Happy birthday to me -- part 5

My friend Barb isn't feeling well. She's battling the flu and it makes it hard for her to focus. I'll assume that's why my birthday celebration was so underwhelming.

A month ago, she contacted me to make plans for my birthday dinner. I told her that since we had tickets to see Beautiful, a play I desperately wanted to see, for December 9, we could just figure on celebrating then. She was good with that. "I'll make the dinner reservation because it's your birthday!" she wrote back.

November melted into December and I didn't hear from her. Had she forgotten? I didn't want to appear pushy -- after all, she was buying me dinner and giving me a gift. On the other hand, I had been waiting forever to see Beautiful and didn't want anything to interfere.

Last weekend, while I was farting around on the internet, I discovered that the Loop restaurants in the theater district were booking up fast. Not only is Beautiful playing at the Oriental, Lion King is back at the Cadillac Palace. The nicer restaurants on Randolph are going to be busy between now and Christmas.

So I went ahead and booked dinner at 6:00 at 312. That would give us a little over an hour to eat and then get into our seats to catch the 7:30 curtain.

At 6:10, she texted me that she'd be there "in a minute." She rolled in at 6:20. I didn't have time to finish my sausage and mushroom risotto. (Too bad, because it was delicious.) She also wasn't terribly present. I wanted to talk to her about my poor old tomcat, Joey. I thought she'd be receptive because in 2012,  I went through the death of her beloved Max with her. She wasn't interested in letting me talk about it. Instead she wanted to gossip about a woman we both know. I felt dismissed. Like an after thought.

Like I say, she was sick, fresh off an afternoon trip to the doctor, in fact. And she did get me a lovely gift -- a pair of glass and pewter salt and pepper shakers that are really adorable. But still, I felt a little empty at the end of the evening.