My wife left me this weekend

Just me and the dog this weekend.Ashley and Henry were off visiting family on the far off planet of East Texas, so Elliott and I had the place all to ourselves. I kept meaning to hop on the old bloggio and document the happenings of the weekend, but the happenings kept happening and just kept going by undocumented. So here's a few segments from the Holmes's first weekend flying solo since, well, uh, since....since I can't remember when, to be quite honest.

- I watched Borat Friday night. I don't think I've watched a movie alone since my bachelor days, and it felt weird to be laughing all by myself. I realized that from our couch, my laughter sounded kind of odd without Ashley's there to accompany it, like the time in my old '94 Ford Taurus when the speakers on one side decided not to play anymore. That's when I realized that RATM's Evil Empire album was mixed with the guitars on one side and bass on the other. Anyway, there's a particularly gross scene in the movie that had me laughing my ass off until I realized that if somebody were to walk by our condo and glance in the window, they might think I was watching very bizarre and very gross porn.

- I painted our bedroom, a task which desperately needed doing since the color it came in was whitey. All told, this took up most of Saturday and part of Sunday. I managed to get the room emptied, prepped, painted, cleaned, and all put back together again by the time Ashley made it home. Hell yeah.

- The paint I used was this non-toxic stuff that you get at this little hippie home improvement store close to downtown that also sells biofuel, organic clothing, and children's boardgames about saving the world from corporate greed. Since Ashley took our car on her trip, my transportation to get to said hippiemart was her dad's ginormous F-150. They still sold me the paint.

- While I was painting, I had ye olde Zune on shuffle. The combined force of this household's musical collection comes out to about 25GB, so plenty to listen to, though there could always be more. At one point, some fluttery treble-laden bit of instrumental annoyance that I didn't recognize came on. I checked and it was Enya. I rolled my eyes, muttered under my breath, "Dear God let it end soon" and resumed painting. Enya came to an end and was immediately followed by Slayer. I guess that was the answer to my little prayer.

- I went out to the Alamo Drafthouse with my friend Brandon to see Severance, a horror-comedy which does not disappoint on either side. It easily wins the award for most hilarious beheading. After the movie we went downtown to watch an improv comedy competition, which was less funny and did not feature any beheadings, but perhaps should have.

- I couldn't sleep for shit all weekend. I had the bed all to myself, so I suppose I should have taken the opportunity to enjoy the extra room, but I've grown so accustomed to sharing the space with Ashley and Henry that I just felt alone. On the plus side, it meant I was up bright and early to get going on the painting both days.

- My dog is a lazy son of a bitch. I busted my ass all weekend painting and watching movies, but every time I turned around he was passed out asleep. Finally, I said enough's enough, enleashened him, and headed out for a walk. I thought I was being smart by taking him out to the designated dog-toilet before we got going, but then ten minutes later he shit in somebody's yard. Since I thought he had already taken care of this little bit of business, I was completely unprepared to clean it up. The turd had to stay. We continued down the street, me whistling innocently.

- I was incredibly happy to see Ashley and Henry when they got home. I knew I was going to miss them, but I had also thought I would enjoy having a bit of time to myself. Yeah, sure I enjoyed it some, but it was also lonely. It's funny, Single Holmes was pretty good at being alone back in the day, but Family Holmes ain't so much. Ah well, Family Holmes has plenty of other superpowers that more than make up for it.