The Lunch Date

I am not a person with long-range goals.  I do not have a five-year plan.  I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t even know what I want to eat for dinner tonight.  I have learned not to look too far ahead.

And I’ll tell you why.  The universe likes to take my goals, roll them up into a nice tight little cylinder and then use them to shoot spitballs at me, right between the eyes.  When I get up in the morning, I do so with the full understanding that I have no idea what’s going to happen that day, that anything could happen that day.

For example.

Today, my plan was to meet Word Girl and Ortizzle for lunch.  I had been looking forward to meeting them for a couple of weeks and today was the big day.  I had housekeepers coming and a babysitter.  I was going to go to lunch with grown ups and then come home to a napping child and a clean house.  Short term goals.

But then my child woke up with the wheeziest wheeze that ever wheezed.  So I cancelled the housekeeper’s appointment and made one with the pediatrician instead. And off we went to see about de-wheezing our boy.  After a breathing treatment and $50 in prescriptions, I made it home just in time to open the door for the babysitter. 

At least I still had plans for lunch.

I drove 20 miles towards The Hunan Garden only to find out that when I printed out the Google directions, I had left the last page on the printer. At home. That would be the critical last page that detailed the route to my final destination.

But I’m nothing if not resourceful.  I ducked into an Office Depot to take a look at a Mapsco.  However, I did not have my reading glasses with me and could not hold the dang thing out far enough to read the small, small, very small print.  But since I was at Office Depot, I bought some pretty paper, because why waste a perfectly good trip to Office Depot and an opportunity to spend money needlessly?

When I went through the checkout line, I confessed to the cashier that I was lost. She took pity on me and called up the manager who looked up the address for me on the Mapsco that I had so graciously restocked in the pretty paper department and then he gave me some detailed verbal directions.  I am one step away from being a little old lady that boy scouts help across the street.

So, I found my way to The Hunan Garden and lo, it had gone asunder.  The Garden of Hunan was no more.  Unbeknownst to Mr. Google, the knower of all knowledge, it had become for a brief shining moment in time, some sort of classy night club with a sign that was spray painted on a piece of plywood.  But now it was not even that.  It was boarded up tight and in need of a good mow.  And! Next door to the restaurant formerly known as The Hunan Garden was a discount funeral home. But I’m sure that is totally coincidental.

So I called Ortizzle to apprise her of the situation.  About that time she pulls up, and although I had never met or seen her before, I figured a woman talking on a cell phone at the now defunct Hunan Garden must be she. And it was.  And oh how we laughed. Then off we went in search of Word Girl and a good stiff drink.

We ended up at Papadeaux’s and enjoyed a lovely lunch of wine and non-stop conversation and to me that is far better than any day at the spa or even coming home to a napping child and a clean house.  It recharges my batteries to spend time with bright, witty, thoughtful and intelligent women.  The time flew by too quickly.  And part of that had to do with the fact that my watch had stopped. And maybe the glass of wine.  I kept looking at my watch thinking it was only 1pm, when in fact it was 3pm.  Drat.

As we left the restaurant, a mighty wind blew up and heavy gray clouds closed in.  So we said farewell for now and see ya around the blogosphere.

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I returned Ortizzle to the discount funeral parlor where she had left her car and I headed towards home.  Not the day I had planned, but nice. Very nice.

On the way home, the rain started in hard and steady, but oddly enough, only on the other side of the highway.  I drove along savoring being on the sunny side of the road, and life, for as long as it should last.

Because who knows what the rest of the day will bring?