Catching Up With Old Friends

News from the cookie party:

• My friend Linda has held an annual cookie exchange FOR 25 YEARS.
• Last year, I showed up on the wrong day. A day too late.
• This year, Linda slipped and fell the day after Thanksgiving, and her shoulder is broken.
  
• When she went out shopping, it was 5 a.m., and she was wearing a sweatshirt, sweatpants, her coat, and her boots.
• That's ALL she was wearing.
• So the ride in the ambulance, during which they were cutting off her clothes and purse, was a little, well, revealing.
• So now, she carries panties IN HER PURSE. Just in case. I'm not sure how she reasons that they'll save her any embarrassment by being in her purse.
• In fact, they created more embarrassment for her just recently, when her daughter was helping her purchase something. She can't really open her purse or her wallet very well by herself, so her daughter was pulling out her wallet for her and, you guessed it.
• Mortification of daughter.
• Meanwhile, my friend Shelly acted out the time that she had to go to the grocery store and her husband had left the ladder right behind her car.
• Annoyed, she put the ladder away.
• And went to the store.
• And when she got home, her red-faced and cussing husband informed her that he had spent the interim hours throwing snowballs at the neighbors' houses, banging on the head-phone-wearing, air-guitar-playing teenage son's f@##$%ing window, and trying not to slide off the g#$#@&-d@#$$% roof. But the Christmas lights looked really pretty.
• My friend Mary laughed through the it-turns-out-ok-in-the-end story of running her ragdoll kitty, Lily, through the dryer FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES. Icebaths, temp 106, slack-jawed.
• And really pissed, once she regained consciousness.
• Bonnie sent me home with TWO packages of her famous dipped candies. That's because I told her that my husband loves HER more than he loves me.
  
• It's not really true, though. He loves her famous dipped candies more than he loves me.
• My former principal is opening a bakery! It will carry ONLY bundt cakes.
• Which made me think of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the mom doesn't know what a bundt cake is, and she keeps saying, "a bump? a butt-unt? a bumt?"
• My friend Chris told about a colleague's liver biopsy.
• Which is not funny.
• Which made me think of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the aunt can't pronounce biopsy, and she keeps saying, "bibopsy. bopsy, bidopsy, bibopsy."
• It was a five hour cookie party, and I HAD SO MUCH FUN.