The Single Girls Guide to Kitchen Duties

Sometimes I feel as if my confidence is at floor length-low and unnoticeable. This is my fault, of course. I come home from work, knowing that the only one to greet me will be my cat, Lucy. And even though her sweet way of rubbing against me warms my heart, it's not the same as coming home to somebody. Not that I would know how that would feel.

It seems that married people tend to envy single people. This, I do not understand. They tell me how lucky I am to be able to do what I want, and when and how I want to do it. They insist that having a place to myself must be refreshing. They do not understand the down side of it, seeming to think that the grass is greener, as the old cliché goes.

My refrigerator pretty much says it all. What happens to the second half of a single person's dinner?

Can we really eat a large pizza all by ourselves? If it says it serves four, what do we do with the rest of it?

How long does it take to finish four sticks of butter and a dozen eggs?

They would be mortified if they looked in my refrigerator, where everything is growing legs and furI hate leftovers-and of course, this is the cause of the ultimate disaster: disappearing dishes. If it's moldy, out it goes, plate and all. This is partly due to a big downfall of my apartment-no counter space, and a tiny sink, which has turned a simple job of dishwashing into something that requires extreme patience. Of course, patience is in very limited supply with me, so my dishes are disappearing as the result of this terrible crime. The dried goods in my cabinets are also sparse. And if couples think living on peanut butter (no bread), pasta (no sauce), and cereal (no milk) is so fabulous, I can see why they might be jealous-especially since I do that almost all the time. My dinner last night was dry Raisin Bran cereal, right out of the box. I suppose now I sound like I have no manners at all, but my cat does not have any preference as to whether or not I use a dish when I eat in front of her.

One of my friends was a real millennium nut. He felt he had to stock everything up for this just-in-case situation, where supposedly every store would shut down forever because, as he insisted, the computers were going crash at the stroke of midnight, 2000.

I told him, "Well, I don't think it's going to happen.

But if it does, I'll borrow from you."