Weekend

Marie and I are putzing around late Sunday afternoon, cleaning up and arranging stuff in the new back room, but mostly being very lazy, when the phone rings. It's Eileen, just leaving a meeting at All Saints, and she wants to know if it's cocktail time yet.

It's a pleasure having the kind of friends who will occasionally drop in, and who are pleased if you drop in occasionally. Eileen is one of those. I didn't get the hole in the basement wall patched, so a squirrel or a cat may be coming in for another day or two, but it was delightful mixing martinis and sitting on the porch, drinking, munching, chatting, laughing.

Marie and I got gentle vengeance by scanning through some of the guys on the dating service (or whatever you call it) that Eileen has been using, and then persuading her to let us send four of them messages that she'd be interested in talking and maybe meeting. Eileen admitted later that she was pleased we'd done it, because she'd always waited for the guys to contact her first.

I have to call Eileen and tell her about the docent at the Birmingham Museum of Art that I wanted to meet back when I was single. After a noon group tour, I found someone who knew her and could give me her number, and I called her and asked her out. She seemed genuinely sorry that she was busy that weekend, and she urged me to call her again. I told her that I'd taken the first chance, and now it was her turn. When she replied that she couldn't call a guy and ask him out, I told her that there was no way then that we'd ever really hit it off, because I was only interested in women capable of an egalitarian relationship. She again told me she hoped that I would call her again, and I said that I hoped she'd make the next call.  She didn't, and the rest is history.