Back to the iPhone

In case y’all missed the end of my last Disneyland post, the answer to the question you’ve all been wondering about is:

Yes.

I kept the iPhone X Joyce gave me. It sat on my bureau for almost a week, until I just decided to open the dang thing. I thought about Meemaw’s advice and I reckoned that, yeah, I like Joyce…Joyce wanted to make me happy…and an iPhone X with facial recognition would make me happy.

I also thought – this was based on something Meemaw said too – that it would really hurt Joyce’s feelings if I threw the gift back in her face. Meemaw said that it was probably really hard for Joyce to give me the phone and show that she liked me…well…that she liked me enough to give me a $1200 gift. By accepting it, I guess I’m showing that everything’s cool…and that I like her.

Let’s not get into how much. Whenever I start worrying about that, I start trying to fix the Dodgers batting order in my head. (Note to Dave Roberts – since I guess they ain’t firing you: keep CT3 at the top of the order.)

So I opened the phone, looked at how cool it was, and texted Joyce on my old phone that I need help with getting the sim card into the new phone so I could use it. She offered to come over then and there.  The thing is my apartment.  It’s not that it’s a mess (Mom taught all of us that dirty clothes belong in the hamper and not on the floor), but, as Keaton says, it looks like I just moved in, even though I’ve been there for getting on two years. So I don’t like having people over.  So I suggested instead that we have dinner that night and she could do the card thing then.

Then she invited me to her house for dinner. (This was two days before me and Keaton went to Disneyland. I never promised y’all a blog that was in order lol.)

So after work I took a Claritin and drove the shitbox up to Joyce’s house.

After I rang the doorbell, I could hear her trying to get MooMoo and Numnums into the bathroom, so it took her a while to get to the door. When she did, I was a little surprised to see her in…I’m not sure what they call it…since it wasn’t a nightgown or a bathrobe or anything like that…but it was kinda more like one of those than it was like regular clothes. It sure didn’t look like something you’d throw on just to sit around at home in. (Not that I think chicks sit around at home in basketball shorts and old t shirts lol.)

I was coming from work, so I was in a nice t shirt, jeans and our lace-up sneakers…which by the way are not designed for standing up in for eight hours. I could have looked worse, but I wasn’t dressed up for a fancy date at a woman’s house.

Remember: we only agreed that morning that I would come over that night. She didn’t have all that much time to prepare. But she’d prepared.  A lot.  I could see the table was set in the dining room with candles and everything. And she’d set up an ice bucket in the living room with a few Stone IPAs in it.

“Wow…I wasn’t expecting you were gonna go all fancy on me just to put the card in the phone.”

“It’s the first time I’ve made you dinner…I…wanted it to be nice…”

She looked real uncomfortable.

I guess I shouldn’t have said what I’d said, but I’d worked a whole day, my feet hurt, and I wished I’d gone home first to shower and change and put on some of the cologne she bought me (instead of the Banana Republic stuff they make us wear at work) if it was going to be…I kept hearing the words “romantic evening” pounding in my head.

The candles and the dinner and the ice bucket and the lacy thing Joyce had on were all okay. I wasn’t expecting them, but they were okay. It’s that word R-O-M-A-N-T-I-C in my head that was bothering me. I got flashbacks to those notes written in pink ink on doilies that Becky Landry used to shove in my locker in high school.

“Dinner should be ready in fifteen minutes. I put some beer on ice for you.”

She handed me one. The bottle was all wet from sitting in the ice bucket. So I didn’t know where to put it down. Joyce always brings me a glass when she brings me a beer. I don’t have anything against glasses…as long as I can find the coasters. The only thing is that, even with all the little doodads Joyce has all over the place, she doesn’t have coasters on the coffee table.

I was going to need more than my usual one or two coming home from a day at the store beers. There was something weird going on. Not weird as a monkey driving a lawnmower…but definitely weirder than Keaton having a good time on the Pooh ride.