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| Labor Day 2010. Maria, we did tons of historic stuff without you on this trip! |
Knowing that Mere tends to get a little stressed, I jumped at the chance to be there for moral support, which included selling the car she has had since she was 16. An end of an era. I told her my sales pitch was going to be about how "I've known this car as long as I've known her, and it's just as stable and reliable as our friendship."
Sadly it didn't come to that. The first person who saw it bought it without even taking it for a test drive. Quite a bit of faith for a 1996 Ford Explorer. (Tangent: Meredith initially tried to list the car for the ambitious price of $2500, but it didn't get much interest. She told me she might need to "pimp me out in a bikini on the hood." I assured her that would not do her any favors at this point in December. Slashing the price in half proved to be a much better option.)
All in all, it was a great trip - the fourth I've taken to see her there - and I realized that I'm not just sad she's leaving, I'm disappointed to lose my favorite go-to weekend destination. Hopefully, though, I'll still make it down there occassionally, especially since I made a new friend while I was there (Hi Carin!), and reacquainted with an old one.
The highlight of the trip - besides, of course, witnessing the parade of Craiglist humanity marching through Meredith's apartment - was getting together with one of my oldest family friends who moved there in the fall. He's the son of my parents' best friends from college, and his mom is the equivalent of my Fairy Godmother. She provides support, encouragement, advice, amazing hostessing, and "just for fun" gifts. Abra cadabra!
So anyway, her son and I have known each other since I was born and he was a toddler. Recently his dad put together a funny video montage of our families' visits over the years, and I'm pretty sure it shows him dumping me out of a hammock of something. Thanks.
But since those frequent childhood visits, we haven't seen each other in years. The better part of a decade maybe - I must have been in high school and he had just started undergrad at Harvard? Anyway, now that he's back on the East Coast (and newly single), our mothers have been encouraging the idea that we rendezvous. I mean, it is Match.Mom after all. What else would you expect?
My visit to see Meredith was the perfect opportunity since she's one of the girls who has participated in turning his childhood domain into our Wedding Central Sorority House 2.0. As my mom would say, "It's fun to connect the dots."
We went to Michel Richard's Central, one of Meredith's favorites, and it was a fantastic meal. The food and the company. Afterward we both concluded: He's a catch.
He's notoriously brilliant (you might have guessed from the Harvard mention), and that's pretty much been the main thing I've known about him over the years. But it also turns out that he's cute, charming, and fun.
I would make a joke about how my parents should start working on my Arranged Marriage Dowry, but I'm afraid either (or both) of our mothers might spontaneously combust. And we can't have that happen right before Christmas, now can we? Nothing spoils the holidays like spontaneous combustion...
Plus that whole he lives in another city deterrent. And as this blog as my witness, I am not going down that path again.
(But obviously I'm the biggest blog hypocrite of all time - after my passionate protest against them, I had like 400 iced coffees this summer! - so really what do my promises mean anyway? Note to self: Consider a future in politics.)
P dot S: While taking advantage of the drizzly-weather-slash-TBS-plays-awesome-movies combination we watched Father of the Bride (Pts I and II) before I left on Sunday, analyzing them both for the millionth time. (Why was George Banks so against change!?)
It made me realize how proud I am of Meredith for embracing this transition much better than Steve Martin's iconic character would have.
(And because I'm a self-important name dropper who loves to make parenthetical asides, I'd like to take this time to remind you that Steve and I run in the same social circles these days. And I never would have demanded a refund.)
That is all.
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