Everybody Loves a Monkey

Alright, so the food party...where to start.

It started at 6:30 so I waited until I saw other ladies arriving. The party was across the street at my neighbor J's house. Her hubby R was the "helper" but not really socializing with anyone, just feeding and drinking all the ladies. He saved me a couple times by chatting, but I think he was under strict instructions NOT to socialize.

So I get there, two other ladies were there, I think they worked in the hospital like J. Then two other ladies showed up and another... there were probably 10 of us. Only one of the neighbor ladies showed up. She's tiny and lives two doors away from me. She has a son who is... uh, well not exactly well behaved. In fact, my lil monster came in EARLY from playing in the snow because he was being mean and stuffing snowballs down her jacket. Punk. Lucky I didn't see that or he would have been white washed!

Anyway, so I wined, as much as possible, tried the tiniest of samples, black bean/corn salsa, cheese balls, angel food cakes, blah. I really didn't try much of anything, except the wine. So that was pretty good.

Not very social women, well, if you don't work in the hospital. I tried talking a couple times but was ignored so I gave that up. Then that neighbor lady of mine started talking to me. She's one of those tiny cute sweet loud people. She was complaining about her son's blackbelt class being canceled and how the dojo is going to hear it from her this time! (Let me just say that her son is singed up for these classes where it's not scheduled, it's one of those, 4 classes a day, 4 days a week, pick whatever one you want to go to at any time and just go. She's complaining about ONE class... that was canceled. ) Anyway, so we got to talking and I told her Babe noticed the Formula Ford in their garage when we first moved in and it made him miss racing. She said her husband races Formula Mazdas now. Long story short, her husband is racing in the same series that Babe raced in a couple years back. I LOVED going to the races with him. Small world, working with the same people, same race tracks. IT was actually really cool to know, we have so much in common through our husbands. Her husband showed up to walk J's daughter home and she introduced me to him and we chatted for a bit. Very interesting. I told Babe about it later. Small world, I tell ya. I told the wife, can't remember her name for the life of me, that we should sign them up and get a group discount... LOL.. I'd love to get him back into racing. I know he misses it so much.

Anyway, so after that, with J's daughter home, she comes over and gives me a giant hug. I really do like the kid a lot, but her parents have a really really difficult time with her. I'm talking 25 minutes to get her to brush her teeth and 45 minutes to get her to put her PJs on and go to bed... In my world, at 7 yrs old, that's unacceptable. So last night I said to her "So what's this I hear about you not wanting to brush your teeth? What's the big deal?" She told me that she doesn't mind brushing her teeth. SHe doesn't know why she makes such a big deal of it. (read: it's her parents and the entertaining her bratty behavior) So I asked about her toothbrushes and she described them and then brought me upstairs to look at them and showed me her bedroom... Then I found them. SHe's got all the Shel Silverstein books that I love reading to H. I loved them growing up too and still love them. SHe loves them too! We read a couple poems and I said, I'll make you a deal... I'll read you my favorite poem, while you brush your teeth. What did she say? OKAY! So I read Sick to her while she brushed. Just that easy. Her stepdad came up and then turned right around saying "I'm not going to interrupt the peaceful beauty that's going on up here." and went right back downstairs.

After hanging with her for a bit, I went back downstairs and chatted for a bit and went home.

I didn't really talk to anyone else at the party. J and R... the neighbor. Just as I had suspected. The other women stayed in their little hospital clicks, blah blah blah...whatever. Same ole same ole.

Thank god that's over. I went home, crawled into bed with Babe, told him about the party and went to bed. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ