It makes me kind of nervous when library patrons complain about not having enough privacy at our computers.  What are you looking at online that requires more than a library carrel for privacy?  Hmm.

There was a story in grad school about a man who regularly used Vaseline to stick newspaper to the windows of a private study room.  After a few minutes at the library, he would have his very own Vaseline/newspaper-wallpapered room.  He made lots of people kind of nervous.

It’s the weird random stuff that freaks me out at home, too.  Normal stuff that’s supposed to make me worry really doesn’t.  Tell me that someone’s outside my house with a giant machete and a menacing facial expression, and I honestly think I’d be just fine.  (Remind me to tell you sometime about the night I was house sitting and a man started banging on the door and yelling for me to let him in at about 3 AM.)

But last night, as I was cutting into meatloaf hot from the oven (best meatloaf recipe ever!… next Monday’s menu is this tequila lime chicken), my oven clock went berserk.

It mysteriously stopped showing the time a few weeks ago.  I decided that didn’t matter as long as the oven still cooked things.  Then last night, it went kind of like this: “dark, dark, dark, 6!, dark, dark, 59!!, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, :!”  Let me tell you, it was disconcerting.  Had my household appliance been possessed?  Would it open up and steal all of my delicious meatloaf before I had a chance to sample the bacon-coated goodness?  Would my fingers survive the ordeal?  Who would feed Peanut if I couldn’t hold his kibble cup anymore?

Yes, there’s a lot of freedom in living alone.  There are also those weird moments when you suspect that your oven is going to consume your fingers, and no one is there to mention that you might be ridiculously wrong.