Too Much Alone

Here's a Fuji image I worked on yesterday.  I don't know if you can see the difference between this and the digital images like it.  I've gotten better at working with the digital images and have not made much progress in working with the Fuji.  What I learn from working with one, I transfer to working with the other so that they begin to look much the same.  Shooting with the film is more fun, but it is much more work and much more expensive, too.  I am in a quandary.  Such a thing.

I had a friend over for dinner last night, just a last minute invitation.  And when she came, I realized I had not cooked dinner for anyone but my mother for. . . (oh my, can I say it?). . . more than a very long time.  And it showed.  Living alone and cooking for myself, I have let things devolve to essentials.  I no longer make a nice table.  I don't put out candles and don't have flowers.  And I try to use as few pots, dishes, and utensils as possible so that the clean up is simple.  My mother doesn't mind, of course, or at least she doesn't say anything.  My dining room table is usually a mess with scanners and piles of photos and unopened stacks of bills on it.  When my friend got to the house, I began to realize all the things that were wrong.

And I used to think I was a good cook.  No. . . I guess I still think so.  But I made a salad that was not so pretty.  In self-defense, I invited her to eat only an hour before, and it was just a sharing of what I was making if she wanted to come over which was spaghetti and Brussels sprouts, but everything seemed paltry.  I should have let her prepare her own salad.  She picked at it rather than ate it.  She said she wasn't crazy about Brussels sprouts unless they were done in the oven and she began to tell me the way to prepare them.  And in my hurry, I'd neglected to use anything but the daily dishes having totally forgotten the cute little Williams and Sonoma bowls I had for this meal.  I haven't even replaced the broken wine glasses and didn't have two that matched.

I was mortified.

I am not as groovy as I think, and not nearly what I once was when I thought a trip to my house like a trip to a good foreign country.  I must begin to concentrate.  I have to think.  I've vaguely recognized the condition of my solitary existence, but last night the point was driven home.  It will take some time and money and lots of work to turn this thing around, but either I do or I become the hermit I'm on my way to becoming.

I'll keep you updated.

Though if I go by the dating tales I've heard lately, I wouldn't bother and would just content myself with being alone.  I have talked to a couple fellows who have used dating sites, Stinky Fish and Catch.com or something like that.  Their stories are funny from afar, but they are horrors up close I'd imagine.  Bad breath and personality disorders and crazy exes and fucked up children and chemical dependency and on and on and on.

No, I'd rather not add to the list.  Somewhere some woman would be writing a blog about a date she had with a fellow who lived alone couldn't set a table and invited her over for a terrible dinner.

It is far too imaginable.