Tuesday, February 16, 2010

King Calm once asked me how exactly an unattached guy spends his free time and now, months later, I’ve finally located a satisfactory reply. When he first raised the question, it occurred to me I’ve never really codified the minutes I churn through daily. I’ve simply never needed to do so, you know? But when you’ve been happily married for 16-odd years, with five children in tow, such knowledge has likely been relegated to the province of lore, and it falls onto people like me to recount the highlights, much as a bard would.

At the time I offered a truthful, albeit boilerplate answer, something to the effect of television and napping, which nevertheless felt disingenuous when I bumped into the entire clan in front of a Linens ‘n Things a few Saturdays later. I was knee-deep in the “n’ Things” aspect of the chain, furtively heading to my trunk with four high-end humidifiers stacked in a shopping cart, each one destined for a decidedly non-humidifying end, and the meeting was awkward. That’s neither here nor there, though, and it’s a story for another time, or perhaps never at all.

The important point is there were echoes of this last evening. Now, I didn’t run into anybody I knew, nor was I flush with Venta-branded air cleaners, but there were great strides made in answering the question. Here it is: most of my time is spent in a celebration of selfishness. Forget, if you can, the negative connotations of the word. I’m merely stating a fact here. My minutes are invested in how best to optimize my life, and in the case of yesterday night it was an issue of breakfast. Oatmeal, specifically, and whether I could purchase enough to last me a year in one fell swoop.

Short answer? I could. And I did. To any outside observer, the ceremony of purchasing boxes and boxes of Quaker Instant Maple & Brown Sugar would appear strange, but it made perfect sense to me. I hate shopping for food. I hate it doubly when staples randomly disappear in a given week, courtesy of the goddamn Coupon Game. You know what I’m talking about: you’re shopping for milk, eggs, or Cheerios, only to find gaps strategically situated throughout the shelves. It’s, like, where did all the fuckin’ cheddar cheese go?

So when the prospect of crossing “buy breakfast” off the list for more than a year presented itself, I seized it. A preemptive strike, as it were, and it took about 90 minutes to move the payload from store to pantry. There were logistical concerns, to be sure, including pricing and amount consumed per day and expiration dates. But I was pleased with the time spent, and after three trips in and out of the store, my Swedish chariot was loaded with 960 packets of the stuff, its haunches straining under the weight of milled oats. As far as how all of this relates to my renewed search for a dog, well, I’ll explain more next week.