online rejection

because i am new in my town and through a series of unfortunate events ended up homeschooling my son, i haven't made a lot of friends. well, i tell myself those are the reasons for my lack of friends. and as a pathetic attempt to remedy this, i decided to join an online but local homeschooling group. as i perused the posts from other women in my area unfortunate enough to homeschool, i realized why i have such difficulty finding friends. i had ruled out several of the group members as potential friends based solely on their children's names. i know, this seems harsh. but seriously, i don't see my son mac getting together to obsess over video games with aspen and cedar. similarly, i ruled out several members based solely on their usernames, including cooksfromscratch, myhighercalling, birthchic (this one just grossed me out a little) and faith41jesus. i rejected another member because she was selling a book called "baking with whole grains," which she described as emphasizing "a biblical creation perspective." seriously? a book on baking with whole grains managed to squeeze in some biblical creation? i almost bought the book from her just to see how one might accomplish such a daunting writing task. but this is the problem with trying to find friends online - you don't see the whole package. in person, despite baking with whole grains, this person may actually dislike her kids, drink too much, and possess all of the other qualities i am looking for in a friend. i mean, afterall, she is selling the book. or maybe she bought the book to torture her children by feeding them whole grains and simultaneously emphasizing biblical creation. or maybe the book was a gift from a friend she met online, perhaps faith41jesus. so as i went down the list of group members, rejecting them one-by-one for their virtual flaws, i realized, i need to get out more. i am much more confident in my ability to reject people in person.

foreign distractions

today i decided to call myself a writer. and not just because i got this cool leather-bound journal that makes me look like a writer. i decided to call myself a writer because i have officially set myself up for rejection by a real literary agent. i emailed this agent that recently spoke at a writers conference in my area. i guess though if i were a real writer, i would have attended the conference. and if i were a real writer, i wouldn't be sitting here at starbucks, trying to write in my new fancy journal but completely distracted by the people beside me speaking a foreign language. sadly, i am not worldly enough to recognize the language - perhaps french? and really, they aren't bad looking people. but i believe that speaking another language, or speaking english with a heavy accent of almost any kind, automatically makes you more attractive. for instance, we recently went skiing and my son's ski instructor was very nice and not unattractive, although he did have a substantial gap between his front teeth. when he spoke, however, it was with a fantastic british accent. it occurred to me then that with an accent, you really can get away with more physical flaws than you can without an accent. had andy, the gap-toothed instructor, been from south georgia, he would have been nothing short of hideous. okay, that may be an exaggeration but you get my point - that if you are unattractive, you should move to another country where you might be more appreciated. and speaking of appreciated, i need to go and check my email for rejection, something that if i am going to be a real writer, i should get used to.

green with irritation

i went for a run the other day in my new town. the run ended in 5-points, an area of town that thinks a lot of itself. because there is an earth fare (over-priced specialty grocery store) in 5-points, i decided on the spur of the moment to pick up my kids' organic gummy vitamins. but on the way to the vitamins, i picked up some fancy cheese, some special crackers, a bottled water (because i was thirsty) and a few other items. well, because it was on the spur of the moment, i did not bring my own grocery bags despite that i am an avid recycler and reuser - and by avid, i mean obsessive. so i put my items on the belt and the cashier rang them up and pushed them on down the line. i swiped my card and the transaction was complete. only my groceries were still sitting there on the giant silver tray. the tray that up to this point i had considered to be a holding area until the cashier or i placed the grocery items into a receptacle that i would then transport to my vehicle. however, no such receptacle presented itself. and the cashier looked at me and i at him until finally, the silence was broken by his statement that i could pay five cents for a bag or i could carry my groceries out without one. trying to explain to him that i usually brought bags was like trying to explain to the guy at the liquor store that all three six-packs were not for me. futile. we ended up compromising - apparently the cashier could provide me with a box to carry my purchased items in and then we would be reusing a box and the store would not charge me for that. so i took my box of organic and special things to my car and everyone was happy. well, happy might be an overstatement.

college kids

my husband steve and i had a date tonight. our plan was to go downtown and have dinner and then go to this bar and see a band that we have been wanting to see. unfortunately though, steve was on call for our date. we left our house at 6:30 and in the 15-minute drive to downtown athens, his phone rang no less than seven times. and as it turns out, someone had broken or severed or dislocated something or other and he had to go in and deal with it. rather than wait at his office, i decided i could better spend my time downtown. so he dropped me off.

spring break is over and the college kids are in abundance at all of the downtown bars at 7pm on a friday night. i stopped by the globe, a bar that has been on the corner of clayton and lumpkin for a million years and has beers from around the world. i had a local pale ale. as a side note, i was sitting in front of a sign that said (and i am quoting exactly) "we go to jail if we fail to check your ID. please have IDs ready when ordering alcohol." i wasn't carded. so i finished my ale and i headed over to the restaurant where we were planning to eat dinner, the last resort. i managed to secure a spot at the bar alone and immediately thereafter, a swarm of college girls descended on the bar, completely surrounding me. i didn't intend to eavesdrop, but i couldn't help myself, i was alone at the bar, surrounded by beautiful young girls chattering away - about nothing. the conversations were so stupid and meaningless that it made me quickly try to remember whether i, too, had had such stupid and meaningless conversations at bars while seated beside real people, desperate for a night out away from their children. i decided that my conversations may have only been slightly more meaningful. but it made me realize that i didn't want to be that young and stupid again. and that it is totally overrated. i mean really, when you take away the freedom, the friends and parties, the total lack of responsibility, the tighter, firmer skin, the perkier breasts, the thicker hair, the better attitudes, the ability to drink more and stay out later, the flat stomach and the ability to recover from a hangover by having a mcdonald's cheeseburger and a large coke, there really wasn't anything that special about it.

eventually steve arrived and after checking with the hostess and realizing we still had an hour and a half wait for our table and a babysitter on the clock, we decided to head on home. we picked up some pizza on the way and headed back to our more responsible and important lives.