Weird night

~I have thought of a number of adjectives to describe tonight, but for now, I guess I'll stick with weird, although surreal, uncomfortable, and "I couldn't have made this up " also come to mind.

~Backstory: The church has a dinner club of sorts. People sign up and are assigned to a different group each month; goups meet at someone's home, and the groups are usually 7 in number --why 7 I have no idea. I'm not signed up, but I sometimes get invited as a substitute--which happened this week. The hosts were a couple in their early 80s (although if you saw them you'd guess early 70s at the most) who've been married a long time and really love each other and are just very nice and smart and interesting people. So when M called to invite me, I said yes without reservation.

~Of course I had no idea who else would be there but I wasn't too concerned about it. Until I got there and found out that one of the couples was my boss and his wife. Now some of you know already that in earlier posts when I talk about difficulty at work, I'm talking about my boss, although I try not to say it directly too often here. On the surface we are cordial to each other, but just below the surface is what I'll describe as an undercurrent of tension, maybe even hostitlity. Recently he barely speaks to me or looks at me directly except when we're having necessary work discussions.

~And the other couple are nice people, although a bit eccentric. She is somewhat demanding and has in recent months taken to sending me emails at 1 am complaining about this that or the other--which I mostly ignore.

~So it was a weird mix of people. Really. But I know how to be nice, so I put on my happy social face and had a lovely glass of wine before dinner.

~And then there was dinner. I don't make a big deal about being a vegetarian, and I generally eat whatever there is (always hoping it won't be steak or some such). And tonight it was some kind of meat stew--sort of like stroganoff with cauliflower and served on brown rice. So I just took lots of cauliflower and avoided the hunks of meat and it was fine. Until I was helping clear the table and looked at the open cookbook in the kitchen. It was veal stew. Veal. The one meat I didn't eat for ethical reasons even before I became a vegetarian. I am SO glad I didn't know it was veal beforehand.

~So I made nice and ate food that I otherwise wouldn't have, and then I blew my cover as a vegetarian when Eccentric Lady and her husband started talking about how unhealthy all the vegetarians they knew looked and Boss and his wife chimed in. Without thinking about it I blurted out, "I'm a vegetarian." And then hastened to reassure my hosts that it was okay, I easily made exceptions for reasons of hospitality. And felt a little bad, because I really like the hosts and thought I might have been rude. Sigh.

~The evening ended about 9:15 and I drove home. When I got in the house I reached in my pocket to get out my phone to check for messages--and I didn't have it. I left it at the hosts' house. And I needed to call the Kid--whose phone number I never memorized because it's programmed in my phone. Fortunately I found it in caller id in the house phone. (It's a little alarming how bereft I feel without my phone, which I hope I have time to retrieve tomorrow.)

~Overall, it wasn't a terrible night. My hosts are interesting people and told some great stories. They live in a funky old house, filled with her artwork. But really, I couldn't have come up with a less likely group to spend time with. And now my introverted self is exhausted and needs to go to bed.