Nadine picked me up Friday morning at 11 a.m. and we drove into Cape Coral to meet with our lunch group at a place called Brewbabies. Now doesn’t that sound awful, like a sports bar or a biker bar. You’ll understand when I tell you that it really should be called something like Montmarte or The Left Bank. It has two dining rooms separated by a fabulous garden with many intimate corners and a fountain. The indoor dining rooms have many interior small rooms so you do not feel crowded. We chose to eat inside because of the humidity and because Nadine was getting bit by bugs.

The menu has pita wraps, quiches, grilled salmon, gazpacho (sublime), little pizzas. I usually have wine but decided to have coffee partly because of the calorie thing.

Meanwhile, we had our usual animated conversation and since we are an edgy, outspoken bunch, we soon became entertainment for the room. We had a political discussion, switched to relationships, switched to Toni’s art trip to Italy in September, and Sonia told us about her first days in Florida where she was shunned at an art class because she was “a Socialist” all based on her French accent. From time to time Sonia and Nadine would break into French because sometimes it’s easier for Sonia to explain something that way. I don’t mind at all. It’s a beautiful language and I love hearing it. Nadine was born in Cairo, Egypt and lived in French Canada before coming to the States. And Sonia grew up in Paris.

Toni, whose subject matter switches back and forth and is sometimes hard to follow was saying to me at one point, that Edward’s wife is Jewish. Wait a minute, I said, I’m his wife and I’m Greek. My back was to the room but Nadine told me all the other diners choked on this. Turns out Toni was referring to his late wife (incidentally who she never met so I don’t know how she got on to that subject).
A sweet looking older couple passed by on their way out and thanked us for the entertainment and Toni asked them if they had been around for the political talk and they said no, and that they were conservative, and Toni said, well, it’s good you missed it then. And she also recommended a book to me but can't lend it to me because it's in German.

We lingered over coffee and on the fact that in Europe, diners everywhere take at least 3 hours for lunch and in this country they take at most an hour and a half. Afterwards we went to Canell’s, a friend of theirs who has just opened a French patisserie shop. We had espresso in demitasse cups and I was sorely tempted to up-end them in the saucers so I could read our fortunes in the grounds, a Turkish custom my mother taught me and, after 500 years of Turkish rule, adopted by the Greeks. I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to make a coffee mess in the saucers.

That was my third cup of coffee and as the day wore on, I had more energy, and I have decided that until I have my next thyroid evaluation (mid-August) I just might drink more coffee because then I don’t need to nap. And it’s almost midnight and I’m still wired. Hoo ha.

xx, Teal