I had that sensation this weekend where you don't know how tired you are until you stop moving. Just couldn't do or plan another thing. We bypassed our normal mode of celebration for the fourth, which has always been one of my favorites, for laying low, but this year it worked for us.
Dinner with a friend of mine from work and her daughter on Saturday. I'm so glad she invited herself over! I can't call her a new friend, by any stretch, but we'd never socialized like this before, and it was such fun (even if she did make fun of my food covers). It's all my fault, really. I can be such a fourteen-year-old sometimes. "Why would anybody want to have dinner with us? Why would they want to drive all the way over here?"
They did come have dinner with us, never mind getting lost along the way. Perfect holiday food.
Beer, burgers, dogs, potato salad and corn so sweet you didn't even need butter and salt.
Someone, who claimed he was full, couldn't help sneaking more potato salad and bacon leftover from the burgers. This was a happy evening. I'm looking forward to repeating it.
The next morning, of course, was Breakfast at Wimbledon. A long-standing tradition from my childhood in its second year at our house. Strawberries and cream (of course), an egg and potato bake that while aesthetically pleasing, needs a little tweaking, and buttermilk biscuits with a buttery spread made of Earth Balance margarine, honey and cinnamon (hat tip to my friend Jacquie for that one, I mean really, thank you!).
And we all ended up here. I'm convinced that Jean and Paul's porch might be the happiest place on earth. We'd all been in various places for the weekend. Jean and Paul with friends, Tyler working the downtown festival, Catherine hanging with Elliot at her parents, Neel and I with friends or draped languidly over the sofa, still trying to recover, but we all ended up here. The kids were eating popsicles, Tyler hadn't eaten, so we brought him some chips and dip. Someone told Paul about Steve McNair, and Jean, Catherine and I made plans to go to the beach while Tyler and Neel talked about designing a deck. And I thought this is what the movies and the tv shows are always trying to capture. This is Friends in the coffee shop, Cheers in the Bar, and I'm so lucky because it's my life. Roll credits.
