From Ding-Bat Relatives to Ocean’s 8 and Penny Lane

I have a couple of niece-in-laws who I don’t see often since my husband died. It’s not just the lost connection of my husband/their uncle but their mother passing away as well and I still miss her living close by. After Don died I’d stop by often when I didn’t want to go home to an empty house. I could always count on my sister-in-law’s ‘ding-battiness’ to make me laugh. She was a terrible gossip, too, and I guess I like gossip because now I have no clue what’s going on in her large Catholic family. We all fall victim to the seasons of other people’s lives. With her gone, the family parties have all ended. She was the one who’d rent a cottage for Fourth of July get-togethers and a banquet room for Christmas parties and who hosted all the Easter and Thanksgiving dinners. She loved to cook, hated leftovers and we'd go home with enough food to keep us eating for a week. Even stopping by for coffee, would earn you a half a honey ham or roast when you left.

Since my sister-in-law died, one of my niece-in-laws has moved into a nursing home and her older sister does daycare for her grandchildren and grand-dogs. She’s over committed and not in the best of health herself, but the three of us managed to have lunch together recently. It was great to be around people I’ve known and loved for decades! So different than trying to build new friendships, no matter how nice your new friends are. There’s nothing to prove, no Litmus Test, no wondering when you’ll reveal something that will stop a budding friendship in its track. Growing older sucks! Lost connections suck! And I really hate the word ‘suck’ but I’m not in the mood to work at finding a more lady-like word to use in its place. Why did it take putting a phone call on my job list to make getting together happen? Even doing that, I moved the phone call from list to list for weeks before I finally followed through. Calling someone we love shouldn’t get relegated to a job, like calling a plumber to get a leaky faucet fixed.

In my younger days---and probably yours---I could throw together my social life on the spur of the moment. “Want to go clubbing tonight?” “Sure, let’s meet at Oscar’s at---what time is it now? I can be there at 8:00.” But septuagenarians and octogenarians are different. We have a basket full of complications that have to be factored into having a social life. Things like we have to pace our physical endurance or the medical community has us jumping through hoops. Some of us can’t do mornings or can’t do afternoons and many of us don’t drive after dark. And then there are money issues for some who have to make sure a social engagement won’t result in having to eat cat food for the rest of the month. My Movie and Lunch Club, right now, is voting on whether or not to move from going on the 3rd Friday of the month to a Tuesday when the theaters offers a three dollar discount. With nearly fifty of us on the email list, my in box is getting flooded with pros and cons but no one has yet suggested splitting the group into two clubs. Duh! Sometimes the easiest solution is the hardest to come by because people get so intent on having things their own way that they forget about looking for compromises or logical solutions.

Speaking of movies, I saw Ocean’s 8 with my Gather Girls pals. IMDb condenses the storyline like this: “Debbie Ocean gathers an all-female crew to attempt an impossible heist at New York City's yearly Met Gala.” I’ve never been a fan of the Ocean’s franchise or the ‘heist’ genre, but this one is riding the new wave of movies targeting women and if we want them to keep making chic-flicks-on-steroids we have to support them. Did I like it? More than I thought I would but not enough to give it more than a 3 ½ star rating. The five of us had lunch afterward and some of the comments made were: “You couldn’t let your mind wander even a minute or you’d be lost” and “it kept us on our toes, especially with the twists near the end” and “I loved all the dresses and jewelry” and “Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway are great actresses!” James Corden plays an insurance investigator in the movie and I don’t mind telling you that I’m developing a mini crush on that guy, solidified all the more after a blogger friend over at My View from Here posted his Carpool Karaoke video with Paul McCartney. I’m “borrowing” her link because it’s such a feel-good experience to watch---well worth the 23 minutes it takes to go back to Penny Lane and other places special to the Beatles. ©