shopping and laughing, two of my favorite things

December 6, 2006

This past weekend I went away for my annual Christmas shopping trip with one of my best girlfriends. We have been doing it for nine years now I think. (insert some comment on how old I feel now) We shop, eat out at restaurants, and wrap all of our presents in our hotel room while eating candy and watching stupid television.

This year was the first time in a very very long time that one of us, usually me, wasn’t pregnant or nursing. And so we celebrated by ordering margaritas for dinner one night. They were possibly the largest margaritas I have ever seen. All the other people at the bar, where we were waiting for our table, were impressed with them as well.

But most of all during our weekend we laugh. The kind of laughing that makes tears stream down your face and invokes prayers to the gods of bladder control. The kind that you would be hard pressed to tell anyone what was so funny; it just is.

For some reason every year getting all our shopping bags up to our room ends up being something out of a bad sitcom. Last year the luggage cart, filled with all our expensive presents, went up in the elevator with neither of us with it.

This year some man in the lobby asked us if we had a good show and the winked knowingly at us. This caused us to speculate about what he could possibly be talking about.

“Maybe he thinks we are strippers!”

“And the roboraptor is my sex toy.”

“It would make sense to need a noisy talking sex toy since we would obviously need to be strippers for the blind.”

“Would we even have to strip then? We could just pretend.”

“Pretend strippers for the blind.”

I am sure the man was referring to something much more benign, but damn if I know what he was talking about.

We always have a great time and as the weekend comes to a close we swear that we will do another weekend trip away mid-year. But we go home, where life, children and responsibilities take over.

But come next Christmas we will be out shopping again. I might just wear some Depends, to be on the safe side.

Perfection times three

December 1, 2006

This month I had three posts that I thought were perfect. Three posts that made me think. The sort of posts that I read and then immediately re-read and thought about them later. They were all by the same fabulous writer.

I picked the following post written by Journey Mama, titled A love letter to my husband. It just spoke volumes to me about the unspoken conversations that we have. How we are all quick to find something insignificant to lump our anger on, because isn’t anger a much easier emotion to show then sadness, hurt, or feeling vulnerable.

And do you remember how I said, “Pepsi?” And you said, “It was all they had.” And I said, “I can’t believe you got me Pepsi! You know I hate Pepsi.” And then remember how you sighed again and said, “I didn’t know that, Rae!” And then I responded by icily ignoring you for five seconds and then saying, “Oh, GOSH, this is disgusting. I know that I told you I hate Pepsi. I tell you that all the time. Oh, MAN, this is so GROSS. I can’t believe you don’t remember how much I hate Pepsi, and not only that, I KNEW that store was too small and that you shouldn’t have gone there. THIS IS REVOLTING!”

Do you remember? (How could you forget?)

Go read the entire post.

And then while you are there read these two also:

I remember that when I first stepping into mommishness, and I had my one wee baby, my friend Carol would tell me that the biggest change in her life since becoming a mom was her lack of a thought life.

I think I’ve lived for a long time thinking that if I just did everything right, if I was just as nice as I could be, bad things wouldn’t happen to me. If I played my cards right I would not disappoint anyone, and I definitely wouldn’t make anyone angry with me.

Don’t you agree? Her words are beautiful. And so worthy of the perfect post award for November.

*****

Okay, now onto me and my own navel gazing.

I have come to realize over the course of the day yesterday when I got email after email from people who had commented on my blog and were afraid I was offended by them or by their comment, that most of the time the things that people, myself included in this, comment on are reflections of themselves, not the writer of the post. And that a lot of the most interesting things about a blog are the things the people choose not to write about… the missing pieces, the empty spaces that define the writing by it’s absence.

And so to everyone who emailed I humbly accept the apologies and explanations. And likewise I extend my own.

Of course the people who sent the worst emails, the very people that I was talking about, didn’t apologize because their intent was to be hurtful. It is only those of us who do things unintentionally that feel bad. But just like outside of this glowing box there are many more nice, funny, articulate people than there are the other kind. At least that is what I choose to believe today.