Can I Get a Witness?

Don't get in the ring with a pro without checking your supplies.

After Pru and I began the back and forth on finding a night to get together - with no consensus reached - she looked to me for what we'd do.

P: What did you have in mind? Anything?
K: I hadn't thought it through because why waste the brain cells until you said yes?
P: I wanna know what's on the agenda. Use those brain cells! Stave off Alzheimer's!

I staved by suggesting Movieland, but none of the offerings appealed to her. Her bright idea was the Byrd, but I pointed out that they'd be showing a second run mainstream movie.

P: Don't knock mainstream

So I check and "Ocean's 8" is playing and she wants my thoughts on seeing it. I've got no real interest but I'm gracious enough to say I'll go if she wants me to. After all, I can sit there and judge a movie like that for a couple of hours and call it fun.

She calls me judgey and I remind her that our friendship was founded on a shared love of judging.

Next she suggests the Napoleon exhibit at VMFA, though she's quite sure I've seen it. And she's right, I have, but again, I agree to go if she wants to.

P: There's always dinner and back to your place for chatting and such.
K: Should be a lovely night to sit on my balcony.
P: Yes! I like that! Listening to groovy music.
K: I have groovy music, you can attest to that.
P: I'm a witness. What time? Where shall we go for noshing?
K: I know you don't like to start too early, so how about 6:30?
P: Yea! 6:30 is civilized.

We went back and forth for a bit, trying to decide where to go given our financial restraints and decided to leave that decision for Friday night.

But when she shows up, she's carrying an early Christmas present for me - an adorable black tank/slip hybrid for layering - and a bottle of Chateau d'Esclans Whispering Angel Rose. She no longer wants to bother going out to eat, so I put the Brass Ring's "The Disadvantages of You" on the turntable and pour the wine into glasses so we can settle in on the balcony.

Grooviness achieved.

That we're coming off of a humidity-free, unusually temperate August day and my moonflowers are blooming is a huge bonus, but the real story is that we haven't done a girls' night together in months. Of late, our time together involves other people (men and a mother), a drastic change from the first six years of our friendship when it was her and me against the world (or at least judging the rest of the world).

She tells me about her latest DIY projects and I marvel at her craftiness. The manse is better for all the projects she's undertaken in the name of creating a distinctive space to live. She now has an Etsy store and a logo for it. It has been a while since we talked one on one.

As the Rose in the bottle dwindles, we talk about our love lives and living arrangements. About her upcoming trip to the beach and the houseful of friends - moi included - who will be part of the week-long farewell to summer in South Nags Head.

Three hours in, she looks at me and asks if I have any more wine. I don't and she's dismayed. Do I have any alcohol, she wants to know. I disappoint her with my dry household.

"One bottle for a night with Karen?" she asks incredulously. Clearly I am a bad hostess. Fortunately, mere blocks away is Saison Market, a place with shelves and refrigerator cases full of wines so that we can cure my boozeless household state.

Only now I've got to talk her into walking over there. Pru is not a walker, although I'm here to tell you that wine was enough to motivate her on this occasion. We stroll the streets of Jackson Ward on a  Friday night, past the throngs at a fairly loud show at Gallery 5, past the guys sitting on a brick wall smoking cigarettes and talking to passersby.

We score wine, French, natch, because Pru. Once back on the balcony, I crank up the Al Green and pour more wine so we can pick up the conversation exactly where we left off before the wine shortage sent us into crisis mode.

This is what we haven't had in eons: a wide-ranging conversation, personal admissions and a general overview of our lives at this particular moment in time without anyone else around to insert their thoughts. It's glorious.

Conversation only got more personal (read: fascinating) as we sipped our second bottle, but sometime after midnight, I had to pull the plug on it. With plans to go out of town the next morning, I needed to get to bed. She pointed out that I've been known to sit chatting on her porch until well after 1 a.m. That's truth right there.

On the other hand, we'd almost finished that one bottle and I wasn't ready to hear about my lack of wine from the owner of a well-stocked wine jail.

Say goodnight, Pru.

P: Next time I'm bringing at least two bottles.
K: Best guest ever.

Seasons in the Sun

No one wants to start the day hearing that someone you know has died.

Not someone young, not someone unfailingly kind to you, not someone with a good attitude and quick sense of humor. But especially not someone young.

Although I hadn't seen her in three weeks, her last email to me was about getting together. "My love, we shall hang," she'd written after offering some relationship advice. As recently as Thursday, I'd messaged a mutual friend about making a date for the three of us to do just that. Saturday, she was gone.

I know life's not fair, but that's a hell of a reminder of it.

The rest of Sunday - the filling of the Labor Day sandwich - stretched out in front of me without a single commitment beyond a phone call.

First up was a walk to Scott's Addition along Broad Street, where I was treated to doughnut samples on a stick from an affable employee of a new doughnut shop poised to open. When I couldn't decide between chocolate with caramel and chocolate with jimmies, he insisted I take both. Done.

I was nothing short of amazed once I got to Scott's Addition because the streets were abuzz with people despite it being noonish on a Sunday during a holiday weekend.  Apparently if you were still in town, you were there.

In a related note, when I overheard a young couple whining about there being an hour and a half wait at Supper, I wanted to shake them and point out that any open place in Richmond with a patio was bound to be mobbed on a gloriously sunny day smack dab in the middle of a holiday weekend.

Walking past a 4-unit apartment building, a guy came out and calls, "Where have you been?" as if he knows me.

Turns out we'd met years ago when I used to walk Grace Street and he'd been rehabbing an apartment building over there. Now he's elbows deep in the rehab of two buildings across the street from Supper that are bound to be snapped up the moment they're listed. I admire the business acumen of the decision, but no thanks.

Seems I'm one of the few for whom Scott's Addition holds no allure.

But back to the man in front of me with a clear recollection of our conversations circa 2011, it never ceases to amaze me that people recall a random walking woman when she's completely out of context. And I thought I had a good memory.

Blue Bee Cider was already crowded when I walked in to score lunch from the Nate's Bagels pop-up. Nate was impressed when I told him I'd walked 2.2 miles for one of his bagels, but it didn't help me score an everything bagel because they'd already sold out half an hour into the pop-up, if that tells you the power of the everything.

All I can say is, come on 2018, which is when his shop is expected to open and hopefully the supply of everything bagels will be endless.

My afternoon was given over to talking to my best friend in San Antonio for 2 1/4 hours, an almost sufficient period to cover all the relevant topics after months without a phone call. Still, no matter how much time passes between calls, we pick up where we left off, as if we'd spoken yesterday.

I may not have met the love of my life and married him when I was a 20-something like my parents did and preach (I'd heard that talk again from Dad just the other day), but instead I met the best friend of my life when I was not even 20 and that's just as big a gift.

My evening's plans didn't even start until 9 when my presence was requested for an extended record listening party - including my introduction to session guitarist extraordinaire Chris Spedding - with the windows, doors and a bottle of Chateau d'Esclans Whispering Angel Rose open, all enjoyed with friends just returned from a weekend in Annapolis.

Driving home just after 1 a.m., I spotted a fair number of students still milling about on the sidewalks and arrived home to a raging party with a fire pit going at the house next door. It was certainly the perfect night for it.

Monday dawned just as gorgeous, a good thing since post-walk, my day revolved around an all day/night party celebrating the one year anniversary of Laura Lee's in the sylvan-like backyard of my walking companion.

He'd staged a collection of benches, gliders and chairs in a huge circle around a fire pit, while various tables and chairs had been set up under trees, along walkways and in every grassy corner. First-timers understandably got enthused about the treehouse, but personally, I think the yard's greatest strength is the recently-added outdoor shower.

When someone asked what had inspired him to build it, I don't want to brag but he admitted it that it had its roots in two trips to the beach this summer at cottages boasting the same. Hey, I can lead a man to my favorite outdoor shower, but what he does with that knowledge is up to him.

The party was a rambling affair with people I mostly knew arriving from 2 until 7 and lingering until nearly midnight.

There was the friend who'd brought her "pool carafe," neatly labeled "California Cabernet," and so called because it was plastic and allowed at the "criminal pool" she frequents. Only now do I know where said pool is located.

One of my favorite girl crushes arrived and proceeded to get back at me for all the times I've razzed her about when she first met her husband by teasing me about my date's solicitous behavior, although she was quick to shut up when he returned.

I used the superior fire-making skills my Dad installed in me and my five sisters by collecting tinder around the yard and stoking the fire as dusk settled in.

Then I got comfortable on the glider and chatted with the neighbor/reporter who'd just arrived. When I had to go inside to use the facilities, I asked him to save my seat and I returned to find that he'd put his hat on it to reserve it. Such a gentleman.

The UR prof showed up late and sat down next to me to ask for recommendations of where to breakfast around town, while I wanted to hear how his move was going.

Eventually, one of the guests asked to borrow a guitar from the extensive collection in the music room and sat down in a nearby chair to play. Almost at once, a young woman looking like she wandered out of Woodstock - cropped top, long skirt, flowing straight blond hair - took the chair beside him to provide harmonies.

They started with Jacques Briel's "Le Moribond," immediately recognized by my date as "Seasons in the Sun," a trite 1974 song with English lyrics by Rod McKuen. Needless to say, I liked it much better sung in French.

Also winningly covered was Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking at Me," and that's a song you could go your whole life without hearing live, so I gave major props to the duo for reaching way back.

His was a wide range of songs - the Beatles to Air to the Cranberries - and when someone suggested a Steely Dan song in honor of Walter Becker's death, he tried to oblige with lyrics but couldn't quite recall all the chords so my date called them out for him.

Now that's what you call community music-making.

The moon came out so big and bright that the tiki torches were superfluous (except for neo-Nazi jokes) and the twinkle lights mere ornamentation. Eventually, Ubers and Lyfts were called and people began to drift out into the night.

Driving home at 2 a.m. was like driving through a movie set with almost no one on the street. With Labor Day officially over (and the first day of school looming for many), Richmond was tucked in tight.

It's funny, before I'd left for the party, I'd spotted a 3" wide pile of sand on my kitchen rug. I hadn't noticed it before, but it had to be from the eclipse day beach trip two weeks ago. Shaking out the sand over the balcony felt like a metaphor.

It's symbolic, right? Labor Day means the technical end of summer fun and refocusing on real life. Balderdash. As long as the weather stays nice, I'll milk it for as long as I can.

Oh, my life is changing every day
In every possible way
And, oh, my dreams, it's never quite as it seems
Never quite as it seems

It's been a pretty swell 90 days, if I do say so myself. Summer is my season.

Knock Me to My Knees

My willingness to help friends celebrate their birthdays knows no limits.

This one was a two night affair that began Friday night with dinner at L'Opossum and ended early Sunday morning on a screened porch with the Ohio Players blasting.

The birthday celebrant was Beau, dressed fetchingly in a subtly toned Hawaiian shirt and still on a high because of his recent new job, making for a double celebration. The four of us arrived to the flattering semi-darkness of L'Opossum's interior and took over the corner banquette (only because of a reservation made months ago, natch) with a toast to Beau thanks to a bottle of pink bubbly.

The sheer amount of food that we ordered might shame a lesser bunch, but not us.

Escargots cloaked in ham biscuits, a couple of Lettuce Toss Your Salad (impressed, as we were, with its inclusion of "a tight little green goddess downtown"), "Faberge" eggs with caviar and salmon, clams with bacon and herbs and, given the old hippies at the table, the vegan orgy on Texas Beach (five vegetable spreads and papadom).

Next came halibut, beef Swellington, butter-poached lobster mac and the portabello stack with beets, butternut squash and shallot fondue. I'm not ashamed to admit I didn't do justice to my entree after so many starters, but there were no food police at our table.

Not that we hadn't reached an elegant sufficiency, but the birthday bylaws stipulate desserts after a birthday dinner and who were we to mess with rules? There was my flaming chocolate, an apple tarte tatin, lavender limoncello creme brulee and hot black bottom a la mode.

The funniest moment arrived as we sat there in a food coma contemplating our next move. Rubbing his hands together, Beau cracked, "Are we going dancing now?" That's a reference to the time we were out for my birthday and as they dropped me off at home, I turned and asked that question, only to return to the car so we could all go dancing. Not this night.

Saturday night, we reconvened on the screened porch at Pru's manse with additional guests for more celebrating, this time with bubbles, Rose, absinthe and chocolate turtle birthday cake from Northside bakery Morsels. And because Pru was hostessing, also enough cheese and charcuterie to stock a small cheese shop.

Holmes and Beloved were just that day back from a week's vacation on the Outer Banks and when I inquired how things had gone with the other couple, Holmes quipped, "I only got kicked off the island once!"

Apparently he'd had some harsh words for the owners of the Salt Air Motel across the street when they'd left their trashcans in the bike lane and his housemates saw his reaction as un-vacation like. I try not to judge.

Why, just Friday when I was coming back from my rain-soaked walk on the beach, a car driving by had splattered me as it drove through a massive puddle. Did I shake my fist and hurl unkind epithets at the offender? I did not, but probably because I was already soaked to the bone.

Never mind.

Pru's porch is an ideal space for a party of seven bent on non-stop banter and constantly chilling wines. When two of the male members of the party were directed to the same settee, I asked rhetorically what the two non-alpha males had in common.

Beau summed it up first, "We don't like pants!" but his comrade-in-clotheslessness nodded happily in agreement.

When we got low on chilling agents, Beau volunteered to make a 7-11 run, returning with bag in hand across the back yard. "The iceman cometh!" Beloved joked when we spotted him.

"That's the second time this week someone has said that about him when he's come back with ice," Pru noted. Because of course she would have multiple literary friends capable of referencing Eugene O'Neill.

Midway through the evening, the absinthe fountain was filled with ice water and it was drips for all, except the hippie chick who eschews drinking. As the Green Fairy settled over the porch, seconds were ordered and conversation revolved around the unique effect of an absinthe buzz.

That was when Pru decided to replace the Artie Shaw we'd been listening to all evening with something a whole lot more funky and danceable: the Ohio Players.

Because loud music and loopy friends on a screened porch make every birthday better. Pants optional.