A dinner date that wasn’t and a glance at politics

Friday night looming, and I thought a dinner date would be fun, so I approached the most eligible male I know. Here’s how the conversation went yesterday:

Me: Jacob, you want to go to dinner tomorrow night? Your folks are going out.

Jacob, with extreme caution: With who?

Me, brightly: Me

Jacob, the caution still evident: Who else? (He thinks my friends are dull, particularly his Aunt Betty who adores him and with whom I frequently go out to supper. His complaint is we talk about politics.)

Me: No one else, just me.

Jacob, the caution lessening just a bit: Where?

Me: Wherever you’d like to go. (Now I admit I would draw the line at some places, but I was pretty much open.)

Jacob: I’ll think about it.

The last I saw of him he left at one o’clock for a movie with a buddy. I presume his parents know where he is, but I don’t. Jordan did explain that he’d been home without friends for two days—the horror of it!—and needed some buddy time.

So I had a bowl of terrific venison chili, gifted to me by a friend, and a big salad with blue cheese dressing, homemade, of course. Dinner out wouldn’t have tasted as good, but the company might have been better. Then again, I’d have had to decree no cell phone.

I am almost glued to the internet these days, following the goings on in Washington—fascinated by the new Congress, with its diversity (although a couple of the women need to learn to think of ramifications before they speak), filled with admiration for Nancy Pelosi’s tough confidence, and appalled at the squatting president. The wall controversy seems to get worse and worse, but I believe Democrats cannot give in on trump’s foolish obsession and what it turns out is mostly a desire on his part to save face. Once they succumb to the temper tantrum, trump will know he can bully them. I grieve for the Federal employees on whom this is a real hardship, for our national parks where garbage is piling up, for our nation which will soon be a real mess without government. But I do have to laugh when trump claims he is overcome with phone calls supporting his stance on the wall—and then someone points out that because of the shutdown, the White House switchboard is closed. Fascinating days we live in—but oh so scary.