Shepherd's pie

Today I feel like the T.V. when reception isn't good--lots of static and a blurred picture. Perhaps it's a migraine. Maybe it's just that I nearly killed myself with yardwork Saturday and then flooded my dehydrated body with alcohol. Still, I had a lovely afternoon yesterday drinking beers on the patio of a "pub" (in a strip mall with a direct view of the Target, but still a nice-looking place outside and in) with my Irish-American man-friend. We had an early dinner of shepherd's pie and bangers & mash (respectively). It was a good way to spend a Sunday evening that otherwise would have been frittered away with hand-wringing because I didn't get enough done. So I didn't paint the shelves, unpack boxes, or haul the mountain of crap to Goodwill. It'll keep.

Went to a strange wedding party on Saturday night. The bride is someone I've known since junior high, and our mothers have remained friends. This, her second marriage, was precipitated by an unplanned pregnancy. All together, the new family will bring together five children. I hadn't met the groom before, and he turned out to be a 40-year-old frat boy who told me I looked familiar and then exclaimed, "Oh, I hope I haven't met you in a bar sometime when I was drunk. Did I say something offensive? Well, I apologize, etc. etc." In fact, I'm pretty sure that hadn't happened since I don't usually have random episodes of drunkeness in bars where I don't know people, but his paranoia makes me think it's par for the course with him. Whatever. Not a charming introduction.

At this party, I noticed there were a lot of women ranging from 20s to 50s that showed an alarming amount of cleavage, especially for a crowd drawn largely from the happy couple's Presbyterian bible study group. These are not the Presbyterians of my father's ancestry, nor of my college's founders. But, I guess parts of the Presbyterian church have become quite liberated, unlike us stodgy Catholics. The particular Presbyterian church in question has a reputation in the deep suburbs as quite the singles' magnet. It's God's meat market.

Luckily, I ran into a friend I've known since I was five, and her husband who I hadn't met before. The hostess, the bride's sister, has an amazing house, so we got the grand tour and enjoyed the terraced patio looking down on the pool (it's the rare hilly neighborhood in the area).

Saturday morning was a time warp of weed-pulling, and I have the spotty sunburn to prove it. I went out at 10 and after a while thought, "I'm a little hungry, it must be almost lunchtime." It was 1:30.