I’ve already mentioned how I survived my first solo dining experience, the kind with a folding menu. A laminated folding menu, but a folding menu nonetheless.

Well, I can now proudly say I’ve jumped right into solo dining with both feet. I would call myself a pro, but I want to retain my amateur status in case they add this event to the Olympics. Although, technically, I did get paid. Not for my time, but for the meals at least.

The very same evening after I had my Denny’s lunch experience, I had dinner on my own at the little restaurant in the Holiday Inn, where I was staying. It has a fabric tablecloth, cloth napkins, and a menu with the paper that gets tucked into the little leatherish corners.

I’m not sure if it counts, though, because everyone else in the restaurant was also a solo diner. About nine in all. But they were all men, and all reading newspapers, so I still felt out of place with my short story anthology and my breasts.

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I was just sifting through some old emails and came across this. (If you must know, I was looking for crap to forward to Noob because when he has no work to do he sits at his desk staring at his keyboard and it really freaks me out. Seriously, this dude needs to learn how to kill time.)

A Short Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy, “Will you marry me?”

The guy said “No” and the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, drank martinis with friends, always had a clean house, never had to cook, had a closet full of shoes and handbags, stayed skinny, and was never farted on.

The end.

(I have so many items to add to that list, starting with ‘never had to make mindless chatter with in-laws’ and ’spent her money on craft supplies and books instead of Xbox games and barbecue utensils,’ but that would go on for a very long time, so I’ll just leave it as it was originally sent to me (from my sister, by the way).)

(But maybe that will be a future post.)

As much as I love my mom and am inexpressibly thankful for how she and Ed have let me live in their house and be a total mooch for many months now, I am SO looking forward to having my house sell, and being able to spend that mortgage money on rent for a place of my own.

I’ve never lived alone for more than a week. That’s a pretty sad fact for a so-called grown up, but it’s true. I’ve never had a place truly mine, and only mine. No parents, no roommates, no husbands or anyone of any kind. Just me. Just mine.

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