Heather's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 6/21/03 -------------------- 5/5/03 3/19/03 3/5/03 1/25/03 1/9/03 12/20/02 11/30/02 11/7/02 10/31/02 10/19/02 -------------------- Heather's Introduction

Introduction

So...I've been busy with the end of term stuff and Christmas, so I've only been able to finish part of the entry on the Diary Writers Meeting. But I've decided to just post what I have finished and then try to do the rest before Christmas. Today is my birthday and only hours ago John took me out to my favorite nice restaurant. I had the Blackened Elk Medallions in a Pinot Noir Glace topped with bacon and bleu cheese, several glasses of excellent wine, and, for dessert, shared a piece of carmelized apple cheesecake topped with brandied carmel. It was heavenly, especially considering that I wasn't pulling out bottles or distracting a bored and hungry child with crayons and/or crackers.

After dinner we headed to the mall where I bought the most delightful Hello Kitty "I Love Punk" sweatshirt and super cute jeans (trust me, they're just smashing). Rounding out the night was the completion at aformentioned mall of our Christmas shopping and lots of talking and laughing, sans kids.

But I'm babbling here. So, without further ado - here's the first of a two-part piece on the Diary Writers Meeting, set in Seattle, Washington, November Thirtieth, the year of our Lord, two-thousand and two.




The Diary Writers Meet: Christina, Jeanette, Jessica and Heather in Seattle

The first, and last, time I went out on a blind-date was in the same year Jodi won the little gold man for Silence of the Lambs and the elder Bush was president. It was pretty bad. My friend set me up with her boyfriend’s cousin on her mom’s side and despite talking to him on the phone twice before meeting in person I was broad sided by my date’s excessively eccentric personality. Somewhere between the tenth game of pinball at the arcade and being informed that my date considered himself a “wizard” (of what – poor taste?) I realized that, in fact, blind dates were not always good. By the time Mr. Wizard was regaling me with his various hypothetical battles (“Okay! Who do you think would win between Boba Fett and Khan? What if Khan had those ear-bug-thingies with him? What if Boba Fett was backed by Jabba? Do you mind if I finish your soda for you?”) I was willing to feign a burst appendix just to be rid of him. Hell, I was willing to stab myself repeatedly in the eye with a dirty fork, this guy was so unappealing.

So to say that I was a little nervous to meet Jeanette and Jessica would have been an understatement. I mean, what if I didn’t like them? Or worse what if they weren’t like me at all? John put it a little more directly:

“What if they’re crazy axe-murderers who prey on people over the Internet so they can spirit them away to their secret hiding place on a deserted island in the Puget Sound?”

“They’re not axe-murderers!”

“What if they’re NRA members?”

(thoughtful pause)
“What was the first option again?”

It went something like that. Anyway, on with the story.

But I wasn’t just going blindly into hanging out with a group of people I’d never met. In August Christina (Mom’s Today Writer) and I had met up, with our respective progeny, at the IKEA in Renton, Washington for shopping and chatting. It was a great visit (aside from the fact that she described me as “soft-spoken” in her journal. I’m not soft-spoken! I swear!) and Christina put me at ease the moment we met the first time. I could tell she was intelligent and thoughtful (read: not an axe-murderer) and we got along really well. Since Christina was coming along this time I knew I’d at least have someone to talk with if I didn’t hit it off with the rest of the girls (read: someone to help me escape from the deserted island in the Sound).

Saturday morning finally arrived and I had packed and re-packed my favorite Land’s End bag three times before 10AM. I wasn’t sure what to bring, what to wear. In the end it was sweaters and my favorite pairs of jeans and chords – nothing fancy at all. The plan was to meet up at IKEA again, do some shopping, and then head off to Jessica’s house for dinner, margaritas and chatting. The weather in Portland was perfect when I left the house at 11, and I couldn’t wait to hit the open road.

I would have to wait, though, because the car was in need of a serious cleaning and I know all axe-murderers are especially fond of vacuumed floor mats. I took the car to the wash, and then even stopped to empty out all the trash and toys and crap the seats had picked up since the last time I had gone to such trouble. Which may have been before Giselle was born, but who knows? I vacuumed as best I could – really, the kids are thrashers when it comes to anything upholstered – and I made a pass with the Armorall. I had removed all the car seats and left them at the house just in case we needed to use my car for anything (read: it’s much easier to escape from the trunk without the car seats in the way). The only thing left now was to pick up the avocados I had promised to bring for our fiesta. I swung by Albertson’s, picked up four ripe looking specimens and a Venti Caramel Apple Cider from the Starbucks next door, and I was finally on my way.

By now it was about 11:45, and this meant that I had 2 hours, 45 minutes before I needed to be at IKEA. “Perfect!” I thought as I chucked the 101 Kids Songs CD into the back seat. With Pearl Jam and Nirvana blasting I hit I-5 at 75 mph.

I would have been on time, I swear, had an accident in Centralia not set me back. Not an accident I had, mind you, but someone else’s accident that set me back ten minutes or so. It meant that I got to Renton 15 or 20 minutes after I had originally planned. I managed to make it to IKEA and swerve into a just-opened parking space in the second covered-parking structure (remember, it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. At IKEA. Need I say more?). Personally I felt lucky, and hopped out with my purse in hand. I was about to meet Jeanette and Jessica. And, as if that wasn’t stressful enough, meeting these two well-spoken women of the Moms Today board, I was meeting two of their friends – Melissa (Jessica’s friend) and Debbie (Jeanette’s friend). And Christina.

I crossed the street, went through the first covered parking lot, and right into the front door. Instantly I knew who they were. Mostly because there usually aren’t 5 women standing around staring at a front door like that, but also because they just looked exactly how I thought they would. And none looked like axe-murderers. We all said hello and exchanged pleasantries. Jessica and Melissa had their wee daughters with them and we grabbed a couple of carts and started off into the throng of IKEA shoppers.

It was a little crazy in there. IKEA is shaped…well…it’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s horseshoe shaped. It moves really well though and you go through show rooms and then onto the various shopping areas for each specific room. You know, kitchen, bathroom, all that. We browsed and chatted. It was weird at first, primarily because it was so noisy and crowded, but I think it also worked really well. I talked to Jessica for a while, and then suddenly Melissa appeared and we chatted about something while looking over children’s toys. Then Christina would come up and the same thing, and then Debbie, and then Jeanette. It was a good, easy way to get to know each other and sort of break that initial trepidation everyone has upon meeting someone you feel as though you know through and through but that you’ve never seen in person. Jeanette, poor Jeanette, was smitten with all things IKEA, though, and I heard the sentence, “I wish they had this in Arizona!” about 100 times. She argued with herself, tried to calculate shipping charges, and debated over the fragility of several items that may have been small enough to carry in her luggage home. If it wasn’t for that damnedable 1500-mile stretch between Washington and the Sun State, I’m sure her house would be adorned with Swedish-inspired furniture and textiles in every corner.

Whilst experiencing IKEA (because “experiencing” is really the only word that will do) I started getting to really know these women. Only so much can be conveyed over the computer screen (I’m certain they were saying the same about me…) and I found interesting things about them all. Jeanette, for example, was wonderfully excited about being there, was chatty and gregarious, even while lingering over every display and item, falling far behind several times. Debbie had a delightful Canadian accent and attitude that was refreshing. Melissa was both refined and completely genuine – a difficult, if not almost impossible, set of attributes to combine. Christina was unfailingly sweet and talkative and was perfect to talk “baby talk” with. Jessica was animated and clever and bright – even Hana’s face would light up when her mom talked. What was nice was that these first impressions weren’t, at least in my estimation, that far off from the way everyone acted and interacted later on.

We spent a few hours shopping at IKEA and then decided that it was getting late and we needed to head towards Jessica’s house. We needed to fix dinner, drink margaritas, talk, drink margaritas, discuss all things baby, drink margaritas and, of course, drink margaritas. The drive home was, in all seriousness, frightening for me for two good reasons: 1- I don’t know Seattle all that well and 2 – I was pulling up the rear of a four-car entourage that was attempting to make it from Renton (South of Seattle) to the Northern area of Seattle in 5 o’clock traffic on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. To combat this obviously difficult scenario I decided that a nice, loud rap CD would be the best accompaniment to my campaign up I-5. It worked, and, aside from a few jerks that insisted on cutting me off, the whole episode was quick and not too horrible.


(Part II soon....)