Within 48 hours of my arrival back in Mt. Joy, our parents abandoned Rico and I to go off on a romantic weekend at Rehobeth. I think it’s Rehobeth, I don’t even really know because that’s how little notice I got about this separatist jaunt of theirs. Left with no groceries, $300 bucks, and the car (or rather two cars, as dad kept reminding me, even though only one of us can drive), the house was ours.
What craziness did two 20-somethings get up to? It was pretty epic!
- Screen Time: Binging Cuckoo, The Real O’Neals, and Sherlock, shows that we’ve previously shared together, and then desperately searching for more quality entertainment. Cartoons! Movies! Getting wild and renting movies with our parents’ fancy basic cable subscription! Going to a matinee IN A THEATRE because we’re free agents, and there’s nothing better to do.
- Exercise: Rico has his gym time, about 2 hours of it 6 days a week. Yeah. Really. He’s getting very broad, shoulder-wise. On my less daunting end, I’m attempting to up my yoga and meditation game to better manage my stress and anxiety. Sure, we could be drinking all night and sleeping all day, but what hell would that wreak on our general well-being?
- Texting Our Parents: What free entertainment form is better than live-action guilt? Look how you’ve abandoned us! Your own children! You barely even saw me since I got here! Now you’re off, eating fancy meals, reading on a beach, getting homemade ice cream every day if you want to. The shame you ought to feel! The shame! (As Rico and I eat hot fudge sundaes the size of personal pizzas)
- Taking The Dog For Walks: He needs the fresh air. So do we. No one is telling us to get outside and play, so most of our time is spent either at a laptop setup or on a couch. Or sleeping. We sleep a lot.
- Takeout: The makeup of most of our dinners. Frozen pizza also contributes to many of our meals, and that includes both boxed frozen pies and the frozen slices preserved in ziplock baggies from earlier this week when dad ordered the fresh, nice kind of pizza that grownups eat. You know, pies that cost more than $6.
- Question Everything About Our Lives: Are we on the right paths? There’s never been a better time to sprawl out on nice furniture that was not purchased from Craigslist or a Facebook group and question our existence. It’s fair to say that I did far more of this than Rico. Are my dreams too big? Why is my preferred industry so damn hard to break into? Does everyone secretly judge and/or hate me? If I don’t get my anxiety under control, how likely is it that I’ll die at least by age 60 due to stress-related illness? I could go on and on, and I have in my head, believe me.
- Work: Creative independent stuff and freelancing on my end. A final job interview for Rico, as well as some minor landscaping for a friend’s dad. We are making money that we won’t even spend this particular week, like real grownups.
- Have Illness-Related Panic Spirals: Get so freaked out by the hives(?) I developed right when I got home that I Google, then cry, then convince myself something is seriously wrong, then make my whole rest of my body feel rotten because hypochondria creates tangible symptoms, then text dad relentlessly till he calls me and attempts to calm me down. He does a better job of this than anyone else. This happens disturbingly often since my hormonal crash.
- General Waiting: Because we genuinely like our parents. Yup, that much. Enough that being home without them gets quickly boring, especially when all your home friends have real 9 - 5 jobs.
It doesn’t get much realer than this. But they’re back now, so it’s all back to normal (which is still a lot of the above described activities, to be honest).
-K