I think this is probably sexual harrassment

I work with this guy...he is, um, well, I dunno. He is great at what he does, and he is really, really funny. He makes me laugh a lot. I wouldn't call him a friend, really, but we get along and I never have a problem working with him. But, to be kind, he has some character flaws:-) Mostly, he has issues in his relationships with women.

He is pretty good looking, can be very charming, and makes gobs of money...so he has no problem finding women. And probably wouldn't have problems keeping them, but he just likes finding new ones so much that he never sticks with one for more than a month. I wouldn't call him any nasty names, and wouldn't discourage someone from dating him...but I also wouldn't set any of my friends up with him, if that makes sense.

All of that is just background, however, for this morning's story. He stopped by on his way to get coffee to inform me:

"AM, 150 years ago, Levi Strauss invented the blue jean. And when he did so, he had in his mind the absolute perfect female form. Unfortunately, while he was a visionary, it took humans a while to evolve to the point that we could produce the ideal ass that he had in mind. This morning, though, I am pretty sure that I followed her on my walk to work.

See what I mean? Kinda charming and funny...but kinda not.

Exhausted

The weekend was awesome...wedding was fantastic, the girls did great with Grandma and Grandpa and now I need a nap to recover:-) Leave it to me to get no rest on a weekend when I have two consecutive nights to sleep as long as I want undisturbed!!!

I think my toast came out pretty well. I cut it down quite a bit, but a lot of the content was the same. It made BFFg cry, which was really my only goal:-P. She doesn't cry nearly as easily as I do, so I consider it to be an accomplishment!

No problems getting out there, which left us with some time to just hang out with the bride and her family for most of the day Friday before the rehearsal dinner. That is one of my favorite parts of wedding...the "calm before the storm" when everyone is excited, and checked into the hotel and just really riding high. It is a great time to be with the bride and groom before they are buried under wedding guests.

Two moments...one funny and one kind of touching...both related to BFFb (also, I am starting to think I should have given the BFFs less similar names...I think it is hard to keep them straight if you read fast). First, I don't think that BFFg's mother has seen Munchkin since she moved to Boston. On Friday afternoon we were in the hotel lobby waiting to assemble before heading out to dinner...BFFb was sitting on a couch talking with Munchkin, and I was talking with BFFg's Mom, maybe 25 feet away, out of earshot.

At which point she asked me if that was his new girlfriend...and thought I was joking when I told her that it was Munchkin. And then she got so emotional that she burst into tears...which made me cry. What can I say, we are women, we are weird.

Second, towards the end of the wedding, I had a lovely moment with BFFb's Mom, where she told me that she was really glad that BFFg and I were both married, because she never thought he would get married while either one of us was still single. And the thing is...I know exactly what she means, and I think she is right. It is kind of hard to explain (and she doesn't even know part of it;-)), because it has nothing to do with potentially ever being married to one of us...he is just really, really protective and loyal and devoted to us both. (Now we just need to find him a girl:-)).

Anyway, I had a great time, and danced so much that I am still sore. It was wonderful to see so many of her family that I haven't seen in forever, and she was a spectacularly radiant bride. Oh, and since The Rocket Scientist couldn't get away this weekend, Munchkin stayed with Smoking Hot Roommate...so I had The Boy all to myself all weekend long! Something about hotels...hee hee.

Random midweek things

I am re-working my toast based on your feedback, and that of some actual people that I would recognize in a bar;-) (You know, as opposed to just knowing as letters on my screen). I will let you know what the final version looks like in a day or two, or when I get back.

Munchkin is coming up on Thursday afternoon and we are leaving on Friday morning. I would have liked to get out there on Thursday to have an extra day there, but I didn't want to leave the in-laws on the hook for all of that babysitting. As it is, they will get the girls at day care on Friday and have them until Sunday evening, which is a lot:-) Everyone will do great! (It is hard to type with crossed fingers, isn't it?)

And most importantly, have you all been shopping for my birthday? I sure hope so! 29 sounds really old to me...

Also...I am strongly considering going to France with Munchkin when she goes at the end of August...more on that later.

The wedding toast approval process begins

OK...this is my current working version of my toast for BFFg's wedding. I am having trouble with the beginning, but I think I like the second half of it. Unless it is entirely too personal, which is possible.

Also, the chances of me getting through it without bawling are absolutely zero:-)

-----------------

I tried to find poems or book or songs that I could quote from to help me with this, but nothing really seemed to fit, so I am just going to tell you what I think about [BFFg] and hope that it helps you to understand exactly how special she is.

I've known [BFFg] since we were four, and I can't even imagine how life would have turned out if I didn't have her as a best friend. Both of us were only children then, and almost right away we considered each other the sisters that we wished we had. Certainly there were challenges, but when I look back...all that matters is that she and [BFFb] and I were together. We were a team, and it was the best team that a confused, insecure, slightly-neglected girl could have had.

She (and her Mom) were there when I needed a place to stay, which was entirely too often.

She was there to make me laugh when all I wanted to do was feel sorry for myself.

She was there to get into trouble with me. And then to get out of it and then to laugh about it later on.

We sat next to each other in every class we ever took in high school, when it wasn't important to anyone else that we be there. Except for each other, because we made a promise to each other that it mattered, and we take promises to ourselves seriously.

And maybe most importantly, she was there to be a sister, a friend and a guiding voice to my own sister when I couldn't be.

Frankly, life wasn't always easy, and a lot of the kids that we grew up with became victims of our environment. But we didn't. And we didn't because we were always a team. We were always a "we" and we were always together.

We started high school with nearly 800 students. 250 graduated and maybe 25 went to college. But we were two of them, and that wasn't an accident. I made it because she held me to my promise to do it, and I think she did the same.

But she was always the stronger one. She never cared what others thought as much, and she never got as discouraged as I did. We lost friends, and all I could get from it was anger and resentment...she turned that into a strengthened resolve to make ourselves better than that.

Whatever I am, she made me. Whatever she is, I would like to take just a little bit of credit. And now, here we are, almost all grown up, and we made it.

I can give no higher praise to someone than to tell him that he is worthy of her, but [Husband], I think that you are. You are the only person I ever met that I thought worth setting her up with, and I am glad to know that my instincts were that strong. You are not only is so obviously handsome, but you treat her like a princess, challenge her and he make her even better.

BFFg and I have been a team for as long as I can remember, and we still are. But now she has a new teammate, and I can tell you from 25 years of experience, [Husband], that there is nobody you'd rather have on your side.

-----------

Thoughts?

Awkward

After work yesterday, I met a couple of friends for a drink, which involved riding the Green Line about four stops. Normally I would have walked, but it was really hot and I didn't feel like getting all sweaty and gross. And of, course, the T was a mess...the train was late, one was taken out of service so there were a million people waiting to get on, so a couple in a row were packed and everyone was late and in a foul mood.

I was reading, and therefore not paying much attention, but out of nowhere, a girl reached over and tapped another girl (who was sitting, was big-chested and was wearing a very cleavage-intensive shirt) on the arm, motioned to a guy standing next to her and said:

"Excuse me, just thought you should know that this guy has been staring down your shirt since he got on the train."

AWK-WARD!!!

News! (Sort of)

Spent a glorious weekend at the beach, and am feeling a little bit fried today. I got a LOT of sun. But wishing very much that I was still there:-) It's pretty f'in hot up this way, and oh so lovely down there!

So, one of the great things about the Internet, and "virtual friends", is that you get to hear secrets long before they are public. Just as I told all of you that I was pregnant long before I announced it to "real" people (who don't read my blog:-P), several people have shared with me their quest to get pregnant, their heartbreaking failures and then their eventual successes. There is just something nice about being able to share news early on to people when you can't tell some family and friends yet.

I learned within the last week about two different people that are pregnant, and I am incredibly excited for each! Babies bring so much joy to people that really want them, and it makes me giddy to be let in on the secret early on:-). Many, many congrats to both (and the rest of you will just have to wait until they want to tell you:-P...cuz I am a good secret keeper!)

In other news, we are off to Chicago the weekend after next for BFFg's wedding, and I have been working on my toast. I am feeling an awful lot of pressure because it is really, really hard to say exactly what I want to say...and I feel the need for it to be perfect (of course!) And frankly, I am struggling to find words that have the magnitude I am looking for...English needs some better words, I think:-)

I am planning on posting it once I am done though, to get feedback:-)

Until then, enjoy the heat!

One more advantage of being a good looking girl

I would like to have an opinion on Casey Anthony's guilt or innocence, I really would, but I haven't spent more than three minutes paying attention to the whole trial. Everyone sure seems convinced that she is guilty, including Kim Kardashian, whose family is obviously a firm believer in innocence until proven guilt.

I think the part of this that I have found most interesting as a non-observer is wondering why this has become THE story. Sure, murders of little kids are not terribly common, but they do happen, and not every one of them becomes a nationwide obsession. Like, for example, this one from earlier this week. A quick Google search showed an entire family of five murdered, a woman convicted of murder for setting a fire that killed an 8 year old, and a man convicted of a second murder: he was already guilty of beating a woman to death, but he was found guilty of the murder of her baby who died nine days after being delivered after the mother died.

(I am just full of cheer today, eh?)

So, why is Casey Anthony such big news? And while we are at it (because the reason is the same), why is Amanda Knox such big news, and why was Natalie Holloway such a colossal story, when plain old vanilla murders like those happen all the time: there were 15,000 of them in the United States in 2009 alone.

Because, obviously, anything involving good looking girls gets sent straight to the front of our attention agenda. I am not really breaking any new ground here, but if Casey Anthony looked like...oh, the 199 other mothers who (allegedly, of course) killed their children last year...then she probably would have been treated like them.

So, what's my point? I dunno...it is too easy to blame "the media", because they basically just report on what we want to hear (or what they think we want to hear, at least). I don't really have anything to offer on ways we can rectify this, or even really know if it is a problem that needs fixing.

I guess, if you feel like killing someone, make sure you are a hot chick so that you get a high-profile attorney to defend you in exchange for the publicity?

Argh...this is the worst post ever!!!

Happy Long Weekend

I have absolutely nothing to say, but felt the need to check in before the long weekend. Hoping everyone has a wonderful, fun-filled long weekend!

(And for my foreign readers...sorry that you have to work on Monday, but most of you get more holidays than we do...)

We are all headed to the beach where there will be many, many people, and hopefully a little bit of sun and a lot of fun had by all.

Enjoy the fireworks!