**-The Taco Bell Ritual, or A Portrait of Crazy

I am going to let everyone have a little peek at my crazy that may paint a very different picture of me as a person, but is accurate nonetheless.

Whenever I get the opportunity to eat alone I always try to make sure it is a lunch meal. I like to eat lunch alone. To me, it is the meal that you eat reading a book, listening to the radio, quietly enjoying a mid-time break. I usually need a break from having to interact with people, I have mentioned this before, but I do not like interacting with people. I find it stressful and emotionally taxing, but I am good at it and I realize that it is necessary so I do it. I eat lunch with Olivia every day.

When I do get to eat lunch alone I eat at Taco Bell. Despite being a good cook, enjoying well made foods the one food that I feel consistently denied is a bad taco. Whenver I ask to go to Taco Bell my daughter immediately collapses into histronics and my husband looks at me with a stare that says," I'll go because I love you but I will repsect you less afterwards (I have a similar stare for his affinity for the Burger King)."

SO to achieve eating alone and eating at Taco you have to eat in your car, which I prefer to the soul-deadening interior of the Taco Bell, I have better music and it is much quieter, I can read etc. However, I don't like to eat in the car where people can SEE me eating in the car so I have to park in the far back corner of the parking lot where it is a group of people who agree not to make eye contact because they also hate eating with people.

What you have then is a woman who pays someone else so that she can eat bad tacos alone in her car in the back corner of the parking lot. Sad, but I would do it again tomorrow given the chance.