Busy companionable relaxing weekend. Ah.
Friday evening while I was
waiting for Rudder to get home from work,
href="http://mechaieh.diaryland.com">Mechaieh called to say her work dinner
had fallen through and did I mind if she came over then instead of late in the
evening as previously scheduled? Mind? Me? Of course not.
She
followed directions to my house successfully and we hung out on the back porch
hammock chairs until Rudder came home. After a reasonably short helping of the
usual "What kind of food do you want?" "I don't know...do you have a preference?"
conversation, we headed off for Chinese food, at a local restaurant which foursome
odd reason has a koi stream running through the middle of the seating area. We all
brought leftovers home, but only Mechaieh had duck for breakfast. (Largely my
fault; I had planned to make scones but somehow missed buy the eggs that were
clearly written at the top of my shopping list.)
Rudder opted out in
favor of getting chores done, but Mechaieh and I spent the morning at the Boyce-
Thompson arboretum, giving her a chance to get up close and personal (though not
cuddly) with our local saguaros and cholla, as well as Boojum trees and Australian
gum trees. It's finally gotten cool enough that we could do the two mile path
without getting majorly drippy with sweat -- very pleasant, in fact. After that,
we headed out to Globe to see an archaeological site, but as we got there the
lightning started (with simultaneous thunder -- no 5-seconds-because-it's-a-mile-
away delay at all), along with rain heavy enough that we bagged the expedition and
headed back home.
It wasn't raining much back in town, so we
detoured so that I could show her the boatyard and the lake I row on. She found
the odd cracked texture of the mud by the lake more interesting than the bits of
art along the lake, which is not a comment on her taste but on the quality of the
artwork. (Sample from the Words Over Water project, which has tiles with words
along the lakeside wall: "Water runs and runs. It must get very tired.") After
that, we hung out with Rudder for a while and polished our toenails in preparation
for Egret's bachelorette party. This was in keeping with the theme; some of the
rowers had decided on Friday morning that we should all dress
"hoochie".
I wore a tight brown slipdress with black lace at the neck
line (chest line, rather). Mechaieh, being a very good sport about going along
with these women she'd never met, pulled out a very short red knit dress she'd
originally planned to sleep in. I warned her about T2's sarcasm when we went to
pick up Egret. Though it didn't exactly show, I think he was impressed by us. He'd
made Egret wear a bra, though.
The best part was that all but about
two of the rowing women showed up, including one who's been out for months with a
hurt back. Egret was especially touched theyÕd all come out for her. The weather
had kept Four Peaks, my favorite brewpub, from getting too crowded, and we managed
to push three tables together so we could all sit comfortably. That worked
extremely well until the weather shifted from occasional drops to real rain. We
all stood around one table until we finally got everyone to agree on the
next bar to hit. Unfortunately, some of them were refusing to go to the dance
clubs that sounded more fun, or to anywhere with "too young" a crowd (I'm not sure
why that would matter, since we were in a group of 12). We finally agreed on the
bar in a local resort, which proved to be almost completely empty, so then we
headed over to a sports bar with a dance floor and spent the rest of the night
there.
There was the usual assortment of a few people who could
really dance, more who moved vaguely to the music, a guy who kept grabbing his own
crotch and dancing up against any woman who would dance with him, people of all
sizes and shapes who had found flattering clothes and others who had picked
entirely the wrong bit of skin to show off. Good thing Mechaieh was there,
because for a good part of the evening, she and I and Egret danced while everyone
else only sat. It's always worrying to subject people to large groups of
strangers, but she was adaptable enough to manage to have a good time, even when
they got to discussing the weirdest place anyone had had sex (the winner: in an
elevator at Sky Harbor airport, Terminal Four).
This morning, we went
up flying with Rudder. It was just a routine flight that he has to do to stay
current on instrument procedures, but of course that's a lot more interesting the
first time you go. Mechaieh seemed to enjoy the flight a lot -- I think, because I
always fall asleep in the back seat of a lightplane. As we were turning in the
keys and paying for the plane, someone came out of a back room and said, "We just
started bombing."
I don't even know what to say or think about that.
I hope Mechaieh's flight home is all right.