Kindred Spiritedness

I love a good reunion.

That's where I've been this weekend -- at least, that's how it seems. It is a singularly pleasurable experience to meet people in person and have them be exactly the way you thought they would be, only better: smarter, funnier, deeper, kinder, wiser. More. Not just kindred spirits, but kindredly spirited, old friends reunited after an open-ended separation. And new friends who fit that bill, too, whose acquaintance I am happy to have made, whose blogs I will forever frequent.

Now I'm tired. And I have to fly home tomorrow with an infant who would rather be practicing her newly-developed crawling skills. Instead, I'm going to confine her to our 18 square inches of allocated space and tell her she's not allowed to use her voice -- although the sweaty fat man not charmed by her little southern rendition of "Hi" and a coy, intentional wave is a cool customer indeed.

Wish you had been here. Maybe next time?

My 500

A few weeks ago, I took two-thirds of our children to the grocery store with me while CPod took the other third to the dentist.

As I wound my way past the bananas and peaches, the bread and peanut butter, I kept running into this very nice woman. We made small talk through the store, and then made our simultaneous departures.

A few days later, we took our kids out for hot dogs, and the grocery store lady was sitting in the booth across from ours with her cute teenage son. Also eating hot dogs. Our town is small, but it's not that small.

This made me remember one of my roommates in college. Everywhere we went in Provo, she knew someone. One night, we made her draw a map for us, a kind of Venn diagram with her in the center -- of all the people she was related to, and how they were connected to this person we'd met on campus, and how she dated this guy in high school, whose sister's best friend's uncle was once mission companions with . . . you get the picture. I was amazed at the connections, until I began to think about the people I know, have known, in my own life, and, really, it was no different.

Then I read Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, which I loved. And I found this quote, near the end:

"It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety."

I've been thinking about this for weeks now. And every time I go shopping and see the same person pushing her cart through the store who was there last time I was there, I take Neil Gaiman a little more seriously.

This happens in the blogging world, too. Have you noticed? It's a little easier to explain here, though. I mean, we leave much more visible footprints on the internet than we do in real life, and it's easy to find a blog you like, and then look at the ones that the author likes to find more that you like, and pretty soon, you're frequenting the same on-line joints and buying a round of virtual lemonades for the same group of people.

Are you one of my 500? I think you are. I think we all belong to this great, big group of amazing women (and the occasional man) who all hang out in the same blogspots. I think if we all got together in one room, we'd be amazed at the real-life overlaps: how interconnected we all are even though we are scattered across the world.

So. Thanks for being one of the 500 people I keep running into over and over again, for being connected to me in some inexorable way. Just maybe, if we're lucky, one of these days we'll end up "discovering each other in the same unlikely tea shop in Vancouver" and recognize that the virtual world bleeds through to reality with surprising regularity.

Random! The Randster! Randarooney! Randomaliscious!

1. Do you think I'm damaging my children for life because we listen to No Doubt all the time? Sometimes I feel the need to increase the amount of estrogen floating around in the ether of our house and No Doubt is girl-power music to the nth degree. I love it all. Except for "Don't Speak" -- that one was ruined by a really bad break-up experienced by one of my college roommates, and I can never hear the song without remembering how unfairly she was treated. Sorry, 'ness!

2. CPod watched American Idol with me last Wednesday. His comment: "This is obviously live because otherwise, it would not be so . . . crappy."

3. Girlfriends are great. And girlfriends who are totally okay with the absolutely unfiltered version of you are especially great. I have a lot of those. It's a good thing because I'm usually pretty unfiltered.

4. Moving is not great. My friend Jen is moving this week. I'm sad. Michigan is far away, and her family's life will improve immensely because of their new situation . . . but still. It stinks, and I will miss her a lot.

5. Speaking of friends, I have some really, really great ones. I have old friends that I've known since junior high, and we don't talk that often but when we do, it's as if no time has passed. I have had college roommates who became like sisters to me. I have one friend in particular that became my entire support system when CPod was in graduate school. Her husband was CPod's study mate. Their new baby (now 10) was the one we loved like our own since we had no babies, and we had dinner together so many times that I can't even count them. She is the gold standard friend, against whom all other friends will be forever measured.

I have had office friends and symphony friends; summer camp friends and neighbor friends; church friends and we're-all-in-the-same-boat graduate school spouse friends; employer friends and employee friends. I have really great sister-in-law friends and, yes, even a mother-in-law friend. I was in a string quartet once that was like being one cell of a multicellular organism. I have new friends that I wouldn't know if it weren't for blogging, and old friends who I might not ever hear from again if it weren't for the blogging world.

Now, I have the best friends I think I've ever had all at one time. Do you ever wonder at which point people become indispensible? I do. I don't know when it happens, but it has with many of my closest friends. I hope I am as necessary to them as they are to me.

And then there's my sister. Don't even get me started. When I was in junior high school (that makes me seem old, doesn't it? I mean, what's middle school?) we didn't text -- we wrote notes. And we would sign our notes with the ubiquitous "LYLAS": Love Ya Like A Sister! Well, I wrote it, but I didn't really mean it. How many of my friends would have been flattered if they had really thought about what it meant? I love you just like I love my 9 year old sister who annoys me to death! Yay! If I were to revert suddenly to seventh grade behavior and write you a note in huge bubble-script, if I wrote LYLAS at the end, you should consider it a compliment of the highest order. And I can't forget my mom. It's a wonderful place to be in when you are grown up enough to realize how great your mother is. I'm there, and she's the best. I am lucky to call her my friend.

(I think maybe number 5 should have been it's own post. Oh, well.)

6. I feel really cruddy. I think I know what asthma feels like now -- like Andre the Giant is sitting on my lungs and keeping them from inflating all the way. And I sound like a foghorn.

7. It strikes mortal fear in my heart when my husband tells me he might need me to come into the office one day when they're short-staffed. Why? Because of the inadequacy of the mommy wardrobe for any occasion that will not include poopy diapers and snot wiped on you at crotch-level. The one day when it was a real possibility that I would have to go to work outside my house, I had a 15 outfit try-on-a-thon and still wasn't satisfied with what I ended up wearing. I mean, I think I have a great wardrobe . . . until I have to do something besides A. play in a symphony, B. attend a funeral (that symphony black does have a dual purpose!), C. clean my house, D. play with my kids, or E. go on a date with my husband. Work clothes? Not so much.

8. My twins think everyone is a twin. Granted, they are surrounded by twins in their little lives: they have twin cousins, twin uncles, and 4 other sets of twins in their preschool class (I know -- it's not a wonder I can never find 2 pair of anything sized 4T at Target). They spend a lot of time figuring out who belongs to whom, twin style: of course, MommyJ and I are twins (we're not -- I'm *GASP* 4 1/2 years older!); our brothers are also twins (also inaccurate -- they're 7 years apart); and they have broken the twin bond of their uncles, and assigned Uncle C as daddy's twin, even though he rightly belongs with his identical brother, Uncle B. Very funny.

9. The crispy green beans at PF Chang's are nigh unto exceedingly AWESOME.

10. My family is notorious for playing the "you-look-just-like" game. CPod is always annoyed by it. So, just to spite him, CPod looks just like the dude from "Life" (NBC, Wednesdays at 9PM): Damian Lewis. (IMDB him. I promise you they could be brothers. And I didn't want to get permission to use any of his photos because I'm lazy, so if you really want to see, that's what you'll have to do.) Name any person (well, not any person -- I have to have actually seen who you're naming) and I will come up with someone they look just like. And if I can't, I guarantee my mother will be able to.

11. Sickness + Travel + Unrealistic Expectations = An Unrealized February Running Goal
Just because I ran 6.2 miles once does not mean I can do it every day between now and Saturday. I'll try to be a bit more . . . honest when setting my goal for March!

I'm done.