{"id":35,"date":"2008-10-06T20:30:43","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T02:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2008-10-07T18:08:30","modified_gmt":"2008-10-08T00:08:30","slug":"it-all-started-with-how-we-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"It all started with how we roll."},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, actually it started with how we apparently get stood up, because the story began\u00c2\u00a0Saturday morning, when\u00c2\u00a0a\u00c2\u00a0friend of ours, with whom we’d planned to attend the Renaissance Festival, totally flaked on us<\/span> apparently disappeared from the planet (ahem – you know who you are).\u00c2\u00a0 (Yeah, so um, Mr. Flaky<\/span> Dude?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t be, like, dead or in traction or anything, because then I’ll feel all guilty for talkin’ about you like this.)<\/p>\n

But, see,\u00c2\u00a0SkipFitz and I\u00c2\u00a0HAVE to attend the Ren Fest.\u00c2\u00a0 It has become a Tradition of Our Love (much like manacles and various foul odors; but those are stories for another time).\u00c2\u00a0 The first year that we dated, he drove the 80-some miles from his city all the way to my city to pick me up and take me to the Ren Fest (which was 60-some miles back\u00c2\u00a0towards his city), and then bought\u00c2\u00a0for me\u00c2\u00a0a sparkly crown of stars to wear at the Fest. A\u00c2\u00a0couple of years ago, he pushed me into the mud at the Ren Fest and then\u00c2\u00a0bought for me the Scotch Egg that would, later that night, result in gastrointestinal distress (some of which I also wore) that made Linda Blair’s Exorcist performance seem like\u00c2\u00a0the starring role in a kindergarten class production of Little Mary Sunshine.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

So yeah.\u00c2\u00a0 The manifestation of\u00c2\u00a0said\u00c2\u00a0love has undergone a few transformations.<\/p>\n

But the tradition stands.\u00c2\u00a0 We ALWAYS go.\u00c2\u00a0 So what, we wondered, were we to do about having been stood up for Saturday’s Renaissance Extravaganza?\u00c2\u00a0 Should we go by ourselves, to keep tradition alive, or should we wait and see if we heard from Flaky McFlakerson<\/span> our missing friend?\u00c2\u00a0 (Dude, PLEASE still be alive and healthy!)<\/p>\n

Ultimately, we decided to do both; we’d skip the Ren Fest on Saturday, to give our flaky-ass<\/span> probably really busy friend a chance to get with the program\u00c2\u00a0 (Dude, seriously– you’re alright, aren’t you?) and maybe attend with us on Sunday.\u00c2\u00a0 After a brief Saturday morning run to pick up my new prescription glasses (and an equally brief return to the optometrist’s office when, approximately 7.8 minutes after arriving back home with my new specs, I broke the summa bitches), I insisted that we HAD to do SOMETHING, because it was an absolutely gorgeous day!\u00c2\u00a0 So we opted to pack up the babe in the car and spend some time in a quaint little shopping area about 20 minutes north of us, where Skip could get a haircut (which embodies another tradition, since this is the barbershop to which he’s gone for haircuts since he was a kid), and where I could get cheese.<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah, Baby.<\/p>\n

CHEEEEEEEEEEEEESE.<\/p>\n

You see, in the same shopping area is this\u00c2\u00a0little\u00c2\u00a0shop that sells a gazillion super-licky varieties of cheese; I am only stopped from consuming\u00c2\u00a0the store’s entire inventory at one sitting\u00c2\u00a0by the fact that I do not have a bajillion dollars (well, by that and the fear that if I ate all that cheese, I’d never poo again).\u00c2\u00a0 But on Saturday I did have about fifty bucks, so with that SkipFitz and I purchased four chunks of cheese in a variety of flavors (one of them was goat cheese flavored with honey . . . how, I wonder, did they get\u00c2\u00a0that goat to swallow a buncha bees? . . . but such is the magic of cheese).\u00c2\u00a0 After that and the aforementioned haircut, \u00c2\u00a0we wandered back towards the\u00c2\u00a0car, eager to head home, dig into the cheese,\u00c2\u00a0and commence the constipation.\u00c2\u00a0 En\u00c2\u00a0route we passed the outdoor\u00c2\u00a0dining\u00c2\u00a0area of a\u00c2\u00a0cute little French joint.\u00c2\u00a0 Just as I opened my mouth to ask Skip if he’d ever eaten there, a strange (as in heretofore unknown to us, not as in weird) voice called out:\u00c2\u00a0 “Hey– you have the same stroller we do!”<\/p>\n

We turned to see a smiling couple sitting, with their baby in the stroller beside them and nearly empty plates before them, at one of the tables of the French joint.\u00c2\u00a0 And almost as if it had simply been waiting for that cue, my mouth opened completely of its own accord and blurted out, “OK, so does your stroller have the wonky front wheel?”\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

(It’s a jogging stroller, see, so it’s got three wheels instead of four; only the one wheel in front sometimes wobbles and makes the whole stroller vibrate, and you’re forced to pop wheelie after wheelie in an attempt to get it to restabilize.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a pain in the butt, really.)<\/p>\n

“YES!” came the reply, and then we were off and running– or chatting, rather, as easily as if we’d known each other for 20 years.\u00c2\u00a0 They were in town from a nearby smaller, farm-y town, in order to satiate their yen for a little urban living.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d recently relocated to the Midwest from Houston.\u00c2\u00a0 Their baby, a girl, was about three weeks older than Auggy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The dad\u00c2\u00a0worked at a university.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The mom\u00c2\u00a0was a stay-at-home mom with previous experience\u00c2\u00a0in TV production.\u00c2\u00a0 But perhaps most importantly of all . . .<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0. . . they were looking for a good sushi place.<\/p>\n

So we recommended our favorite local sushi joint which, I may as well confess now in hopes that nobody notices this little tidbit in the midst of such a fascinating story, we love so much that we chose to skip\u00c2\u00a0that recent\u00c2\u00a0Earth, Wind & Fire concert for which we had tickets, in order to have dinner there.<\/p>\n

They seemed pleased with our recommendation, and invited us to join them for dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 We did that thing that couples do, which was to evade the question and say our goodbyes to the nice couple, then walk away and consult each other in private about the invitation we’d both pretended not to hear (because neither of us was willing to be the Bad Spouse who consented for both of us to a social event that one of us did not want to attend).\u00c2\u00a0 When we found that we both actually DID want to join them for dinner, we concocted some lame and transparent excuse to return to their table and accept the invitation.<\/p>\n

(Of course, by the time we returned to the table, our new Mom friend had run off to change the baby’s diaper, so our new Dad friend was forced to demur until HE could check with\u00c2\u00a0HER, in order to avoid being the Bad Spouse.\u00c2\u00a0 So we walked away again, leaving our cell number; about 10 minutes’ worth of phone tag later, we had a (double<\/span> triple) date.)<\/p>\n

Which means that I have officially become One Of Those People, the ones who make friends with other people based merely on a common biological experience, i.e., a baby.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I always hated those people.<\/p>\n

In fact, I was only able, with clear conscience,\u00c2\u00a0to befriend my friend Cat after we swore a blood-oath that we would, like, TOTALLY have been friends BEFORE we had babies, if we’d ever, y’know,\u00c2\u00a0actually had a conversation with each other back then.\u00c2\u00a0 (I think there was also\u00c2\u00a0a clause in the oath that requires us to seek each other out and become friends if we ever both happen to travel back in time.)\u00c2\u00a0 But, see?\u00c2\u00a0 By NOT having actually spoken to each other when we were both normal, non-Mommy people,\u00c2\u00a0Cat and I\u00c2\u00a0spared ourselves all that insignificant introductory chit-chat, and moved straight into deep, intimate discussions about nipple soreness and poo.\u00c2\u00a0 And good or bad, these are apparently the kinds of conversations that foster friendships for me now.<\/p>\n

So here I am, one swirl deeper into the Parenthood Potty, having broken yet another of my sacred parenthood covenants: Thou Shalt Not Succumb To Mommy-Bonding.\u00c2\u00a0 But what the hell, I’m too exhausted these days to actually put effort into being a scintillating conversationalist with a fascinating life (or hell, even to put effort into being well-groomed and free of unidentifiable crust)– so if I can make cool new friends based merely on my choice of stroller, Honey, watch me roll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, actually it started with how we apparently get stood up, because the story began\u00c2\u00a0Saturday morning, when\u00c2\u00a0a\u00c2\u00a0friend of ours, with whom we’d planned to attend the Renaissance Festival, totally flaked on us apparently disappeared from the planet (ahem – you know who you are).\u00c2\u00a0 (Yeah, so um, Mr. Flaky Dude?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t be, like, dead or … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “It all started with how we roll.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}