An Unexpected Dinner Guest

Last night I was supposed to meet a friend visiting from Boston and another DC friend after dinner. But at about 6:00 I get a call from Boston friend that she's been in the city all day, is tired, and would really like to meet up earlier. Without missing a beat I invited her to come over to our apartment for dinner. "We're making pizza! We have wine!" Great. She was on her way.

As soon as we hung up, I though, oh crap. What if SCL doesn't really want my random friend coming over right now? He had been spending most of the day trying to update my laptop's operating system. When I told him about my conversation, we debated over what to do food-wise. We'd only been planning to make dinner for ourselves, so we'd only defrosted enough dough and cheese for one pizza. Should we make two? Make a salad? We decided on a second crust, which SCL promptly defrosted and starting rolling out.

"What kind of pizza do you want to make?" he asked. "We can make pepperoni, sausage, barbecue chicken, pesto chicken..." I figured I'd better call Boston friend to ask what she'd prefer. I felt so awesome, having all of these delicious options for her. And then she says: "I can't have pizza. I'm gluten-free."

CRAP. Not only have I invited someone to dinner at the last second, but now I have to tell SCL that she's gluten free and we really didn't need that second crust defrosted or rolled out. "Can you re-frost a crust?" I asked. "We'll find out," he said, rolling his eyes a little. He wanted to know if her being gluten-free was health-related or a lifestyle choice. If the latter, he said he would tolerate but not approve--to which I responded "Would anyone really give up bread if they didn't have to?"

Now we're scrambling to find something for Boston gluten-free friend to eat. Oh yeah, we bought this huge pack of crackers from Costco, which happen to be gluten-free (and therefore pretty disgusting...and we now have a lot of them!) We had veggies, hummus, and other non-wheaty things. It was going to be alright after all.

Friend arrives. She eats the veggies, hummus, and crackers. We have wine. We catch up. SCL quietly and graciously does the host thing. I am very grateful.

Having a partner who doesn't get mad when plans change at the last second, who doesn't get too irritated when those new plans change again, and who steps us as host for a dinner he didn't plan to serve--he's pretty much the best. Ever.