I want to tell you a little story about my retirement community home. Due to Omicron, they shut down the “sit and wait” dining room service in February and replaced it with a cafeteria type carry-out service. That proved to be almost ideal for me, as I don’t have to make every meal here an uncomfortable social event. Due to my Aspie traits I don’t do social stuff very well, especially in crowded rooms. In fact, it is something I usually try to pretty much avoid.

Before this change, I had pretty much resolved to doing most of my own cooking. I ignored the fact that I was throwing away the $350/mo stipend for meals, and spent a couple of hundred bucks a month buying groceries. That was OK, but I found that cooking for one is just not practical. With the cafe carry-out, I could just go downstairs and spend 3 – 5 minutes getting my meals to take back to my room. I didn’t have to spend an hour twice a day to get what I already paid for. And then came the “Lucy” moment.

I am talking about Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. Every time he attempted to kick the ball, she pulled it away, and he ended up on his back screaming. When I read in the weekly menu sheets that they were stopping the cafe service and going back to only the “sit and wait” social hours for food, I lost it. I heard staff comments that due to the labor shortage they couldn’t provide both. I love my apartment and the community in general, but now that I have the feel of what it is like to have meals prepared for me. Maybe I need to reconsider where I will be spending the rest of my life?

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With my last edit on this post, I am ending it on a more positive note. I have found that if I go to the dining room during the last 15 minutes of serving time, the dining room is less crowded, and I can usually get my food within 10 minutes instead of the usual 30 minutes. That’s tolerable to me, but I still want my cafe back. 😉

Just another thing to complicate my RetComLife. Nothing is perfect, I guess.