CHEAP FUN (continued from many months ago): Put on the Ritz

Are you wishing you could go to a fancy restaurant? Make your own fancy restaurant at home. Substitute your same-old menus with a good-brand frozen dinner (or a carryout meal). After heating it up in the microwave or oven, dish it up on your best china. Put an exotic beverage—say, a hearty ale or pomegranate juice—in that crystal mug someone gave you years ago.

Or go ahead and use that fragile stemware you've been saving for decades. What's the difference if you drop one and there's not an even number anymore? (You can also buy just one glass or one plate from your local thrift or discount department store--it's amazing what a difference different china makes.)

Try cooking dinner-food for breakfast or breakfast-food for dinner—or switch menus for your noon and evening meals. Marie Callender's chicken pie for breakfast? Why not! Your favorite canned soup tastes better in Lenox or Wedgewood bowls and becomes be an appetizing, light dinner. Offer your partner or friend a tray of finger sandwiches and pink lemonade instead of the usual mid-afternoon cup of coffee.

Light candles for yourself and get out the cloth napkins. If you don't want to wash and iron them (who does anymore, anyway), just  throw them away after you use them! That's one less thing for your kids to get rid of. Go ahead, shake it up a little! 

The Problem with Selfies

Living alone has a lot of advantages. I can make dinner when I'm hungry, watch whatever TV show I want, go to bed when I'm ready, leave my shoes in a heap in the closet, and change the setting on the furnace thermostat whenever my body wants the house to be warmer or colder. I don't have to consult anyone on what time to set the alarm, and if I don't want to fold my towel, so what. I love having autonomy in a lot of ways.

Of course, there are disadvantages, too. It's lonely. I have no one to talk to (yes, I can talk to myself, but I hate that tendency!) I have no one to plan a vacation with or decide on a spontaneous adventure together. No one to laugh with on a regular basis, no one to tell me my outfit looks OK or that there's soup on the corner of my sleeve. No one is here to leap up on a stool to reset the smoke alarm when goes off because of the oven and no one to give feedback on a public speaking event. Did I say it's lonely? And there's no one to snuggle with? The list goes on . . ..

This week I had a new challenge: I was asked for a picture of myself for an event. But how to take a selfie that both looks natural and that I like--well, that's quite the challenge. It isn't that I don't know how to use my iPhone for selfies, but the resulting photos this week were horrible. And then there's the decision (which is the least worst?). Shown here are only two of about twelve I took. If I had to take my own picture, I sure would have liked someone to confer on which shot was the least awful. (Does this really look like me? Ouch!)  Posing with the photographer calling out smile! and say cheese!, or cracking a stupid joke just as the shutter is tapped is challenging when the photographer and the subject are one and the same!