Sometimes, you just want to feel sad.
Everyday, I wake up and try and be optomistic. I wake up at the butt crack of dawn and get ready for work. I do my little commute in the morning and drink my coffee while I listen to the radio. I drop the wee one off and injest a huge glass of mommy guilt while I slide into my car and head to work. At work, I am usually so busy I don't have a moment to think about being single or how my life is pretty much a one seater on the train ride toward nowhere. But sometimes, like today, I am like a little kid home, sick in bed, staring out the window while all her friends play in the pool accross the street....wishing I could be THERE. Wishing I could be like them. But this happiness is something that is untouchable and seem so far away sometimes. Like a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, I throw my hands in the hair and say "I quit".
All day, I see these women walk in to my restaurant. All put together in their nice suits, cute hairstyles, french manicures and cute heels, they wait for their husbands to meet them for lunch and they smile and hold hands while in line. They are like a dress that I wish I could put on just to see how it looks and how it feels to be beautiful again. I look down at my "costume" as I affectionately call it, and realize this is reason number 11 of why I will NEVER pick up a guy at work.
For those of you that don't know me, I am a manager of a sandwich shop in Austin. My required uniform is a polo shirt in one of four colors. Blue, white, yellow or....ok, I guess my choice is three colors. In my closet, I have about 12 white polos for work. Every morning I stand there in front of these 12 white polos and actually contemplate which one to wear. They are all the same, they are the same size, the same style, yet I sit there like I am viewing the Mona Lisa and make my choice. For the bottoms, anything from jeans to shorts to capri pants. The capris are my all time favorite which look very stellar with socks and tennis shoes, let me tell you. Not only do I get to wear this get up everyday, but I get to complete the ensemble with a baseball cap and an apron. Yes men, eat your heart out. I resemble a girl that will serve you a hot dog at your son's baseball game and then be sweeping the bleachers at the end of the game.
But I will tell you, I clean up really nice.
There have been times when I have seen some of my customers out and about at night and they do not even recognize me. It is kind of fun the expression on their face where they are trying to place how they know me. They stand there and snap their fingers trying to place me....I should just carry the baseball cap with me so they can figure it out.
Yes, I have seem to fallen into a "feel sorry for myself" sort of rut. It's just that when you are alone, EVERY one else is happy. Have you ever noticed that? You are surrounded by happiness and loving couples everywhere you go. I walk into the grocery store, stand in the frozen food section and buy my little "loser party of one" entrees, and then make my way over to the single serving ice cream cups. A couple is on the other side of the aisle laughing and canoodling with each other. He has his arm around her, he kisses her on the cheek, she is blushing and holding a family style box of frozen lasagna. I glance down at this lonely little single apple rolling around the bottom of my cart and try and move past them quickly. I have aquired this single serving lifestyle. My house is filled with "cooking for one" cookbooks that teach you how to make lasagnas in meatloaf pans and how to bake in bulk than "freeze for later." My life is one freezer storage bag after another of items that I am going to save for later.
When you are single, and all your friends are married, they love to shower you with advice. They love to look at you and very nonchalantly throw little phrases at you that they assume will make you feel better. They all must meet up and practice how to say the same line over and over again. I imagine them chanting it in a grade school gym somewhere on tiny folding chairs....
ok, say it with me.everyone, nice and loud so your pathetic single friends on the prowl can hear you
he is out there,
you just gotta stop looking for him.
He will show up when you least expect it.
The group of friends say it over and over again until they look like the stepford children and they are chanting it like they are at an "AA" meeting. I have heard it a million times, and though I know my friends are just trying to be supportive and get me to lay off the dating quest, it doesn't make it any easier.
I say, show me a single person who is not looking for someone to fullfill their need in one way or another, than I say they are probably rooming with the lochness monster, Bigfoot, and three little green men. No matter what anyone says, all single people have at least one eye open to someone coming into their life. I will not buy the line of "I found him when I wasn't looking" when you were in a bar, on ladies night, wearing THAT. How could you not be looking?
I will say, there are times in my life when I just don't want a boyfriend. I have no desire to have a guy look at me, think about me or want to buy family style lasagna with me. But, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't be open to having something great in my life happen.
The weekend is right around the corner and it's the first time in months that I do not have Sam for the entire weekend. I think about how ideal it would be to have a date on either of the nights. How fun it would be to push back the work polos and see if there were any shirts back there that had some color in them. How cool it would be to do my hair in something other than a pony tail, and to put on those cool new boots I bought a month ago that still have not seen the light of day. But, my phone is not ringing, my email is not getting lit up with anything but bill pay reminders, and I am thinking that my fun this weekend lies with netflix.
I would like to be the girl that goes into the restaurant and waits for the guy to meet her and snuggle with him in the booth in the corner. I guess for now, I will just have to be the girl behind the counter wishing it was her.
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