Monk is Shod

After days of gorgeous weather, we ended up with a crappy day on my day off. I shouldn’t complain though. We’re not in New Orleans.

I took Monk to a JP playgroup that I don’t normally get to go to because they always meet on Fridays. I think they were a bit taken aback when we arrived, because they seem to be a fairly tight-knit group who see each other every week, and they weren’t necessarily expecting any newcomers—especially one who looked like a crazy bag lady after walking blocks in the drizzle. By the time I got there, my hair had fuzzed into a frizzy rectangle, and my fringe had turned into two sticking out curlicues. How very attractive and glamorous. Not that glamour was the order of the day. It was a pretty crunchy group. Veggie puffs in Tupperware pretty much sums it up. Some of them were very nice, and others seemed a bit disgruntled by my presence. I got one phone number of someone who might be interested in hanging out on Wednesdays. She’s Canadian. I like Canadians. It’s so funny. In my pathetic attempts to make mommy friends I feel like some loser guy trying to get womens’ phone numbers at a bar.

I had the funniest conversation with Petra later in the day. I described the playgroup to her and she said, “But did they at least serve champagne?” It’s an expectation so monumentally out of character with that playgroup, and probably most others, and yet I know what she means. She is so used to providing this generous, expansive hospitality that she’d rather die than have people in her home and not provide them with gourmet food, wine on tap, music and dancing . I’m no Petra, but I think that if I were hosting people in my home, I’d at least manage a pot of coffee. Champagne would certainly help break the ice though, and I applaud the sentiment. Why not?

So anyway, Monk had fun, and was of course by far the largest child there, despite many of them being 18 months old. Some of the kids were so tiny and delicate, I swear their hands and feet were smaller than Monk’s were at birth! He fell asleep in the car on the way home and I carried him up to bed without waking him, but he only slept for an hour. I felt like he got shortchanged on fun today because it was too wet for the playground. In the afternoon I took him to Chestnut Hill Mall and finally got him some StrideRite walking shoes. Boy did I pull the wool over their eyes! Technically I suppose he still doesn’t meet the criteria for walking shoes, but I got a far less demanding salesperson and she sold us the shoes and even took a commemorative photo of Monk in his first official shoes and gave it to us. Then we walked around the mall, came home (and tried to get Monk to nap again, to no avail), played a bit and had dinner. Day over. It gave me a bit of a preview of what it’s going to be like in winter when we can’t really go outside at all. Ugh. I’m not looking forward to it . . .