order up!

Tuesday night I came home from work utterly fried. My brain hurt. My eyes and fingers hurt. All of me hurt. It's been super stressful at work lately -- partly its the time of year, and partly its a bunch of projects all converging at once at the worst possible time of the year. And of course, it was the first day back to work after a three day weekend. 

So I was ALL as my friend and former co-worker would say. 

But there was this little voice in my head as I was driving home which said "Hey. You don't have it in you to fix yourself dinner. Why don't you take yourself out for pizza and maybe a beer. Wouldn't that be nice?" 

And sure. That sounded great. But there were a million reasons not to do that. Money, time, having to face eating by myself in public, the fact that I had just been to the grocery store the day before and had a whole fridge full of food...

But I've been learning to listen to that little voice. So despite some anxiety (turns out being exhausted is a good way to dampen the doubt in my head!) I got back in my car to drive a couple minutes away, down the hill, to a local pizza joint. 

In my head, as I'm thinking about solo dining I'm always imagining exquisitely awkward conversations about my solo status, and I'm always sure I'm going to have to justify my existence on the planet to my waitress. But in reality she just took away the second place setting, and took my drink order. 

And hey, I don't even like beer that much, but lemme tell ya, that $2 draft Yuengling was the tastiest thing ever. And by the time I was halfway through the beer, all the way through with my salad, and digging into my first slice of pizza I realized I had this huge grin on my face and I couldn't stop smiling. Some of that might have been the beer! But mostly it was a combo of being proud of myself for being brave and doing this thing. And of course, partly that sitting there in my booth (a little bubble of ME), just BEing and eating yummy food, and having a drink was exactly what I needed in that moment. 

Go me. 

Self-care. Leveled UP!

and bonus: enough leftovers for two more meals of yummy yummy pizza. It's my total favorite pizza ever.