This past weekend, I got extra ambitious and decided to spray my mattress with a bottle promising to kill all the dust mites that have been eating my eyelashes for a while now. And along with that 4-hour soaking project, I also decided to flip the queen-sized mattress, like any responsible mattress owner.

I have done it a few times over the last year or two, but it’s always exhausting. On Saturday, as I was wrestling with this monstrosity, it “flipped out” and knocked my bedroom TV over, hitting the screen on the edge of the TV stand.

At first glance, it looked OK. But that night, as I was attempting to watch a little TV before dozing off, the screen looked like a really bad imitation of a Picasso painting. Yep, gonna need a new TV…

As I was contemplating the difficulty of this job, I was reminded again of how some things are hard, or even impossible to do alone. Aha! There’s a blog post topic for me! (I’m always sniffing one of those out…)

And since I spend the majority of my time alone, especially here at home, I figured it was the perfect subject matter and I should be able to have lots of ideas.

My goal was to have a humorous post for a change to balance out some of those pathetic ones I write from time to time. Because the mattress/TV thing is kind of funny, right?

So, I sat down at the computer – prayed like you know I do – and then could only think of SAD things to do alone! That’s NOT what I was looking for!

But in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m going to throw out a few sad things to do alone before continuing on this quest.

• Go to a movie or a restaurant.
• Go to a wedding or funeral.
• Go ANYWHERE.
• Have a non-canine/feline conversation.
• Cry on someone’s shoulder.
• Get or give a hug.
• Put up Christmas lights.

You get the idea. Yes, there are many things that are hard to do alone. That’s all the space I’m allotting for sad things.

Back to my humor quest – I turned to my best friend, Google, and entered “Things that are hard to do alone.” Surely Google had some ideas for me. Well, I was sent to a blog post from a woman in Oregon, also a widow some years back, who had written on this very subject.

It was hilarious!! I honestly laughed out loud reading it. So, I sent her an email, letting her know how much I enjoyed it and how I was writing on that exact same subject. Long story short – we are now FaceBook friends. Check out Sue’s post for a good laugh.

As much as I was tempted to plagiarize some of her ideas (and she would likely have been OK with that), I’m committed to mostly original ideas here.

So, here is my list of “not sad” things that are hard or impossible to do alone.

• Flip a queen-sized mattress without destroying any other furniture…or my back.
• Drop myself off at the front door of anyplace in the rain.
• Play Gin Rummy
• Make a toast to someone’s health
• Ride a motorcycle without being the driver.
• Win or lose an argument.
• Blame anyone else when you lose things.
• Play tennis or racquet ball.
• Get the cat in the kennel.

Now let’s do some audience participation. I’d LOVE to hear from any of my readers the FUNNY things that are hard to do alone. And please, keep it G-rated. I have the power to delete your comment…

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Genesis 2:18