I don't remember when it started, exactly. Joan and I had been playing Scrabble for awhile, we'd had some e-mail exchanges prompted by some of my journal entries and our growing frustration with George Bush.
One day Nancy suggested we get together for tea or coffee. I think it was just that we were all neighborhood people who never get together and it would be fun to enjoy the sun porch and get caught up.
"Getting caught up" ended up involving a lot of emotional outbursts about things that Bush was doing at the moment and at the end of the morning we'd had such a good time that we decided to do it again.
Nancy is rarely in town, so our get together were few and far between, but over the course of many months we started to call our get togethers our Bush Bashing Breakfasts.
Well, all that ended, of course, in January when the former president slunk out of town, never to be heard from again (oh why couldn't his VP follow suit...?).
We hadn't gotten together since Obama took office, but Nancy was going to be in town and suggested that not only the three of us get together, but that we bring our husbands into it, and we could have a pot luck instead of a daytime coffee.
I had known Joan's husband, Ed, for several years. He's a pilot and teaches flying at the local airport. In the year when I went to the gym faithfully every morning, Ed usually went at the same time and especially whenever Joan was having some sort of health problem we would chat for a bit.
I knew Nancy's husband John was an ophthalmologist, and I had seen him at many events, but I don't know that I had ever actually talked with him before. I don't think Walt had spoken with either of them either.
So Nancy set up a pot luck dinner at her house. And, she said, one of the requirements was that we had to bring three suggestions for what to call our Bush Bashing Breakfast now that GWB was no longer in office (handy that his successor's first name also started with a "B"!)
John cooked some delicious beef, Joan made a fantastic orzo and farfalle salad and delicious cheese-stuffed peppers for hors d'oeuvres, and I made this terrific strawberry dessert.
I was very pleased with how my dessert turned out, after the not-quite-right olive oil cake I had taken to the ACIS dinner last night. This was very simple and very light, just using egg whites, mashed strawberries, lemon juice and sugar, beating the hell out of it until it was very light but thick, then layering it in a bowl with lady fingers and freezing it. It tasted like ice cream, but had no milk in it and, as I said, was very light and refreshing, unlike the olive oil cake which, while it tasted good, was very, very dense.
And we had a delightful time talking about everything from the recent crash of the Air France flight (Ed explained how things work in a cockpit) to the problem with health care in this country (John explained how we got so screwed up and why it's so difficult to fix). We talked about Obama's recent speech to the Muslim world and Cheney's "Honest, I never said that" tour to change history. And we talked about dogs we have all loved and lost. Trips we have taken. Our kids and grandkids.
And we voted on the new name for our group. The three finalists were Bisecting Biden's Buddy, something else and Barrack's Bodacious Babes. We liked the last one, but decided that "Broads" was more "us" than Babes, so our group is now "Barrack's Bodacious Broads." We think it fits perfectly.
It was just a fun, fun evening, the kind we almost never have in this town. I absolutely loved it. Perhaps when we get the urine-soaked carpet out of the living room and things organized, I can start reciprocating a night like this.
The only down side of the evening came right before we left, when Walt had a call from his sister saying that their mother had another fall and had fractured her clavacle. Apparently when she first wakes up she is disoriented and she had been napping in her recliner and went to get up, not realizing that her walker wasn't where she expected it to be, and down she went. She wasn't wearing her call button, so lay on the floor until someone came to check on her and found her there.
They rushed her to the emergency room, but when Walt talked with his sister, she was back in her apartment and her caregiver was getting ready to take her to dinner. Her arm is in a sling. She has such a hard time getting around under the best of circumstances that I can imagine that not being able to use her walker is going to add just another layer of frustration (and physical hardship) for her.
For now we're just hanging in there and waiting to see what happens next.
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