, however, this is all complicated by the presence of my oldest. Now I have to maintain certain fatherly standards. Today I did that, albeit in a very lazy way.