“They say men don’t wear underwear with kilts,” Bobbie says. She raises her eyebrows and smiles.

“I do acroyoga,” the lovely woman standing next to me says. “But since the days have gotten shorter, we’ve been adding fire to our performances.”

Let your creativity gene flourish!

“You look like an ax murderer.” That was definitely not the look I was going for when I dressed for church this morning.

“You do date men, right?” a new-found friend, Trish, recently asked.“Who else would I date?” I reply.

I found them! The perfect shoes! They are sparkly and silvery and the heels are not too high. And they are 40% off! I will be a princess!

“You’re lucky,” several of my friends have told me. “If anything happens to my husband, I wouldn’t date. I’d enjoy being by myself.”

“Oh, don’t try to lift that,” Connie says I reach to remove a section of the dog walk from the agility trailer. We are setting up for a dog agility trial and there are three trailers full of equipment that needs to be unloaded and assembled.

This meeting is so boring. It’s seven at night and I’ve spent the day chasing grandkids so I just want to be in bed. I don’t want to be sitting in a Zoom meeting.

“Did you ever read that book?” Pam asks, taking a sip of her hot tea.

“What book?” says Susan (we are both Susan). She picks another French fry off my plate.

It is an unwritten rule of our lunches—one of us must order fries so we can all share. We’ve been a writing group for 30 years but today is simply a lunch celebrating friendship.

“I’ve completely let go of the whole underwear thing.”

My Zoom conversation screeches to a halt. I know we all are staring at Iris, who has just informed us about her lack of underwear.

“He’s gorgeous!” Terri stage whispers to Ellie across the conference table.

“Absolutely delicious!” Ellie replies.

“Who are you talking about?” I lean toward both as I sit.

Terri smiles. “The new guy at the Starbucks drive-thru.”