New friend

I made a new friend yesterday. Aren't you excited?

I met Melissa (not my new friend. confusing, I know. just stay tuned.) when I was on my expedition in Nova Scotia. She was my roommate and altogether my bestie on the trip. She lives in San Francisco and has a really hot Argentinian husband named Martin (pronounced Mar-TEEN). He is funny and Skyped with her (and inadvertently me) pretty often while we were gone. Anyway, digress digress, Melissa told me one night during our late night slumber party I-can't-fall-asleep-yet-Can-you? chats that her friend Rebecca (yes! my new friend!) had recently moved to a Seattle suburb (Redmond, land of Microsoft) in the fall of last year with her husband and was hating it. This was no surprise to me because I would hate moving from Seattle to a suburb of San Francisco just the same. I would also hate moving from Seattle to Redmond. It's just not a lateral move. Well, she also had a baby and decided to be a stay at home mom at the same time as they moved so now she's in all kinds of newness that one needs to adjust to and can't adjust to with ease without any friends nearby. So, long story short (I know, too late), we agreed I should connect with Rebecca when I got back home.

Fast forward to yesterday. We had our first date. We agreed to meet in Redmond because she doesn't know how to get anywhere (which could be considered strange since she's been here almost a year, but is not really the point here). I got to Starbucks to meet her and I realized I didn't know what she looked like. Oops. We never even told one another what to look for. I was nervous. Then I saw her. She looked really scared and she had a stroller in hand. Bingo! We hugged, started talking non-stop, laughed about her crazy neighbor (seriously more crazy than my crazy ex-landlord.) ate Thai food, walked so baby Lila could fall asleep, and went to World Market to touch everything. We then went into TOP Foods so Rebecca could get some blueberries and lemons only to discover that particular location was going out of business. Everything was 25% off. If you bought 4 bottles of wine, it was 35% off. And that pressed the crazy button in our minds and we began to shop for wine like we were never going to see it again after this moment. We each bought 4 bottles. Then she realized it would be cheaper to get diapers on sale there too. And formula. And soap. And chipotle peppers. And we made it through the register and realized we were parked nowhere near the store because we had walked so far to encourage Lila to fall asleep. CRAP! So we loaded up the stroller with wine bottles (trashy!) and balanced the diaper packages on the top (trashy!) and found other nooks and crannies for the peppers and formula. And we walked....and walked....and walked. We had been so lost in conversation, we never even noticed how far we'd initally walked. I also hadn't noticed how late it had gotten and essentially tried to make it back to the city during rush hour so what took me 20 minutes to drive in order to get there took me AN HOUR to drive home. But it was worth it.

I don't know if it's just her desperation to have friends or if we really had a magical insta-matic connection, but we've already planned date 2 for Sunday evening at her place. That will make 6 friend dates this week! I don't know if my social calendar has been this full since 2005 when I was in the heyday of my partygirl ways. At least I'll remember these evenings, which is more than I can say for the ones I had back then. But that would be a post for another day.