Expired Soup Day
Written on 1/18/2026 about the events of Feb 5, 2023
The next morning, we woke up and prepared to go our separate ways. A day or two previously, I’d had some new Ikea furniture delivered, so my plans for the day involved a nap in a proper bed, followed by furniture assembly. Holly, however, expressed a love of assembling Ikea furniture and invited herself over to assemble it with me. I had mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, it was obvious progress and I was thrilled; on the other, my social capacity was still quite low at the time. I was exhausted; I had thoroughly earned my cupcake*.
When I got home, I had about four hours of time before Holly was scheduled to come over (at 6pm). I had three major goals:
sleep in a real bed for a few hours
Eat lunch
Clean up my apartment a bit
Unfortunately, item 2 was difficult; I was mostly out of food. Walking to get lunch would take at least half an hour. In my fridge, I did have a container of pemby’s chicken soup that was a few days old. I smelled it and it smelled… mostly ok, maybe a hint off. I tasted it and it tasted… mostly ok, maybe a hint off. I made the following calculation: If I risk this soup, I will have more time to sleep, which I desperately need to function as a human and make conversation; any potential food poisoning will not hit me until later, after she leaves. So I ate the soup. My stomach did indeed end up quite upset, but not until the next day. Success! Unfortunately my plan ended up being a bit silly, because while I laid in bed for several hours, I slept almost none at all; too excited and stressed.
When Holly arrived at 6, we had a lovely time. The furniture to assemble was quite large, a dresser; so we worked on it for awhile (and chatted), then took a break to go find dinner. We walked to Pemby’s, which she had never been to and quite enjoyed; I just happened to have a full sandwich card so I was able to buy her dinner without “buying her dinner”. We worked on the dresser for another hour or two, and then took a break to go on a walk. We walked on my favorite route over Avon Hill; we chatted, and I pointed out architecture that I liked. It was a lovely time. Finally we came home and finished the furniture, by which point I was nearly falling asleep on the floor. At some point during the evening, I’d learned that I got absolutely no matches from speed dating, which had never happened before; I wasn’t terribly sad about this, and took it as an indication that I should focus on what was in front of me. Holly later recalled being surprised by this and having thoughts like “he’s such a nice boy, why didn’t those other girls like him?”. Nice.
In my journal I recorded this as “The best totally-not-a-date I’ve ever had … It was perfect.”
*During this period, when I was still recovering from my extended post-pandemic social isolation, I would reward myself with a cupcake whenever I managed to go outside and socialize. Sometimes they came from 7-11, sometimes they came from Pemberton Farms.