Matt and I were watching a movie last night when the phone rang. It was my mother.

"I think I've committed a bit of a faux pas," she said wryly.

"What happened?"

"Well... I called Gloria to ask if she got her invitation yet."

"Mom, you decided not to invite them." ("Them" is a small group of friends from Mom's bridge club. There was no way we were going to be able to invite them all, so I limited the possibility to the few of them that I thought would actually recognize me if we ran into each other. After much dithering, she'd decided it wasn't fair to invite some but not all of her friends.)

"I know, I know... But I waffled so much, I couldn't remember which way I'd gone. I was so embarrassed!"

"I guess so... Did you get it all straightened out?"

"Yes. So now Gloria wants to throw you a shower, for the bridge club, sometime in mid-July."

That wasn't really too surprising. My mom's friends are a complex knot of social obligations. When I'd asked her, five years ago, why she had to invite all of them to my wedding, she'd just looked at me. "I went to all their kids' weddings." And throwing showers for each others' kids' weddings and babies provides an excuse for them to get together.

So Mom was really calling to ask me to provide a couple of dates in July that might be good. Except I'm going to have to call her back today. My brain melted and oozed out my ear, and one of the dates I gave her is a friend's wedding.

Have I mentioned that bending over is getting more difficult? I mean, another couple of weeks and I'll have to start having Matt help me dry off after a shower, because even propping my foot up on the edge of the tub or the toilet, it's pretty troublesome to bend over far enough to dry off the backs of my calves. (Weird, the things you take for granted until they're gone...)

I came in to work this morning and unlocked my office door to find that someone had shoved something underneath it for me. Cruel and unusual, folks.

--Liz