Fatale Abstraction

We bought our house late June '04, and immediately after, husband went to Virginia to visit close friends from college, and it's sort of turned into a tradition that he's always gone during this holiday. I noticed yesterday that every year since then, I've spent the evening of July 3 by myself in the pool, watching a nearby fireworks display. Well, not this year.

I called up Kelly and begged she & Big Dick to meet me at Texas de Brazil. They finally caved in to my pitiful plea and we arranged a time to meet.

Now let me chase a rabbit for a second: my hair is naturally curly, but I generally wear it straight. I figure if we can put a man on the moon, someone can make a product to give me straight hair, dammit. However, with all this rain, lately, I've been drying my hair straight, but it ends up just sucking up moisture and curling up, anyway. Yesterday, I decided to-heck-with-it and fixed it curly intentionally. Big mistake. Huge. I'm not one to spend much time looking in the mirror. My policy is I take a few minutes to be-cuten myself in the morning, and that shit should hold all day, right? because I'm just enhancing my natural beauty, right? SO... not having looked in a mirror all day, I was just about to leave my house to meet K&D and I did a quick look and my hair was ENORMOUS. Like it had exploded, seriously. I was mortified. It was like Carrottop huge. Roseanne Roseanna Danna huge. I called Kelly and asked her to tell Dick in advance that my hair is not normally that big. She laughed and passed along the info.

We had a blast. What happens at a Brazilian steak house is that first you hit the "salad" bar, which is in no way a typical salad bar. They have all kinds of nice cheeses, lobster bisque, hearts of palm, salmon, sushi, tabouli, roasted peppers - lots of good stuff. Then when you are ready for steak or whatever, Brazlian guys in gauchos bring giant skewers of meat to the table, and you ask for whatever you want. The meat pieces are smaller than serving size, so you can try a lot of different things.

Dick kept laughing about the whole thing, saying it was a great concept, that they figured out a way to charge so much for serving only so much food. When he was finished, the waiter came by and asked if he'd like a fresh plate. Dick said "no, I'm finished." The waiter seemed incredulous, and said surely he meant to eat more. Dick said "no, I can't eat that much. See, I used to weigh 400 pounds, but I had that surgery a couple years ago." Incredulous, the waiter sort of sputtered "but you look so, you don't look like..." Just getting into gear, Dick said "yeah, you wanna see the scar?" as he reached for the bottom of his shirt, and the waiter said "no! no! no! It's ok, I just-- it's just, you don't look like someone..." The poor guy seemed in a daze.

Let me tell you why that is SO funny. Dick is probably taller than the average guy, and he looks quite fit, and obviously always has been. He looks muscular and capable, and he has that easy, relaxed air of a man who knows pretty much no one can kick his ass. He's like my dad that way, someone with real presence. This is something other men notice and respect about a man, in the same way women notice what the others are wearing. So, obviously, Dick couldn't weigh 400 pounds if he tried.

I feel like I've touched the hem of the garment of greatness in leg-pulling.

Kelly is lovely and incredibly smart and witty, and she can keep apace with Dick in that department, I suspect, though I've not seen her in action. You can see a post about this very kind of whoppering on June 16 over at Kelly's blog. They were in Lowes and buying a washing machine. Dick said it was for their grown son and Kelly played along and the sales guy was gasping and freaking out, because Kelly looks like she couldn't have a grown son. Kelly has that adorable Philly accent, too, and kind of a soft voice, so it makes her seem even more incongruous with the very easy-to-hear Dick. Nutty business. If you ever get a chance to meet them, don't miss it!

Anyway, the whole thing was a hoot, and I had the best July 3 in yonks. Thanks, y'all!