Girl Talk

I’m sure there are guys who assume when women get together, we just talk about our feelings and make-up and shoes and purses. Oh, and we always have a pillow fight in our underwear. Truthfully, some of that is true. Except we almost always have naked pillow fights.

Last night, Katie and I were on our way to book club. One of our dear book club members just had a beautiful baby girl on Thursday. In addition, about 500 of our closest friends are currently pregnant. For any woman, even two women not wanting or expecting to be pregnant, the presence of so much pregnancy tends to invade every day conversations. So, that’s the back story for this conversation:

Me: Sometimes I wonder if my uterus is all old and dried up.

Katie: You are NOT that old!

Me: I’ll be 38 this year. 38!!

Katie: You have a solid ten years left of good uterus.

Me: Ten years?? I don’t want to have a baby at 48!! I’m not going to be using my uterus for that at 48!

Katie: Oh, well, yeah . . . that. I wouldn’t recommend having a baby after 45.

Me: What the hell did you think I was talking about using my uterus for? Extra storage space?

Katie: Oh my god . . . I’m having the weirdest mental picture!

[stop talking to giggle about what we could store in our uteruses (uteri?)]

Me: Wow. There’s a thought. It would be a really good place to keep my keys. I can NEVER find my keys when I need them.

Katie: It would be like the Great Room of a house!

Me: Well, really . . . it does fulfill all of your families needs.

[more giggling]

Katie: So, if the vagina is the Great Room . . . .

Me: No, the uterus is the Great Room. The vagina is more like the entryway to the Great Room.

Katie: Like the doorway. Wait, no . . . the labia is like the doorway, the vagina is the entryway and the uterus is the Great Room. That works.

[more giggling]

Katie: So . . . what’s the anus?

Me: The man cave?

My Typical Interaction with Facebook

I joined Facebook about six months ago because my 21 year old cousin said I should. Despite the 16 year difference in our ages, she insists I should try to be cool like her. When I joined Facebook, I looked around for people I knew and asked for several of them to be my friends. I immediately saw that my parents were both friends with my cousins, so I invited my parents to be my friends. My mother accepted by invitation right away.

My dad has still not accepted my invitation. I asked him about it saying, "Why won't you be my friend on Facebook?" My dad said, "Because I'm not your friend . . . I'm your father." My dad clearly doesn't understand the way Facebook functions.

Anyway, after my initial sign-up, I haven't done a lot of searching for friends. I have looked at everyone who says they graduated from the same high school, college, or law school that I did in the same year I did. The strange thing is that I don't know half of the people who say they graduated in my classes. I really, really don't remember them. And it is not like I went to huge schools. My college class was probably the largest, with about 400 people in it. There were only about 150 in my law school graduating class, so one would think I would recognize some of these people.

So, either because my memory sucks or because people are pretending to want to be my friend just to up their friend numbers, I get a fair number of Facebook emails from people I don't recognize. I just got another one over the weekend. My reaction to this one is pretty typical.

Facebook: Jane has added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to confirm you know Jane in order for you to be friends on Facebook.

Jane: "You may not recognize my married name, but you'd know me if I said my maiden name was Smith. :) How are you Miss Smarty-Smarty Lawyer Pants?"

Me: Who the fuck is Jane? (I am able to rule out her belonging to my law school class because, as a general rule, lawyers don't address each other as "Miss Smarty-Smarty Lawyer-Pants.)

Facebook: To confirm this friend request, follow the link below.

Me: Okay . . . follow the link. Now, I am reading the friend request and it says we have one friend in common. Click on that link. I see the one friend we have in common is a friend from my pre-law school days. Really, just a drinking-partying-doing-stupid-stuff friend, but we bonded quite a few times over shots, so she and I have become friends on Facebook.

Me: So, I still have no idea who Jane is. I suppose I might as well accept her friend request. She clearly thinks she knows me. And it is driving me crazy because I can't place her from her blurry-shot-in-a-bar profile picture. Click on confirm.

Facebook: Don't you want to see how many people you know in common?

Me: No. Click on profile pictures. Scan through pictures of kid, husband, dog, house, kid, kid, kid, husband . . . the very last picture is Jane with her husband and kid and I actually recognize her. OHHHHH . . . JANE!

Me: (writing on Jane's Wall) Hey! How are you? What are you doing in PA? You have a cute kid!!

Then, I figure my Facebook obligation is over. She and I are now friends, she can look at my profile and all my pictures, comment on a few, send me a few stupid drink requests or plants or best friend awards, and the whole thing will die off soon enough.

Notsomuch.

Jane: "Hello!!! So glad to see you on fb! I've found more people that I thought I'd never see again (all good--- you included! :) ). Yes, we live in PA---and are ready to move on. We love where we live, but jobs for husband have all but dried up in this area. [The baby] is 15 months now and becoming quite a handful. She's just incredible and worth the wait, let me tell you. Looks like you've been busy reproducing as well, yes? I'm so impressed with your job--you scored! how's the family?"

Well, that was probably more information than I needed, thanks Jane. That's exactly what I tell people when they ask what I've been doing for the last 10 years . . . reproducing and lawyering. Little bit here, little bit there . . . whatever.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

My best friend H is a HUGE HUGE Cubs fan. So much so, that she actually auditioned to conduct the Seventh Inning Stretch at Wrigley Field as part of a contest the Cubs are running in conjunction with Baby Ruth candy bars.

AND SHE MADE IT TO THE FINAL FIVE!!!!!!!!

So, please, please . . . vote for her. My understanding is the person with the most votes wins. Here is the link to the voting page. Her name is Heather H. You can watch her audition video and vote for her or just vote for her! If she wins, you can share a little bit of her glory and mine. While you couldn't pay me enough money to sing in front of a crowd at Wrigley Field (or any field for that matter), she has the balls to do this and I am very proud of her.

Go Cubbies!

Well, Maybe You Shouldn’t Date the Easter Bunny

One of my best friends for many years just turned 37 and is still single. Single and bitter, really, which differentiates her from me because I remain single and hopeful (and I am not quite 37 yet) with only occasional moments of bitterness.

Anyway, she was talking to my two and a half year old about her Easter Basket recently. (Even though Easter was several weeks ago, the Easter Bunny is still a big topic of conversation of our house, particularly the things the Easter Bunny brought in the baskets.) After discussing the contents of my daughter’s Easter basket with her, my friend H. said to me, "What the hell kind of Easter Bunny came to your house!?!"

"What are you talking about? They got tons of stuff in their Easter Baskets!" I replied.

"Yes," H. said, "But the kind of stuff is a little disturbing."

"What is disturbing about it?"

H. rattled off the list of my daughter’s Easter Basket’s contents: a jeweled tiara and wand, sparkly hair things, a pretend pink talking cell phone, a metallic orange purse with flowers, sparkle lip gloss, two small princess books, princess sparkle stickers, and a bottle of bubbles.

"So?" I said.

"What, is the Easter Bunny gay?"

Considering the contents of my daughter’s Easter basket, I could see she had a point. "But," I said, "my son’s basket had cars, balls, a red cell phone, truck books, bubbles, and train stickers. So, the Easter Bunny is actually really butch too, but he has a feminine side. He’s metrosexual, really, which is a hard thing to say about a pretend rabbit that neither one of us believes in."

"Well," she said, "I don’t think the Easter Bunny is metrosexual. He sounds like most of my ex-boyfriends - either gay or overcompensating for something."

I Get By . . .

With a little help from my friends. I get high . . . wait, no . . . wrong post. In spite of my never-ending sickness, I needed to get a few things done this weekend. In particular, I needed to move some furniture around to make room for my little girl.

One of the downfalls of being single is that there is no strong man to move furniture with you. (Notice, I did not say for me, I said with me.) In the not-so-distant past, I have been known to move every piece of furniture by myself around the house. In fact, I moved a full size mattress and box springs from the upstairs to the first floor all by myself. However, that just about killed me so I decided to admit I needed help and get some help.

That was when wonderful Katie volunteered herself and her boyfriend to help me move some stuff. And she brought along Mr. Gourmand-O-Rama and his beautiful daughter Chloe. I needed two big brawny men and she delivered!

Of course, the humor in this whole story is that my parents were also in town for the weekend. Some people might wonder why they couldn't just help me with moving some furniture. Several reasons, but mostly because I really don't need one of them hurting themselves by trying to do too much (my dad will never admit when he can't do something). Also, they had been helping so much all weekend - my dad finished stripping wallpaper off of the bathroom walls and my mom babysat most of the morning. The biggest reason, however, was that I didn't want my dad to mess with the TV/cable/DVD because he would have screwed it up. He would say he could do it, but I know he would have screwed it up.

Anyway, on Thursday night, I was talking to my parents on the phone and told them I had some help for the furniture this weekend:

Me: Good news - I was talking to my friend Katie about the furniture moving this weekend and she said she could help, which is good because she has . . .

Dad: (interrupting) A furniture trolley?!? Good, can she bring it?

Me: . . . um, no . . . she has a really strong boyfriend who can hook up a TV/cable/DVD system. But who knows, maybe she does have a furniture trolley too.

It was kind of sad that my dad thought it was more likely that I had a friend who owned a furniture trolley than a friend who had a strong boyfriend. Oh, well. I forgot to ask Katie about the furniture trolley, but the moving got done really quickly and I truly appreciated the help!