Taking a Break from All Your Worries

 It's Tuesday night, which means I just got home from the bar. Many years ago, I said to my friend Collette (HI COLLETTE) "why don't we ever just, like, go out for a beer? Is that a thing people only do on tv, and not in real life?" A few days later she called me while driving home from somewhere (hands-free, I assume, although don't quote me, she's not exactly a rule-follower) and said to meet her at Jonny Canucks for a beer. So I did. The next time we went we brought our husbands and invited some other people. Eventually we had a weekly bar night with two other couples and one half of a couple whose other half prefers to stay home with her embroidery but doesn't begrudge the beer-partaking of her spouse. 

It's a good thing. It's moved around a little, because we all had younger children when we started and we'd have to work around soccer night or dance night or whatever. It's been Tuesday night for quite a while. I used to have to leave earlyish because Eve wouldn't take a shower until we were back in the house. Now all the kids are in university. We had to find a new place when Johnny Canucks closed and there were some false starts (loud live music, bad food, a Tuesday night trivia game - we love trivia, we go there every few months, but we don't want to do trivia EVERY Tuesday, and not just because it wouldn't be fair not to give other teams a chance to win, because individually we can all be hopelessly clueless but together we are a nigh-unbeatable brain). We have a good place now, with a round table that our waitress Ashley reserves for us every Tuesday at 7:30. The first time Bridget at Johnny Canucks asked me if I wanted a Stella - and called me by name - I was thrilled that I now had a "usual". In all honestly it never gets old. There was also the really fun time when Collette (who has a really bad memory, except for British monarchs and European geography) had gone to another bar and then on bar night tried to order a Heineken instead of a Stella, and had to be reminded that this was a Stella bar. Then the next week I got there earlier than her and the bar had actually switched to Heineken, but naturally I told the waitress to wait until Collette ordered a Stella and then pretend it had only ever been Heineken. Because if you can't fuck with your friends, what's the point of life?

It's a good mid-week chance to break up the routine (except it's part of the routine now, whatever, just let me have this), make sure we never go longer than a week or so without seeing our people, talk about every subject under the sun, often remembering that we already beat this particular subject into the ground because part of the joy of being in your fifties is that you can have the same great conversation at least five or six times without having it lose any of its shiny newness. And I almost never want to go, because once I get home for the day I never want to go out again. Get dressed. Put contacts in. Put my bra back on, are you freaking kidding me? Particularly the first Tuesday after the time change. But usually I go, because I am smart enough to know that this is a lucky thing, and I should not be too lame to appreciate it. 

Today Tony had to miss it because he had an urgent work presentation to work on. So naturally we sent him a sexy picture of Matt's Guinness, and then several moodily-lit shots of various condiments, trying to entice him away from his responsibilities. 

It's not exactly that everybody knows your name - I'm pretty sure Collette called me Wendy just last week - but I'm still generally glad I came.