Living Alone.

As you all may or may not know, I moved into an apartment about a month ago. It's a short term thing, and I mostly just did it because I could and so why not? It's my first time living alone...ever. And it's been an interesting experience.

On the one hand, I'm neighbors with my mom (as in, we literally share a wall), so it's not as though I'm really far removed from my family. But my mom is also hardly ever around. It is very convenient to be able to raid her kitchen for the cooking implements I'm missing when I need, say, a vegetable peeler, and don't have one among the limited kitchen utensils I brought over.

On the other hand, I spend the majority of my evenings in solitude these days, which is kind of a first. When I was living at the house with my sister and brother-in-law and niece, I definitely spent a fair amount of time alone in my room, but I could also walk downstairs and socialize with them all most of the time. I would spend hours sitting with Britt and Mackenzie, shrieking and laughing and playing the let-me-pick-that-up-for-you-three-hundred-times game.

Now, I get home from work by 4:40 at the latest, because I leave at 4:30 and I'm only five minutes away. Most days I feel like I could eat dinner right away, but tell myself I really don't need to eat dinner that early, so I settle down on the couch with whatever book I'm reading that day (I finish them in just a couple days now, because I spend so much time reading) and get absorbed into another world for an hour or two.

By then, it actually is a good dinner time and I spend some time cooking something for myself. I take this opportunity to listen to whatever audio book I'm on, and in this way I get through a lot of those, as well. Then I sit down at the table and eat alone, probably while still listening to my audio book.

After I eat, I actually do all the dishes from cooking and eating right away. Because usually there are only about five of them. Go figure. After all the cooking, eating, and cleanup are done, I usually either do some crafting while listening to my audio book or settle back in with the physical book and spend another hour or two with that.

By then, it's pretty much time for bed. I might take a nighttime shower (because I'm still not a morning person, though mornings have become slightly easier since I now have a sink, toilet, and shower all to myself) and maybe do a little more reading in my bed before falling asleep. But only if I'm feeling really crazy.

All that being said, it is actually pretty easy to decide at the last minute to get a drink at the Liberal Cup or the Quarry Tap Room with anyone who asks me, so I have had several occasions come up where I decide to go out. But mostly, I just stay in and read a lot more books than I was reading at this time last year.

And it's nice.

Here are a couple more pictures of the apartment. It's super cute, but I don't really have a lot of pictures of it. Oh well.