Month: January 2011 | Melanie Bates

This is a story about a half-painted bathroom. That might sound really dull, ironically much like watching paint dry, but bear with me because this is also a story of how a half-painted bathroom represented my state of mind.

In October 2002 I took a gargantuan leap of faith and left my ten year marriage, packed up a U-Haul with 2 boxes of photo albums, 31 boxes of books, a single, stained twin mattress, and drove 1,721 miles across country to Cleveland, Ohio.

My friends, my family, and my husband thought I was nuts. Many were sure that I’d found someone else, a few thought I was going through a mid-life crisis at 33, still others just shook their heads and never were quite able to understand it. I’d be included in that last group, hitching my hand up in the air to be counted. Read more

I’m about to get real, folks. Really real.

I like to be alone. I’m not simply saying, “I like my alone time.” Nothing puny like that. I’m saying, “I utterly love being alone.” I take a lot of flack for this — from society, from those whom I love, from therapists around the world spouting “connection” and “human interaction”. I have frequent conversations with myself wherein I ask, “Am I normal? Is there something wrong with me?” When I allow myself to buy into society’s spigot of “norms”, I’m pretty certain that I’m whack. Except then I feel that rush of joyful bliss that makes me giggle out loud when I’m all by myself and all of those theories flush right down the drain.

The How

Make Thanksgiving dinner the night before Thanksgiving because you simply cannot wait and you’re not expecting company anyway. Prepare only the foods you love, mainly those with a sauce of some sort. Prep your $1100 mattress for a canvas o’ culinary goodness and feast on roasted turkey with sage, whipped mashed potatoes drizzled with real butter and smooth, creamy gravy, baked yams with bubbling brown sugar sauce, and Waldorf salad swimming in sugar syrup, minus the gross bananas. Watch Disney movies while you eat and spill blobs of said gravy onto said mattress. Lay there after your gorge, feeling like a sixteen year old boy who just lost his coveted virginity in 3.2 minutes. Sleep in the wet spot. Read more