Table for One

If you consider that I'm the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an Asberger's depressive, I'm actually a pretty happy person. But after returning from my trip to St. Louis a couple of days ago, I was hit by what Breakfast at Tiffany's Holly Golightly memorably referred to as the "mean reds": The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of.
You know, I could have the blues, after all. The only things I'm currently afraid of is driving down I-5 in rush hour and paying my quarterly taxes.

But I digress.

I was in a funk that I'm sure being Audrey Hepburn would have taken care of, but I couldn't turn into Audrey Hepburn because I don't have the step up that say, Natalie Portman does. Why the funk? Well, I've been deluged by work on a grand scale so taking a quick vacation isn't an option, and oh yeah, I'm about to be broke. (See: Quarterly taxes). So tonight I decided to cancel my plans to go downtown to a couple of art openings, mostly because the effort to meet my friend A. and talk pretty with the art mongers seemed a task so Herculean I might well have morphed into Holly Golightly whose evenings involved conning gentlemen out of $50 bills for the powder room. (By the way, my young friend T. was throughly perplexed by what Holly needed with money in the bathroom. She wondered if perhaps Holly was buying drugs. Fifty dollars would be roughly $200 today.  That would buy a lot of 1950's crack, now wouldn't it?  T. was rather fascinated to hear that once upon a time, women actually worked as attendants in the ladies room and expected tips - although they would have been more in the range of 50 cents. Ah those bygone pre-fast food days!)

In short, I wanted to be alone, but alone in a crowd. I was in a funky mood and being a superior human being I didn't want to bring anyone down with me. So I decided to put into practice a certain bold evening plan that my friend N and I had been discussing recently - how hard should it be to dine out/have a drink alone in a bar on a weekend "date" night? I chose my neighborhood pub - the Latona.  I chose it because I was in such a bad mood the very idea of getting on a bus or in a car made me feel vaguely postal.  Also - I like the Latona.
 They play jazz on the weekend, which was rather nice, and the wait staff is understated and adorable if you like them shaggy.

I tried to go all the way and sit at the bar surrounded by men of various stages of Green Lake grubby. No seats available. So I managed to snag the tiny, last corner table where I had my glass and a half of wine, before ordering this for dinner:

Mmm. Chicken sandwich.  One of the best things about the Latona is that they don't even serve french fries. Just salad.  So it means I don't have to make that Sophie's Choice every time I go in.