pameladean

That will have been Saturday. JM picked me up in her little red car. She had had the radio on, which was a relief, because it meant that she knew already. We had a brief discussion of how each of us had wondered, later, if the other had known when we originally spoke on the phone. We had both found out later on. Then we had the little catching-up conversation we usually have on these occasions. We don't see one another much aside from the Romance Exchange. We got sidetracked almost immediately into gardening talk, and I found out that, most unfortunately, a local native-plant nursery, whose catalog I have been hoarding for at least two years, until finances should be better, has stopped selling to mere individual gardeners. J told me of some other places I could order some of the things I'd wanted, like the fall-blooming anemones.

When we got to CS's house, PW was there already. The house smelled splendid. P told us that BF couldn't make it; she'd had to go to Chicago because her grandfather had died. So we were just waiting for RI, who has a much longer drive than the rest of us. PW had floor plans for her new kitchen and the other remodelling she's having done in her new house before moving in. That kept us occupied until C suggested that, since it was past the time R had said she would arrive, and things were getting cold, that we come to the table and start.

I always sit next to B so that we don't have to be always passing the honey back and forth -- we are the only ones who consistently take it rather than sugar in our tea -- so I was momentarily discombobulated, but I did manage to sit down eventually. C put a little blue and white pot of spice tea at my elbow. Everybody else was drinking the Darjeeling, so I just happily consumed the entire contents of the pot.

It was an excellent tea, and C had devised a method for reminding me what pieces of provender were vegan. She had some little Norwegian and Swedish flags, on toothpicks, and decreed that the Swedish flag indicated dairy content, while the Norwegian flag indicated that an item was vegan. I had to ask which flag was which; having told me ("And you've lived in Minnesota all these years! Lucky you!"), C kindly pointed out that I could refresh my memory by looking at which flag was stuck into the cheese. This arrangement answered admirably, and led to remarks such as, "Please pass the Swedish scones."

There were a nutty bread (with an American flag in it, because R is allergic to walnuts and pecans) and a plain bread; the cheese, and also avocado, baby greens, cucumber, mustard, mayonnaise, Swedish and Norwegian yellow spreads, all for the making of sandwiches; vegetarian sausages in puff pastry (wow! those were amazing!), samosas, and both Swedish and Norwegian scones. The scones were lovely, exactly like the real thing. With currants. Oh, and jam. Mmmm.

R arrived before we had demolished the entire table, and it was she who brought up the subject of the Columbia. "Well," she said, "I've been glued to CNN." We shook our heads and were glum for a bit. In a kind of reaction, we then became very easy to amuse. P cracked us up by saying she had figured out why all these internet quizzes and psychological quizzes irritate her so much. They're not Minnesotan, she said. They think they are giving you a spread of five answers, but since no Minnesotan would ever strongly agree or strongly disagree, that only leaves three options for expressing one's opinion. "That's why we have the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory," I said (though for all I know it uses the same set of choices). "Because no other test will do."

Everybody was extraordinarily witty, or so it seemed, but my memory is not good at these things. It used to be. Oh well. We talked about varying perceptions of prose styles, using as examples books that have gone through the group at various times, and a bit about "Buffy." I thought J and I were the only holdouts, and now I had left J all alone in her nonbuffiness, but it turns out she used to watch the show and stopped. There was also discussion of football, and of the Ur-hotdog, Chicago style (I think this was prompted by the vegetarian sausages, but really all our minds make amazing leaps with no provocation at all, so it could have been anything). R told us that the First Evil has a Live Journal, and C provided a couple of choice examples of the thoroughness with which the perpetrator had executed it.

C brought in the piece of resistance, as we sometimes call it -- a cranberry pear crisp, with ice cream or soy ice cream, depending on one's national preference. It was stupendous.

We sat around talking and refusing to borrow one another's books afterwards. The point of the Romance Exchange -- well, aside from seeing one another and cooking and eating food we don't much get otherwise -- is to exchange books, but we have periodic refusals of this sort from time to time. I did take a book, and I hope I don't forget I have it.

I love sitting in C's house. It's so restful and so interesting all at once. That I had taken the best chair, a big leather rocker, and was right next to the gardening books, only enhanced this feeling. C brought out a book she was careful to tell us we couldn't have, it being earmarked for a former Romance Exchange member who had had the temerity to move out of state; but we could look at it. It's called THE STUFFED OWL. It's an anthology of bad poetry. C gave it to me and suggested I read from it. She was right that the index was more fun than the poetry. The only entries I recall at the moment were from C: "Cabbage, sluggish," or maybe it was Cabbage something else and "Carrot, sluggish." She said the introduction was very fine too, and it was, in a lovely just-over-the-top Victorian pompous voice that conveyed irony supremely well.

My self-indulgence was interrupted by P's cellphone; it was her sister calling to give her a lot of instructions about caring for the paint job she had just done in the new house, and to say that one of P's neighbors had backed into her (the sister's) car.

Not long after this we took our leave of one another, having decided that the next tea would be at my house.

Pamela