Just One of Those Things

I told my friend I'd call her and we'd decide on a date for lunch. I then got the flu and was sick as a dog. Lyig in bed, flat on my back, the phone rang and my friend said, from the restaurant, "For goodness sake, where are you? I thought we were meeting for lunch." Well, I still don't remember that we had set a definite date, but she insists we did. Of course I couldn't help wondering if that was a sign of early dementia on my part.

Then right in the middle of my novel writing one day, and in quite an exciting chapter (I thought), suddenly my printer stopped working. I tried everything to get it going again, but no luck, so finally I called the printer company. Their technician couldn't solve the problem either, so he said they'd send me a new printer. I thanked him and a few days later, just out of curiosity, tried the printer again and you guessed it--suddenly the darn thing worked just fine. I immediately called the printer company back to cancel the order, but too late; a new printer was already on the way.  The nice young man on the other end of the line said when the printer arrived I must find the return slip, fill it out, and arrange for a pickup, easier said than done. To find the return slip, which naturally was at the very bottom of this huge box, I had to unpack everything first which was quite a  job in itself. I thought of keeping the new printer, just in case something went wrong again, but was told that unless I wanted to be charged for another printer I had to repack and send the first one back. By then I was quite frustrated, as you can imagine. But finally I managed to get everything squared away and thought I could relax, only to learn that was wishful thinking.

To my dismay Hurricane Irene was on its way! I was without lights and power for several days, and some in my state, Connecticut, are still in the dark, so I know I'm lucky. But flipping a light switch and nothing happens in a sobering experience. Makes you appreciate what those people who lived in the days of "Little House on the Prairie" went through daily and survived. At least I didn't lose my home or my livelihood as many did during the storm and I'm very thankful for that. I think the biggest challenge was keeping my sense of humor. Kept telling myself as I munched on peanut butter sandwiches for dinner and tried to read by flashlight that this, too, would pass--and it did. After all, it was just one of those things.

Ladies Who Lunch

Many years ago I remember reading an article about a group of Society women in New York who daily met for lunch at classy upscale restaurants like the Stork Club, and one of them (already reed slim, according to the article) never ordered anything but Perrier and a sliced tomato, because she wanted to stay that way I guess. Anyway being younger and more critical I remember thinking at the time, "How silly! Can't they think of anything better to do?"

Now fast forward a few years and it suddenly occurred to me that I spend a lot of time lately going to lunch with my "lady" friends, too--three times last week to be exact. And what do we talk about?--only everything under the sun: our kids and grandkids, the price of gas, why in the world Congress can't get on the ball and do something, ANYTHING, God help us! Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

We don't solve anything, of course, but if you have a problem there's always a sympathetic ear to listen, and if something's really bothering you it's a good place to get it off your chest. My friends and I are not Society, with a capital S, and the restaurants we go to are varied and not particularly upscale, but it's lot of fun and we share a warm ambiance in just being together. Best of all there's no work involved like having people to dinner. That's lovely, too, but for gals of a certain age all that cooking and cleaning up afterwards has more or less lost its charm. We've done it, lo these many years, and now most of my friends and I agree that now it's somebody else's turn, mostly the kids', to do the honors. So we go out to lunch a couple of times a week, and heaven forbid, we'd ever dream of ordering just a Perrier and a tomato. We have a right jolly old time and therefore I guess (almost before I knew it), I've  become one of the "ladies who lunch" and I love it. Does that make me terribly provincial? I wonder.
    

What Are Friends For?

The other day, Sally, a friend I hadn't seen in quite some time, she lives in another town, called to say she'd bought my book and asked if she could come by to have me autograph it. Of course I was delighted and invited her to lunch. She said she'd arrive about twelve-thirty. So I made a shrimp salad, which I knew she liked, set the table, heated the rolls, cut the cheesecake--and waited. And waited! Twelve-thirty came and went. One, one-thirty slipped by, and still no Sally. Could I have gotten the time wrong? Had she had an accident?

Really worried I went to the door and looked outside, and that's when I saw it: a note tucked under the mat. I hastily picked it up and read it, recognizing Sally's handwriting. She said she'd rung the doorbell three times, but there was no answer so she assumed I'd been called away. She said she was awfully sorry to have missed me, and I was disappointed, too, to put it mildly. And bewildered. I immediately tried the doorbell myself and it rang just fine for me. But wait--it was one of those rectangular shaped bells with a little light in the center and an upper and lower section you could push to make it ring. Push the bottom part and it rang loud and clear, but push the top part, as Sally obviously did, and nothing happened. She said she'd also knocked on the door, but I was in my study at the back of the house (and I don't think she knocked very hard) so I didn't hear her. Fortunately she wrote her cell phone number and I called that immediately and was lucky to find her shopping not too far away. So she came back and we had a lovely afternoon.

But I was worried, knowing something had to be done about that darn doorbell. It was obviously defective and should be replaced, and I wondered if I could unscrew it and put in a new one. I live alone now that my husband's gone, and I've never been what you'd call mechanically inclined, so this was a real challenge. Then the next day, as I was still stewing about it, the doorbell rang. I ran to answer it and there stood the husband of another good friend. An engineer, he had taken out the old doorbell and replaced it with a new one he'd bought at the hardware store, and when I asked him how he knew I needed a new one he said when he and his wife had arrived a few nights before to take me to a concert with them, he'd noticed the doorbell didn't work right. So he simply got a new one and put it in. "No big deal," he said, when I tried to thank him. "After all, what are friends for?"