Rabid Fun: A Happy, Happy Weekend

Friday, June 17, 2005

Worked on Stacy Letters.

Lunch with Barbara at Silver Star.

For our Friday Night Date, Gin & I ate a quite supper at Tad’s then went for a long stroll through Memorial Park.

Actually we did not so much stroll as drift from park bench to park bench listening to soft mood music floating from a party or such across the way as we watched the sunset and a group of young people frolicking around the fountain. Our conversation’s topics ranged from health and living wills, to gardening, vacation plans, church, AIDS, friends, diaries, agency policies, branding, sex, charities, fishing, and Nute Grinrich.

It was so good to enjoy an uninterrupted, 4-hour conversation.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Worked on Stacy Letters.

For some reason the kids wanted to observe Fathers’ Day today so we met them for lunch at Blue Boy’s Sandwich Shop in Arlington.

Gin & I both ordered Western Steak. They construct these sandwiches. by grilling strips of beef with shredded onion and scrambled eggs with mushrooms, and hot peppers. Then, I suspect, they liberally sprinkle the huge home-baked loaves of bread with opium to make the sandwich addictive!

We have been going to Blue Boys again and again since the kids were little enough to need boaster seats. The cooks and waitresses know to run when they see the Cowarts coming because we’ve celebrated innumerable birthdays and graduation get togethers there.

Actually, today’s get-together resembled a country fair swap meet as the kids all exchanged stuff they’d borrowed from each other and then borrowed new stuff. Cameras, I-pods, clocks, books, clothes and even a tea pot changed hands!

And everybody caught up on news of everybody else as though it had been months, instead of days, since they last met. Eve has been contacted about that job in the South Seas. Pat & Jennifer are gaining a sidewalk and their disgruntled neighbor’s brandishing a gun, Patricia is taking chemistry next semester and Donald spent the night talking on the phone with an e-girl he’s never actually seen.

This last bit of news brought on a flurry of sisterly relationship advise – it was like being in the middle of a Dr.Phil/Opra/Dear Abby. Ann Launders/Jerry Springer Convention.

When it came out that the e-girl studies belly dancing, Patricia revealed that she too studies belly dancing. Jennifer thought belly dancing was a martial art like aikido or karate and asked if the e-girl has “a black belt in belly dancing”!

At that remark we all got to laughing so hard I thought they’d put us out of Blue Boy’s. Great fun. I’m sorry Fred & John missed this one.

Few things please me more that know our children get along so well together. They really like eachother and enjoy getting together often without us old folks.

Apparently the night before, they’d gone to a nightclub specializing in improv comedy, and tonight they were either going to a baseball game or, if it rains, meeting at Jennifer’s house to watch Japanese enema movies (Can that be right? Some kind of jap cartoons, although, knowing our kids???)

After lunch Gin & I drove to the Angel Aid Thrift Store – a charity raising funds for kids with terminal illnesses – where she bought some books and dresses and I bought a new desk chair. A very profitable stop.

The family decided to meet again at Dave’s for breakfast tomorrow. (they gave me a Dave’s tee-shirt to wear)..