'OLD' FRIENDS

Educators tend to be a social set, teaching for years in the same school, sharing not only our professional concerns but, more importantly, our personal ones.  We find our niche, our social world, our common values.

God knows, I’ve been blessed with the most loyal and positive teaching friends who have been there for me for going on 40 years.  We’ve enjoyed the births of our kids, then our grandkids.  So many wedding and baby showers I could never keep count.  We’ve endured serious illnesses and surgeries.  We’ve had our share of horrors of teenage years.  There have been many years of anxiety as we prayed  our kids would launch into adulthood.  Some of us are still praying.

And, now, we’re all retired.  And, now, many of them come to Venice for the month of January.  January is now my ‘party’ month!  OMG!  I am in seventh heaven here with my friends!  What can a girl do?  Well, there’s Martini Monday, bargain movie nights on Tuesday, Drum Circle Wednesday, Jazz Tuesday, sunset at Spanish Point Pub on Friday.

This is why I make no New Year’s resolutions in January.  What’s the point?  I’m going to break every one of them.  Maybe, I’ll think about it in February.

I admit, I am a social animal.  Buff Honey is not so much.  He will be the first to tell you he really enjoys my friends but he’s not enamored with being on the every night social circuit.  Even when we go to a tournament, he’s ready to go nuts after a week of being around those serious as a heart attack bridge players.  He needs his solitude.  And, truth be told, I need my private down time, occasionally, too.  I don’t see a studio apartment in our future.

In one of our gatherings this month, someone asked, “Could you go out every night to eat?”  Would anyone in our parents’ generation have asked that???  We were raised in the 50s kind of like Ozzie and Harriet.  Men worked, women stayed home and raised the kids.  Dinner was on the table when Ozzie walked in the door.

At least, that was the way it was supposed to be.  Most of us probably lived in some dysfunctional version of that.  I know I did.  My father commuted a hour each way and didn’t get home until around 6.  Then, my mother would send him back out to go to the grocery to get a package of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti or hot dogs and beans or fish sticks.  Not a planner that one.  Nor a cook.  But, we survived.

As a working mom, I wasn’t much better.  Yes, there were times I was more organized and planned meals.  Mostly, my husband and I shared those duties but I think he was much better at it than me.  I was crazy busy, planning lessons, grading papers, taking courses and raising little kids.  And then, he was gone and it was on me.  I am loathe to admit that my family ordered more Domino’s Pizza than any other family in Columbia, Maryland.

And yet, somehow, they are all healthy serving healthy meals in their own households.

So, could I eat out every night?  Yes, I could, especially, in Florida where BH and I usually share an appetizer or entree and are perfectly full.  It’s probably cheaper here than cooking.  But, I know he can’t go out nightly like me.

The irony is that I’m actually a good cook.  It’s the planing I just never got the knack of.  Aha…a resolution for 2015!  I’m on it!

Right after dinner at Rosebud’s tonight, happy hour at Wave Grill, and the Super Bowl party!