The scary recluse of the neighborhood…

I often wonder when I will hit that moment of no return and become a hermit. Ever since retiring from the daycare world, I’ve been venturing out of the house less and less often. I used to drag Hubster out each evening after he returned home from work, desperate for human interaction. He would complain that he wanted to relax and watch some television, but I am a social butterfly and would bend him to my will. Dinners, movies, shows, people!

The world was my oyster.

After a few months of this, I would only drag Hubster out on the weekends – forcing him to participate in the most mundane of adult household activities. We would wander the home improvement store while I tried to convince Hubster that knocking an entire wall down was easy, and I could do it with this one tool! Luckily, he always managed to distract me with a shiny object as he shuffled me through the exit.

Then I only left the house for the dreaded grocery shopping.

You know, that time suck of two hours where all you do is spend $400 on cookies. Then you sit around for the next two weeks and wonder why you are hungry and just where did all your money go?! Then I found the grocery delivery service and I’ve stopped even doing that. Now I just order groceries online and a faceless person loads them into the trunk of the car while I sit in comfort listening to the radio. I think we exchanged 6 words on my last trip and they were weather related. FYI, it was raining – I know, shocker. (For those of you unfamiliar, it rains here over 300 days each year. It wasn’t a shocker.)

The monthly journey to Target eventually became the only time I left the house.

I never dragged Hubster with me. Target is a sacred place where I must be unfettered of people rushing me to leave. I need to inhale the smells, exhale my life’s stresses, and purchase ridiculous amounts of stationary because they have whales, and anchors, and flamingos, and bulldogs! The list continues on until I pass out from exhaustion in the back of the store… right where they display the furniture. They knew you’d need a nap from pushing that 600 pound cart you can no longer see over!

Now, Hubster complains that he never gets to go out any more. It is becoming such a problem that he’s resorted to bribing my friends to drag me out in my pajamas if they have to. Just this weekend Hubster was telling my friend that I must be walked weekly, and returned home well-fed, or he’s not sure what will happen. There were some manly mutterings about my growing into the couch, perhaps eventually just being forgotten by all the humans.

So, when exactly should I worry?

I still shower everyday. I play with Lola all day long. We even journey around the backyard just to see if any other creatures are trying to make it their own territory. I venture out in the dark of the night and bring home my delicious Taco Bell cheese, exchanging more than a few words with the workers. In fact, I spend so much time with them that they’ve taken to testing out comedy bits on me when I pull up. Once, they all took turns using accents through the microphone to see if I could identify who was who. And I did! So what else do the humans have on the outside that I must participate in?!

Nothing.

I’d like to add this closing thought – if people forget about me, what’s the likelihood they’ll remember me when they become zombies and are looking for a food source?! Exactly!