Stories

The first several paragraphs of today’s post are going to be dedicated to Reservoir Dogs Pregnant Style Night Out because although there is really a lot to talk about I can’t reveal all of it here for fear of legal ramifications. The last few paragraphs will highlight some of the delightful things that happened on our walk to the local bagel shop today, just as a bonus. It’s Friday, I’m feeling generous.

Last night as Beth, eight-months-pregnant Kelly, Chuck’s Lady Emily, and I walked into the empty bar/cafe it was exactly like that scene from Reservoir Dogs where the guys are walking in a horizontal line in slow motion, but we’re women, one of whom is about to give birth to HER THIRD BABY IN THREE YEARS, none of us had suits on, and no one ended up with blood on their body or dead by the end of the night.

Things that I can talk about include:

1) At one point Beth asked if any of us had ever had sex with a really fat guy, and just as the female server was bringing us our wine Beth and I both held up our hands, our index finger and thumb about two inches apart, and we agreed, “Yep, about that big.” No offense to fat guys at all, just the ones we saw naked, of course.

2) The alternating male server (I don’t know why they had two different people serving the table because WE WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE), had as Beth referred to it today, “the most offensive hair piece in the world.” That pretty much sums up that hair piece and its awfulness, except you should know that it crept down his forehead as the night drew on, and by the time we left it was almost sitting on the lip of his eyebrows. As he was taking our food away Emily made the HUGE mistake of saying something that required a response from him, something like, “These were great fries, huh?” And why she added the, “huh,” I’ll never know but I’ll never forgive her because he stood there FOR HOURS talking about how these fries come frozen and they have to thaw which is actually better than the fries he used to make at a casino in Las Vegas where they had to make them fresh daily AND OH MY GOD SHUT UP ALREADY.

3) In the middle of dinner after we had all been talking for over an hour Emily turned to Kelly and said, ‘You’ll have to pardon me and my bad memory, but what was your name again?” And Kelly, realizing all the dirt on her that had already been revealed responded, “You have a website, right? My name is [Our Usually Drunk Neighbor Who Can’t Ever Stop Talking Once She Gets Started].” And then Beth chimed in, “Oh, and my name really isn’t Beth, it’s [Other Neighbor Who Resembles a Spider And That’s All I’m Going to Say About Him/Her].”

4) We all agreed that checking your hair or your nails or the smell of your underarms during sex is far less offensive than farting or burping or getting up and going to the other room during sex.

5) Remember those days when you were single and still longing for companionship and you could remember the exact date of your last orgasm and the precise hour it occurred? And then you had a kid and have to do laundry twice a day every day and you have to take the kid into the bathroom with you when you poop and you have to schedule time for adequate foreplay? And you’ve got to seek that precious balance between the curse of the anti-depressant, the power of your own concentration, and the duration of the opening sequence to “BoohBah”? What is this? I have graham cracker spit on my shirt. I didn’t notice that or the fact that I have applesauce on my forehead.

6) If you weren’t a slut in your early twenties you TOTALLY missed out.

7) And the part I can’t leave out, coming home to a warm bed and a man who remembered to set out my pills for me on the countertop, a man who didn’t watch any of the shows on the TiVo we watch together so that we could watch them together this weekend. I’ll take this life over my early twenties ANY FUCKING DAY.

While sitting and eating our bagels at the bagel shop today, Eli, Beth’s three-year-old son announced to everyone (all 17 of us who went on this trek, AND IT WAS A HOLY FUCKING TREK, comparable in length and hardship to the trek of the Mormon Pioneers, I would totally bet), he said, “Hey! I just stepped in gum!” And Beth’s mom without skipping a beat said, “Really, Eli. Because that’s EXACTLY what I wanted to hear!” So encouraging! With love like that surrounding him, Eli will go on to conquer Asia and Constantinople. You just wait.

On the walk back home Beth walked Chuck because I had to periodically carry Leta and push the stroller at the same time — she’s going through a phase, you know the one, the one where SHE HAS TO BE SURGICALLY ATTACHED TO MY BODY AT ALL TIMES — and Beth kept saying, “Chuck, stop peeing. Why are you peeing so much? Heather, why is he peeing?” That and, “FIX IT! FIX IT!” Which is the command to tell Chuck to get untangled from the leash which always wraps itself around three of his legs simultaneously. But Chuck doesn’t really know how to fix it, I always have to fix it for him, but I didn’t tell Beth that part and the entire walk home the whole neighborhood heard Beth yelling over and over again, “FIX IT!” I am so glad I got to write about that.

And then Kyle, Beth’s five-year-old son, jumped in a puddle of mud, slipped, and landed on his butt, in the mud. There was mud on his butt. And instead of doing anything about it we continued to walk and laugh and hope that we would all make it home alive so that we could run to our laptops and CHRONICLE THE MADNESS.