My good friend Albert, with his irreverent laughs and structured single life, interrupted my escalating work ethic recently with temptations to spend the rest of my Thursday the way we all want to live our lives. This time, it was wine and cheese downstairs in the darkening sunshine of a San Francisco afternoon. While we sipped Italian wines I could not pronounce, served by a waitress who does not like me for reasons unexplained, we talked about our families. And the waitress, whom Albert, after a while, agreed does not appear to have fond feelings for me. Our friendship reached a deeper level as we confided and our friendship shifted like a slab of stone, shedding a layer of skin. It feels so wholesome to be gaining and developing friends this decade, as opposed to the pruning and severing of my 20’s.
Unfortunately, the downside of an afternoon spent in an Italian café is that I ended up quite ditzy. I am a cheap date these days. A sad state of affairs considering the cocktail in front of Grey’s Anatomy I had promised myself all week. Instead, a cup of tea and some chicken satay from a recipe I garnered on a small Indonesian island on my travels was all I managed to whip up in my state. Regardless of these slothful affairs, I feel so thankful for the ability to sample wines on a Thursday afternoon without lifesaving responsibilities. As I wound my legs around my delicious husband later on the couch, I breathed a prayer of gratitude for everything that is so juicy in my life. I know we create these things, and I have been busy!
And so while I take a few moments to start my day with my stories of a day past, my sleepy husband, who is always at his best, his funniest, his most smart, first thing in the morning, clanks away last night’s pots and grinds up coffee. It’s one day short of a new week and I am bursting with promise of a full second half of a week. Yesterday I received a prize in a writing contest and I can ask of no more recognition this morning. My personal manifesto means I will do something I dread, slip in stolen fun and enjoy a friendship I value today.
