It Was Kind of Embarrassing

 

My horseback riding instructor follows my social life closely. She is amused by my intrepid dive into the dating pool as a 54 year old, disabled newly single woman. I am open to telling her my stories of adventure, and she is completely nonjudgmental. She knows quite a bit of my backstory about my decades long marriage ending in a legal separation about three years ago.

I was at my lesson last week and Kelly, my instructor, asked what I did over the weekend as usual. We had had a nor’easter on Friday and there were a lot of power outages in the area, including at my home and our vacation home where my husband lives. There were two volunteers there to assist me for my adaptive lesson. The volunteers were not familiar with my backstory so they heard only the following dialogue:

Kelly: “How was your weekend?”

Me: “It was great, and I’m a little embarrassed to share the details.”

Kelly: “Oh, come on, you know I don’t care about any of that!”

Me: “OK, well, our power went out on Friday, and my husband called on Saturday morning to check on us and told me he had lost power, too. Then he said he was probably going to go to a hotel with his girlfriend. So I thought, wow, that’s a great idea and I ended up in a suite at the four star bed and breakfast a few towns over.”

Kelly: “Cool, I hear the rooms are really nice there.”

Me: “Yes, they are, and the brunch was fabulous on Sunday.”

Kelly knows I am usually seeing someone on a regular basis and she correctly assumed I spent the night at the B&B with my current significant other. She was thrilled that I made the best of what might have been a home bound, boring weekend but knew that that is what to expect me to do. When my lesson was done, I thought about how funny that conversation could have sounded to the volunteers. Then again, a lot of people hear a great many stories about unusual living arrangements among people in my demographic.