Last night, BJ and I went to dinner with two of my oldest and dearest friends and their partners. The last time we got together, we deemed ourselves the Hospice club because "Bob"'s dad had just died after being on Hospice, "Ann"'s dad was on Hospice, and BJ's dad was being proded to go in to Hospice. Of course, I was working with Hospice- so I had an automatic 'in'. All three dads have since passed on, and Ann's partner's dad (who wasn't on Hospice when we got together last) died later on that year.

Four fathers from this group of friends were lost in 11 months.

Between the six of us, our schedules are crazy so usually from the time we decide it's time to get together for dinner, to the time we ACTUALLY have made a decision on date and place, sometimes three months will go by. But when we get together? Hoo-boy, they'd better put us somewhere in a corner because we laugh so loud and so much. We've known each other for about 20 years so we have a lot of 'dirt' on each other that we like to shovel up now and again. I sometimes forget all that Bob knows about me until a "did you HAVE to mention that in front of BJ?" memory comes flying across the table.

As I mentioned in the post linked above, we don't get together very often but it just doesn't matter. We pick up right where we left off every time.

And how we laugh....just like we always have.

You might have noticed that I used the term 'partners' when I wrote about Bob and Ann's significant others. That's because Bob and Ann are in same-sex relationships. Bob is with 'Bret' and Ann is with 'Carol'.

Yes, this is important to the story!

Here's how we were seated:


When ordering, we told the waiter that we wanted separate checks, and pointed out who was with who.

When the checks arrived, the waiter got BJ and me right, but the others were coupled up like this:


Bret leaned over to Carol and said, "well, I guess you're my date" and cuddled up and put his arm around her. I didn't quite get what he was saying until Bob called the waiter over and told him that he'd made a mistake with how the bill was split up.

Bob then laughed and said, "Wow, over the course of dinner, you've managed to change my sexual identity!"

The waiters reply?

"The church would be proud!"

I asked my friends if I could blog about this because it was too priceless not to. I'm also going to send them the link, so everyone wave hello to "Ann", "Carol", "Bob" and "Bret"!