In which I learn a valuable lesson about stress and partnership, and a Friday that goes all the way into Saturday morning!

After work last night, I went and had that nice cold cocktail. Yum. Then I jumped into the BBT and drove myself home, windows down, NPR on the radio. Friday! The weekend! Yes!

I decided to go through the mail immediately when I walked in the door. I’d been intending to do it for two weeks, and there was a massive pile of it on the laundry table that I’d been studiously ignoring. I figured if I left it, it would continue to not get done.

Bread came in and we had our usual ‘how was your day?’ conversation. He helped me sort the actual mail from the garbage. [We get mail by the metric ton these days, I swear to God. I even opted out a few years ago, but someone seems to have bought us subscriptions to Consumer Reports and Atlantic Monthly magazines and now we’re back on all the lists. It’s a nasty waste, all that paper.] When I found the bills, I opened them up and added the couple I’d missed to my spreadsheet and showed it to Bread.

“So what’s this?” he asked, reading.

“The bills. The money we need.”

“Hrm. Well, here’s a start,” he said, and handed me a hundred dollar bill. “The mortgage is paid?”

“Yup. This list is just bills, though, no food or gas or smokes or anything!”

“Uh, yeah, I see that.” He grinned at me. “Quit stressing! It’s not even as bad as I’d thought. I’ll handle it. Now, wanna go have a cocktail at the Hideaway?”

And that was it. Gorgeous was right. She’d told me the day before to share the burden with my partner, that that’s what they’re for. So I did, and he said he’d handle it, and he will because that’s what he does. And now I’m not freaked about it any more.

The man actually laughed at me. I’d gotten myself all worked up about it, had been mulling it over for days and days… you see, I do all the bookkeeping: I open the mail, I write all the checks, I pay all the bills. Naturally I have something of a running total in my head, and so I start stressing much earlier than necessary… I think the man actually found it amusing that I’d gotten into a funk about money.

Bastard. (This is the man who has said to me on more than one occasion, “If you’re worried about money, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You can always get more money.”)

Then we went right back to town. We parked at BoSe’s house, walked through the incredibly packed ‘downtown’ area of Fairfield. (It was Art Walk with some kind of Italian Days theme. The square was SRO and there was no parking anywhere.) We had drinks at the Hideaway and started passing out invitations to the barn party. Bread spoke with BoSe a couple of times. Eventually we were tipsy and hungry so we went in search of food.

Every restaurant on the square was SRO. I decided I wanted Los Portales, so we walked over. They were closed. At 8:31 on a Friday night. I was starving and hot and pissed off and nagged Bread into walking two more blocks to University Amoco, which has a new Mexican restaurant called Guadelejara in it. ALSO CLOSED. By then I was hot, pissed off, and my feet hurt ’cause I wasn’t wearing walking shoes. I monstered on Bread a little. He asked me why the hell I was taking my shit out on him, and I said, “What the fuck! You do it to me all the time!” and started marching back up Second street.

We ended up at Torino’s. They’ve updated their menu, so I had ‘manicotti’ and a side salad. It wasn’t brilliant, but it wasn’t pizza either. After that, I felt so much better.

We went next door to the Dead Cock and stayed there partying until one in the morning. Well, Bread left at one — we had a fight in the parking lot first, of course — I stayed and closed the bar. Ray had a little after-hours at her house; we left the bar right after last call and did a whirlwind tidying-up at her place. (It wasn’t dirty. She’d said it was a sty, but basically all we did was tidy things up, take out the trash, and light incense!) It was a fairly small after-hours; bigger than she’d wanted or expected, but not huge. I tried to crash a couple of times but both times she came and found me and asked me what I was doing!

Around four, she told the few remaining stragglers that she was going to bed and threw them out. Then she and I settled for some girl talk, but I basically fell asleep on one of her kids’ bunkbeds. I can’t do that all night shit very well any more.

She woke me up at eight. (Groan.) I sat in her kitchen trying to wake up while she chatted cheerfully about her kids and family and sucked down three cups of black coffee in less that eight minutes. (Ray is so fucking cool.) Then we hopped in her new car — she traded in that monstrous grocery getter for a late 90’s Saab — made a deposit at my bank and headed out of town.

She dropped me off at home before nine, then headed for Ottumwa to pick her man up. I fed the dogs, grabbed the Frapuccinos I’d bought and a glass of ice and headed for the bedroom. My man was sleeping, so I stripped and got in with him. He woke up, we, ah, ‘greeted’ each other, nudge nudge wink wink, then he got up and I went to sleep.

I got up at two, put on a bikini, made tostadas, lounged on the porch in the sun. Ray threatened to swing back by on her way back from Ottumwa tonight. Other than that, no plans. Maybe clean the barn. Go swimming. Eh. It’s Saturday, I don’t have to do shit if I don’t want to! Yay!