Single Or Not, All Women Are Cathy

Tonight at the grocery store my purchases consisted of a cheap bottle of cabernet, a pack of cigarettes, a dozen eggs, and a Stouffer's French Bread Pizza. This depressed me.

I am not single. I have been in a loving and committed relationship for over two years with a wonderful man. Yet standing in line at the store I felt like the worst kind of single woman. The kind you can smell a mile away. Even though I am not single, I live alone, which can lead to all sorts of single woman tendencies. (Not that being single is in any way in and of itself depressing).

Tonight my tendency was to get a bottle of wine, because I had studying for a final to do. My undergrad instincts must have kicked in, allowing me to believe that any study session must involve some sort of self-medicating substance. The wine and the cigarettes alone would not necessarily look desperate, at least not any more desperate than the guy in front of you at the corner store buying two 40's at 11 a.m. I chose to go to the actual grocery store because I know they have really cheap wine on sale always, and because I was also out of eggs.

Somehow, having turkey bacon and hash browns for breakfast does not seem as wholesome has having turkey bacon, hash browns, and eggs.

ANYWAYS, so I had my cheap cabernet ($3.29 a bottle) and my eggs and realized that it was 9:30 in the evening. I was not about to go home and really cook for myself. So I scanned the frozen food section for something tasty and quick. I ended up with the Stouffer's FB pizza because I could not, COULD NOT, bring myself to buy a DiGiorno's For One. I was already on to the fact that my purchases looked desperate. Adding a single Pizza For One to the mix might just push me over the edge. (Meaning, it would be one thing if I bought a bunch of them, creating the illusion that perhaps I take them to work or something).

So I'm standing in line with my wine, eggs, and pizza feeling one bag of M&M's and two frazzled lines around the eyes away from being a real-life Cathy cartoon. I finally get to the cashier (how could the people in front of me, with 12 items or less, take so freaking long?) and ask for my cigarettes. This VERY large cashier woman saunters over to the cigarette cabinet like she's got all the time in the world. I think the round trip took her at least five minutes.

She was gone for so long that the people in line behind me (with 15 items, ahem) started looking agitated and the frazzle lines around my eyes almost started appearing.

While I waited, I thought about how my situation could be worse. I could have one of those extra large bottles of wine, a carton of cigarettes, and an actual Pizza For One. Throw in a Ben & Jerry's and a few tins of cat food, and you have my worst nightmare.

To top it all off she returned with a SOFT PACK of cigarettes and she put my wine bottle in a brown paper bag, driving home the message that I'm a loser drunk smoker. I may as well drink my wine bag and do my cigs on a street corner, or in a back alley.

I have to admit that I did not help my own cause, as once I got home I proceeded to drink my wine, eat my pizza and smoke my cigarettes while in my underwear watching reruns of Friends.

This did, however, enable me to relive my youth, as I got drunk and did no real studying, but wrote this blog instead.