Homeschool Playgroup Day

So, I’m over my psychotic food police moment. I’m crazy. I know it. The brain surgeon knows it, but loves me anyway. Can we just move on now?

Good.

Now yesterday, my friend, D, who has been in home-buying hell, came to spend the night with her two little ones. They recently moved about two hours away and have been homeless, basically, while the banks and realtors made one idiotic mistake after another. I keep saying buy Tupperware from D, and I mean it: colbyandbingo@yahoo.com. You know you need something.

D’s eldest and Miss M are absolutely positively best friends. Miss M, one night when their impending move was upon us, cried her eyes out and said, “I love her so much, I just can’t let go.” No idea where she got the scorned lover speech, so I just held her, brokenhearted for my baby and stifling a giggle at the same time.

Parenthood is like that.

Anyway, today is one of the four days I try REALLY hard not to have scheduled work during the day. Of course, a new client scheduled a call for today at 1:00 pm. This is that new client with the less-toxic cleaners that I’m quite excited about. So for this one hour, I needed to figure out what to do with my three little ones. Four options:

1. Hire Carmen

2. Drop them with the brain surgeon and have said conference call in car

3. Go to homeschool park day with D and have her watch them while I have said conference call in car

4. Put movie on in car, hope and pray BooBoo sleeps rather than screams (still facing backwards; can’t see movie), and ruin environment by running car/air conditioner for duration of call

#1 wasn’t a great option. She has a 6-hour minimum and then I’d feel guilty hiring her and not getting more work done. #2 and #3 were both okay options, but I went with #3 because D was here and we all miss each other.

#4 was one of those conference-calling-while-hiding-in-the-bathroom options. Desperate measures like these are only okay in the absence of all other options.

Plus, D has been bugging me to try this group. Neither of us clicked with the other two groups we’ve been to (too far, no real bonding, etc.), but D swore I’d like this one. I’ve been hesitant, though, because there have been a few stories she’s told me that set off my “judgmental mom” alarm.

I go crazy when I hear mothers being hard on other mothers about whatever, though I’m quite judgmental myself.

(I should just call this the hypocrite blog, because it is what I am. I do try to be consistent, but life is confusing!)

Anyway, so I went. After a hectic morning getting there and a successful conference call that I literally choked my way through.

Do you ever just randomly choke on your own spit? I occasionally do. No idea why. It’s inconvenient when you’re sharing PR capabilities with an ad agency that you’re working with on a new cleaning product.

But I digress. (Oh, and I like digressing, so you’ll see a lot of that).

Shortly before leaving, D introduces me to another mom, Tricia, who is also a writer and who is also a mother of three kids (mine are 1, 3 and 5; hers are 3, 5 and 7; I have one boy; she has three).

We chat about writing and blogging. I tell her I’m just coming out of the closet with my blog (you’ll see the irony of this later). We exchange LinkedIn, MySpace, iFreelance and blog info.

I liked Tricia immediately. She’s now the third person I’ve told the actual name of my blog to and the first stranger. She mentioned briefly that she’s had some rough experiences online and that she’s “complex.” She said she pulled down blogs that resulted in a lot of crying.

Before I started writing this, I checked my email and noticed an invite to connect with her on LinkedIn. I accepted and sent her a MySpace invitation in return. Then I browsed through her stuff.

I have to say, she could be the most “complex” person I’ve ever met.

She’s a lesbian, she says. Maybe she's a nonpracticing lesbian. She’s happily married to the father of her children. She writes very dry technical stuff for organizations like NASA. I relate to that. Best part, she’s a comic, like the guy in my mean girls clique.

What are the chances of meeting two comics in one month?

She’s been lamented online for being homophobic (more irony!), anti-fertility treatment (we might agree there) and anti-adoption (and I'm learning about why).

She’s clearly controversial. I like that. Clearly she’s judgmental, which I can’t stand, but again, I’m that, too, and a hypocrite, so who am I to judge?

Damn I’m witty.

I haven’t read much about her views and her personal controversy yet, but I’ve read enough to tell so far is that she’s brilliant, regardless of viewpoints, and very, very brave. That makes her interesting.

Plus, she was just plain nice.

Toodles.