Eat, Prey, Love

To be truthful, it was a delightfully quirky and terrifically fun evening.

A Currier & Ives-inspired house, beautifully appointed and cozy as a Hallmark movie set would insist it be. Warm and crowded with holiday themed things that seem to be taken from a simpler era.

A table overflowing with scrumptious dishes and pretty serving pottery.

A countertop covered with lots of corked bottles of wine.

I get a few pointers about Invisalign Orthodontia from the hostess, who is a patron – and on whom the treatment is indeed invisible. Yay me. I start my treatment next month hoping not to have my mother’s teeth as I head into middle age. Bad enough that gravity takes its share of beauty.

My nephews and some of the other young people play penny poker and all cheat shamelessly. It is hilarious to watch.

I take a seat on the sofa and regale a few of Jack’s nieces with my moderately embellished story of Casey and his atrocious, room-clearing, weapons-grade halitosis. The one niece nearly croaks at the part where he ordered his filet “medium-well.” As a waitress in college, she and her fellow servers use to share a private joke by placing ketchup on the tables occupied by similar uncultured boobs. The unsolicited and premature comments about my behind get the best belly laughs. Bad dates make great cocktail party material.

And then I step into the dining room for some more artichoke dip before it congeals into something putrid and inedible.

And there, I am accosted by Jane.

I look skittishly about the room for backup.

The boys are still cheating at poker and are not in my sight line.

Where the Hell is Charlotte? Probably wisely visiting the bar.

In my head I am screaming “Officer down! Officer down!” but in three quick strides Jane is upon me. Cornered with nothing but a small plate of artichoke dip between us.