The Existential Woman

After surfing the internet and playing some online games, Shanna looked around the small condo and decided to do some cleaning. The kitchen sink was filled with dishes. They weren't all her dishes. Her brother Norman had put some dirty dishes in the sink also. Norman and Shanna lived together in the small condo. It was all they got as an inheritance from their father when he died a few years previous. It only had one small bedroom and one small bathroom, but the siblings made the best of it. They each had a twin bed in the bedroom, and they each had their own "spot" in the living room. It was cramped, but neither of them could afford to go anywhere else. Although Norman worked, he couldn't afford the prices of other dwellings. Shanna couldn't find anything within her retirement budget either, so they tolerated each other. Sometimes Shanna loved her brother Norman very much and was glad that they were roommates. Sometimes she couldn't stand the sight of him and was glad she had her own vehicle so she could drive off and get away from him for awhile. This particular weekend, Norman was the one who drove off in his vehicle. He had invited her to go camping with him, and although there was a part of her that wanted to enjoy time with him again like they used to a decade ago, she declined his invitation. She didn't want to risk an argument between them while camping when their homelife was finally getting to a comfortable peace between them. She turned the sink water on and washed the dishes quickly, setting the washed ones on the drying rack. Once the sink was empty, she wiped it clear of any food or residue. Then she took the garbage out. Her cat Selia stared at the open door looking for a chance to run out.

"That's all you ever want to to," Shanna said to Selia, "Just go out galavanting and looking for some macho gato to hook up with. You act like you're more bored than me." Shanna looked down at Selia's cat bowl and Selia meowed loudly. "Oh," Shanna said picking up her dish, "Sorry. I didn't know it was empty." Then she filled the cat bowl with some fresh crunchy cat food and fresh water and set it down on the floor again for Selia.

Shanna looked around the condo again. The floor was clean enough. She had mopped it yesterday. The laundry, both hers and Norman's was put away. The refrigerator was clean and organized. The food pantry was stocked and organized. She really didn't see any more to do, yet she had noticed that they had a slight roach problem. Mostly the roaches liked to crawl around the stove area and where Shanna had her coffee pot. She tried to keep the countertop wiped clean and free from sugar, but she still noticed the roaches crawling around there sometimes.

"Conceited roaches," she sneered, "They just come around to criticize me. I don't care. I spent too much of my life working hard. I don't like housecleaning and I still have to do it. I don't want to be perfect, God forbid. Can you imagine being perfect at cleaning? Then you'd never be able to get out of it."

She noticed that her acoustic guitar was set on the black sofa. She noticed that her black lace shawl was bunched up on her favorite chair. She noticed that her current craft project box was falling off the shelf where she had set it. She straightened up the guitar, spread the lace shawl across the top of the chair, and steadied the craft box on the shelf.

"There. That's better." she said and sat down on her cushy chair. She lit another cigarette and sipped her soda. Then she picked up the book she had recently acquired and began reading. She was so happy that she finally found a book that felt good to her. She had tried to read some others, but the voice and vocabulary and genre were not interesting to her. This one was just right. She liked the characters immediately and she wanted to know more. She liked the pace, the tone, and the vocabulary. She liked the setting. It was all delicious, and when the internet began to bore her, the book was the perfect get-away. After reading another chapter, she set the book down. She didn't like to read too many chapters. She dreaded getting to the end of a good book. It was so difficult to find one she liked.

She thought about her friend online, Reba, who had expressed interest in some of Shanna's crafted items. Reba was the only one who seemed to like anything Shanna ever made. Shanna tried so hard. She wasn't very crafty like those women who could sew new fashions or do needlepoint artwork. She didn't have that kind of patience. She loved to watch those women and loved what they produced, but she just couldn't do that. She loved painting and drawing pictures, but it seemed that everybody did that and her style wasn't anything more eye-catching than what everybody else was doing. She wondered if there would ever be a craft that she would be good at. Reba said she loved Shanna's cards. Shanna liked making all kinds of envelopes and cards. She was somewhat obsessed with papers. She liked glueing things to paper. She liked writing and drawing things on paper. She liked cutting and trimming paper. Reba told Shanna that if she ever made a new deck of cards, that Reba would pay Shanna for them. Shanna sold her first deck to Reba for $10 and was very satisfied that she had finally accomplished crafting something that was liked. Reba was waiting for another deck, but Shanna had begun a different project - a secret project that she hadn't told anyone except Norman. Still, she didn't want to disappoint Reba, not after Reba was so kind. She decided to work on another deck of cards for Reba.