I’m home alone on a Friday night. I got out of work at an hour usually reserved for beginning a second draft of a script, and it’s the start of a weekend, so I don’t really know what to do with myself. I talked to AB for a little while, but company arrived while we were talking, so she had to go. AB gets company at eleven at night because she hasn’t been working on a television show for four months, so she still has something that resembles a social life. My social life, in no particular order, currently includes:

1. My coworkers. They saw the early night as a blessing and got the hell out of there before it was dark, which is what normal people do.

2. My husband. Tonight he’s with friends working on a script, as he’s stopped having any hope that I will be home at an hour before it gets dark. He’s smart like that.

3. Dan. He is currently busy being Tyra’s bitch. I cannot count on seeing him again until October. Enjoy your Top Model, fuckers. It steals my sweet friend.

4. The rest of my friends. They, too, have stopped having any faith that I will be out of the office before they’re asleep. I cannot be the person who calls and goes, “What are you doing… RIGHT NOW? I’M OUTSIDE YOUR APARTMENT.”

5. The Internet. So… um… hi. How you doin’? You look great. It’s been a while. Did you do something new with your hair?

I just ate something I thought I’d never be able to enjoy again: macaroni and cheese. And it was awesome. I don’t care that I had to microwave it, and I don’t care that it was so hot I think I damaged the roof of my mouth. Stee found some organic rice macaroni something-or-other at a hippie-dippie LA store, and God Bless California, because this gluten-free glob of frozen food was the closest I’ve had to something that was pasta in forever. And I loved it. And I’m going to ignore the fact that the seventeen bites of heaven I just shoved into my mouth weighed in at 400 calories. I don’t care. Thank you, Amy’s Organic Hippie-Dippie foods for making me feel like a normal person for three minutes. Because today when my friends all feasted on beautiful-looking cheeseburgers while I had to make due with a spinach salad with chicken, I thought I was going to cry.

And speaking of coworkers, this morning the following exchange made me laugh so hard I sounded like some kind of dying animal.

[scripty]
IRWIN
Hey, pamie. Is this a real sentence? “We understand that taste is highly individual preference.”

PAMIE
I think a word is missing from that. Like “a.” And maybe it’s a little redundant. I’m not sure what the adverb is doing there.

IRWIN
Yeah, it didn’t sound right to me, either.

PAMIE
…What are you reading?

IRWIN
Wishbone responded to my letter.

PAMIE
… The band?

IRWIN
The salad dressing.

PAMIE
Haaaaaaaaaaaaa.

IRWIN
They changed the recipe. I had to complain. You know how much I love it. Now it’s all packed with “herbs” and “spices.” It sucks! And they wrote me back.

PAMIE
I really thought at first you meant the band, and I was like, “Irwin. Leave those people alone. They haven’t bothered you in twenty years.”

IRWIN
They changed my salad dressing, pamie. That’s not right. It was perfect.

PAMIE
Man. You are going to be weird when you get old.

IRWIN
I know.
[/scripty]

(And it’s worth following the saga: here, and then here.)

Okay, I’m going to watch a movie. Because I can and because that’s what normal people do on a Friday night when they are home. And I will fall asleep in about fifteen minutes because that’s what I do when I have enough time to sit uninterrupted to watch a movie. Because I’m lame. And old. And …..zzzzzzz.