Cooking for One, Hitting Your Head January 27, 2008
Posted by Conrad Hubbard in : The Chip , 1 comment so farThere are many little reminders that life alone is very different from living with others. One of those differences is driven home nearly every evening, yet continues to plague me. For almost six years, I regularly cooked meals for myself, my estranged wife, and her two children (both prior to me). For months now, I have been cooking for myself alone (excepting when friends are over). However, it is still an ongoing adjustment to cook dinner for one, rather than four. Often I find myself with absurd amounts of leftovers, as once again I fail to reduce the quantities sufficiently. Other times, I find myself cooking odd dishes that don’t work out, because with no one else there to risk leaving hungry I get more creative than I probably should.
Occasionally, I am faced with harsher reminders. Thankfully these are as rare as they are disconcerting. A couple of days ago, I realized I had foolishly forgotten to grab a clean towel before hopping into the shower. Rushing out of the bathroom, I snagged a fresh one from the laundry, and raced back into the bathroom to avoid getting even more water on the carpet of my house. As soon as I hit the bathroom floor, my feet slid from under me. Luckily, this time, I managed to catch myself as my head lurched directly towards the edges of my sink-cabinet. Still, a few of my abused muscles protested for the rest of the day, and I could not help but imagine myself lying unconscious and bleeding on the floor with no one around to realize that anything was wrong.
Obviously neither of these points are important to the grand scope of the world. They are just little things which run through my mind occasionally, as I adjust to a solo life again. I try to remind myself that adjusting to having a family was pretty freaky sometimes, too.