If you type "shackles" into Google Image, the first page is filled with sexualized imagery. Really? Being deprived of freedom is sexy? It's the worst feeling in the world to me.

I'm not alone. I suspect my friend Todd suffers from freedom deprivation, too. He describes falling off of his diet recently. Maybe he's so sick of being forced to get up at 4 a.m. to sell closet organizers to compulsive shoppers who can't keep track of their 500 pairs of shoes without professional help, that the thought of one more constraint on his life is unbearable. Maybe what he puts into his mouth is his one free decision of the day.

My day is dictated by school hours, the needs of my children and the expectations of society. Why do I give a rat's ass what other people think? Mostly because they're not content to simply act as busybodies, but manage to enact their paranoia into law. For one example, in Illinois, kids are required by law to be strapped into carseats until age 8. Despite the fact that no proof exists that regular seatbelts don't work just as well.

When my husband finally returns home, I know he will want me to get out of the house to "do whatever I want." I have no idea what that is. What do I want to do? Spend more money on useless crap that doesn't make me happy anyway? Go to the library? Walk around aimlessly and look at people with some sort of purpose in their lives, only to discover their purposes are, by and large, meaningless anyway? What is meaningful, anyway? Who the hell am I to judge? Maybe I should learn to knit or hook rugs or something.

Meanwhile, my main goal in life is to rid myself of the physical pain that has plagued me the better part of this week. Maybe I'll get drunk and fall asleep in the planter in front of the Downers Grove train station, like some crazy homeless guy did last week.

In the immortal words of They Might Be Giant's song "Dead, "Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want ...
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do"