Last night I did the hip mama thing with Opera Sarah. It was a tiny escape: the Boy took care of his boy and I was free to be an independent adult. We went to see Ariel Gore (editrix of Hip Mama) speak in a bookstore on the Danforth, and spent the entire night gossiping & telling stories & trading confidences. By promising to bring over my entire stock of maternity clothes, I also got dinner out of the deal. Sarah (professionally known as the Singing Chef) is a wonderful cook and I love being cooked for.

One of the interesting things that I came away with was a new perspective on the web of mutual friends we hold in common. I had always assumed that these people knew each other longer and better than I ever could; it had never occurred to me that I could be closer to even a few of them.

Which kind of reminds me of something from Sarah's wedding reception last week: I spent a great deal of the night drinking & chatting with as many people as I could fit into my sphere of vision, and I had a grand time doing so. But there was one person with whom I reasonably expected to converse, who stayed away from me all evening. He's stayed away from me for about 3 years now, since before I returned from Nova Gothic, and I have no idea why he doesn't want to talk to me anymore. Even his partner – whom I've met only a handful of times, and with whom I'd had exactly one conversation before that night – started talking to me in a friendly fashion.

She didn't remember me, of course. When I told her that I used to know her partner, I struggled for a moment to find some way of encapsulating our past friendship. I came up empty, of course. That made me really sad; that feeling that I've fallen out of touch with the 24-year-old me who used to know this person. Me, the queen of the giddy encapsulation, had nothing to say.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the glorious night I spent with Sarah. I need more tiny escapes in my future: tiny bubbles of listening & talking & eating. (For two people who never stop talking, we sure get a lot of eating done between the two-and-a-half of us.)

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 10/24/2004 08:54:00 p.m.