friends as family (lyn)

7pm, the phone rings.  Alexander and I are getting ready to meet Val, Abbey and Michael for dinner at Atlantic Grill, a great, local seafood restaurant.   Robyn is over to pick up something.  I don’t have time to be on the phone.  But then I hear the start of the message my friend Ellen is leaving.  “Hi,” she begins.  “So, we’ll be over around 7:30.  See you…..”  I’d invited Ellen, her husband, and their son over to watch a movie, tomorrow night.  I pick up.  Yikes.  The email I’d sent has (1) said the invite is for Tuesday (tonight), and (2) has referred to Ellen’s husband as Matthew, though I know full well his name is Peter.  I feel incredibly stupid. 

Fortunately, they are all free for tomorrow night too.  Phew.

Alexander and I make it to dinner on time.  Adam and Jason can’t come, but Michael is in from LA and joins us.  It’s a surprisingly slow evening at a restaurant that is typically full of boisterous diners.  But it’s nice.  Valerie and I order drinks (me a Grey Goose Cosmopolitan and she a Grey Goose martini).  The men stick to water.  We get four large house sushi rolls (Abbey doesn’t eat sushi), including a lobster roll and an exquisite-tasting Sushi Taco Trio.  The hard crust juxtaposed against spicy tuna, salmon, yellow tail and guacamole is astonishingly good.  Next comes the main course.  I order the Branzini with beets, my new favorite fish.  Dessert is coffee with an upside down apple with ice cream.  There are too many complicated combinations to be even remotely accurate on a points-count.  Good that I’m not tracking. 

We laugh our way through dinner, and Abbey tries to balance my political views with examples of Obama’s lack of leadership. We all leave around 10, sated from an evening of great food and great company.  

There’s an expression, You pick your friends, not your family.  But given a choice, this is exactly the family I would have chosen.