Dressing up and eating leftovers

 

Christian's description of this photo: "We fancy."

Interesting happy hour tonight. Two good friends, Sue and Teddy Springfield, came around six on their way to dinner. Sue and her two children, then young, lived next door to me for several years, and we became good enough friends that she dubbed me her Fort Worth mom—her real mom lives in Ottawa, Canada, and Sue felt she occasionally needed someone closer. After she bought a house about ten minutes away, we remained good friends.

And then she met Teddy and that charming Californian didn’t hesitate to move to Texas. Like all of Sue’s friends, I fell in love with Teddy. Was pleased to be one of the few invited guests at their small but classy wedding, with a seat reserved to accommodate my lack of mobility. I ended up sitting next to Teddy’s daughter—getting to know her was lots of fun.

So every couple of weeks, they come by for drinks. They have only let me cook for them once—after Teddy confessed that he loves eggplant, and I said I had an eggplant recipe I’d been wanting to try. Tonight, no eggplant but Jordan had fixed a fancy charcuterie plate. Left to my own devices I probably would have put out a few crackers and that hunk of Cumberland cheese I’ve been saving. At any rate I thought we’d have a pleasant, semi-sophisticated happy hour.

That thought went south when my favorite a/c man called. He had called this morning and said it didn’t look like he’d get here before two o’clock so he’d see me after four. I almost laughed aloud—he’s been here so much that he knows I keep two-to-four clear so I can nap within that time frame. Only he didn’t call until Teddy and Sue had just settled on the couch with their wine. The a/c unit (it hangs from the ceiling) was maybe three feet from Sue. But Donald said he wouldn’t be working again until Wed. so I thought I better ask him to come ahead.

He was soon part of the conversation, and we had told stories, talked about restaurants, and laughed a lot. But then it was obvious I had lost the attention of Teddy and Sue—they were looking beyond me, out the window. And there came Jordan and Christian in all their finery—and I do mean finery, as the picture above testifies. They were going to a debutante party in the African Safari area of the zoo, just blocks from our house. So they came in for a few minutes, and I’m sure Donald wondered what he had wandered into the middle of.

After everyone left, I had cheese and crackers for supper, gave Jacob his leftover cheese enchiladas, and settled back at my computer. Jacob came to return the casserole dish his dinner had been on—my request because I didn’t want to wait days while it went through the dishwasher in the house—and I asked again when he thought he might put together my new walker. He rolled his eyes and said, “I’ll do it.” Then he modified it to “Me and my dad will do it.”

The walker, an unassembled upright one, arrived Thursday, and Jacob brought the large box out, opened it, and looked for a minute like he might put it together. But then he said, “I’m going to Colonial. I’ll do this tonight.” (The Charles Schwab Challenge PGA tournament is in town at Colonial Country Club, which is about two miles from our house.) Since this fifteen-year-old has his eye on a career in golf or at least a college scholarship (as a freshman he’s already on the high school team), I could see that. But I never saw him again that night.

Last night, he looked at it again, and said, “I can’t do this now. I’ll do it tomorrow.” I decided he was intimidated by it. So when “tomorrow” became today, I asked, and he said, “Do you know what a big project that is? It will take hours.”

So my fancy new walker sits unassembled, while I itch to try it out. I am hoping it will ease the pressure on my shoulders and arms and make me more inclined to get out of the house because it will enable me to walk farther. But I can’t tell until I can try it.

In the meantime, I am sleeping with my feet higher than my head, doing my exercises, enjoying happy hour with good friends, and grateful for a repairman who doesn’t mind working late on a Friday night. Life could be better—but not a whole lot.

Rain, and a surprising work day

I want to say that the Lord is confused—rain and temperatures in the 70x in early August? Never happen in Texas. But I suspect that man’s carelessness with earth has caused that confusion, whether it’s the deity or nature’s forces or a combination. I would contently say I’ll take it, whatever the cause, but the current extreme violation of the environment is a great worry, always lingering in the back of my mind. That fantastically expensive wall between the U.S. and Mexico is not only dumb, it’s going to do terrible damage to the land and critters in a wide area. I wring my hands in despair.

Nonetheless, I was almost chilly in the cottage this morning, sitting still and working at my desk. When I napped, I didn’t turn the a/c on as usual but slept heavily under a cover. Sophie decided to be loving and affectionate—head on my chest, tongue busily telling me how much she loves me. I think she was hungry.

Two service people today. It cost me eighty-six dollars to have a technician tell me that my refrigerator is fine. It does not need a new water filter—he showed me how to read that option. And the reason it keeps freezing expensive asparagus is that I let plastic, etc., poke out of the vegetable drawer. That keeps the exterior door from closing tightly, warm air sneaks in, and the refrigerator works harder. He also showed me how to adjust the air flow to the vegetable drawer and, when the time comes, where to replace the water filter. Most important he gave me the model and serial number. Maybe it was worth the cost.

Then two men came to give me an estimate on cleaning my area rug. They walked in with great confidence that they were taking it to clean, and as they rolled it up I asked about the price. Expensive but not out of line. It will be back a week from today. Meantime my living area looks bare.

The big deal for me today was that I read to reacquaint myself with the manuscript I’d been focused on until publishing chores and stuff distracted me two or three weeks ago. An instructive exercise—I caught typos and misspellings, of course, but I found contradictory facts and things that plain didn’t make sense. But as I read I got a better sense of my characters, and the way the novel will work out became much clearer in my mind. So it was worth it. Downside is I edited out a lot of words, going backward instead of forward. And having figured things out, I have to go back and do the reread one more time. Will Judy ever get past Chapter Six? Stay tuned for the next installment😊

Lucile’s, a local restaurant that bills itself as a stateside bistro, is having a crab festival, and we went tonight. Betty had a soup she said was spicy, which I wouldn’t have wanted because of the spice but also because I thought a heavy base, with meat, would hide the delicate taste of the crab. They offered a crab and shrimp Louie salad, and since I’m allergic to shrimp I convinced them to make it crab only. So good.

Home, reading. Rain has stopped, but it still has the feel of a cooler than usual rainy day.