Retirement Party

Linda across the street retired from the Game and Fish department and has been saying we should give ourselves a retirement party. I offered to broil some oysters and little did I know she loves them. I had never done them so I tried Oysters Bienville off the Internet. We had all the ingredients except shrimp - butter, cayenne, yellow onion, lemon juice, scallion, parsley, eggs, flour and white wine. I had gotten nine huge oysters earlier. Dix came to the rescue and cooked up the sauce. I shucked one and Linda scarfed it down raw. I put the others on the grill to coax them open and dolloped the sauce on. They were a giant hit. Even Dix who does not like oysters, enjoyed the sauce like an omelet.

In preparation for the company, Linda had vacuumed the day before and got tripped up in the cord and took a fall - 12 stitches at her eye and a big shiner. That was a close call. Nancy's son Matthew is visiting from California. She will be going back with him for a couple of weeks. I'm not sure she knows but Matt is going to make a pitch for her to move there. I'm so glad he realizes she needs to be closer to family. She appears to have reconciled she can no longer safely drive. And she is finding it harder to call things by their name rather than whatzacallit. This has become rather pronounced in the last few months and it's regretful since she has always been a great storyteller. She enjoys her wine and on the way to her apartment next door, she lost her balance and had I not already had a hold of her arm, it would very likely have been a trip to the hospital. So, we all survived the retirement party, barely.