When I came to Oregon last year, I “met someone.” Why do we say that, anyway? We “meet someone” all the time. Yet we also understand those mundane words to mean that something ordinarily so ordinary is, in fact, extraordinary. And so it is for me. A beautifully bald guy—quite a bit younger than me--is sprawled out on my couch, dozing. We’ve only known each other a few months, and though I haven’t told him so, he’s captivated me. I can tell he likes me a lot and we spend time t...

 “As much as I love my friends, I wouldn't think of going out to lunch with a woman. I can't think of anything less interesting, except hen parties and showers — and I avoid them like the plague.” Thus spake Betty White in a not-so-recent edition of AARP magazine.

Obviously, Betty White never had lunch with Jill Kuykendall. (Or dozens of other women who will go unnamed only because my blog gets cranky when I go too far over its word limit) I chose Jill because she’s a lunch companion e...