Artificially Sweetened

In which I ramble and offend just about everyone

What do you call someone who is teetering on that fine line between acquaintance and friend?

There is this woman, a friend? I will call her Hippie Sunshine, although that is not, believe it or not, her real name. I am sure she would say we are her friends, because she is of that sort of person who takes ownership of everything around her and makes it a reflection of her. I say that and it sounds like I dislike her. Sometimes I do.

But Hippie Sunshine is so well-meaning, it’s hard to dislike her. She’s horrifically insensitive at times, but it’s the kind of insensitivity that reminds me of our fat white cat, who can’t swish his tail without inadvertantly knocking over glasses of water.

And what does she do for a living, this acquaintance friend friendquaintance Hippie Sunshine? Why she teaches multi-cultural education, of course, this labrys wimmin wuving wimmin she.

She is so eager for us to have a child. She thinks we will make great parents. She asks us every time she’s sees us how it’s going. She tells other people without even asking us that we are trying because they are trying too and we should know each other. And she tells us (without asking them) that by the way the friendly mullety lesbians on the other blanket at her picnic are going to start trying to have a baby too.

What do you call someone like that? A faquaintance? I ask Pili.

Oh GOD NO! That sounds too much like fuck buddy, and eww, ewww no no none of that. Says Pili.

So we send her an invitation to our pride bbq and ask if she will kindly pass the invitation along to those other nice mullety lesbians who were at her picnic. She responds: “The other friends you mentioned are X and Y. They are fine * My partner went to the baby shower on Saturday (I was out of town) *- the baby is due in three weeks.”

The BABY IS DUE IN THREE WEEKS. THE BABY, of the no-spring-chicken-mullety-lesbians, who were just starting to try last labor day weekend. The if-you-thought-for-a-minute-
maybe-you-would-realize-this-is-a-bit-of-a-sore-spot-for-us BABY is due in three weeks. Crappity crap crap crap on a hot crap roof. And she sticks this in a email without even the slightest caution, as if we of course knew that her random mullety lesbian friends were pregnant. So I say to Pili that I think Hippie Sunshine really needs to go to a sensitivity class. Which is hilarious, because of course, Hippie Sunshine? Teaches sensitivity classes.

In Other News:

Pili has to order her birth certificate from the town of her birth, because it is locked up in a safe deposit box and her mother has lost the key, and god only knows how long it will take the gentle hippies in the town of her birth to wave sage over the birth records until the stars are aligned correctly. And do I get any credit folks, for having both my birth certificate and my passport safely stored in my Important Documents file? I’m not kidding, it’s filed under I, for Important Documents.

We are having a bbq on Saturday. Pili gets to show off her mad grilling skillz with her new gas grill. Going to pride in the City That Always Sleeps gives me new perspective on the six frickin hour long pride parade in Very Flat Cosmopolitan City, where we bitched about the beer sponsorships and the endless cars full of politicians slowing down the good stuff, i.e. Dykes on Bikes.

In retrospect, those cars full of politicians seem kind of nice. It feels good to know that you’re enough of a voting bloc that politicians feel like they have to show up and sit in the hot sun for six hours in your parade even if they are running for assistant commisioner of public lavatories and couldn’t care less about the gay vote. On second thought, the assistant commisioner of public lavatories… never mind.

So yeah, anyway, not many politicians in the pride parade here. And last year we showed up half an hour late and almost missed the whole thing.

We met with the Social Worker, Mrs. Vaseline Teeth, today. She urged us to be circumspect, because if we went down to Guatemala and were publically affectionate Guatemala could go the way of China. Thanks, Mrs. Vaseline Teeth, for pointing out the obvious. Now if Pili and I were smooching passionately in her office, or even holding hands, I could understand this, but we are sitting with a good three feet of space between us and in fact I am worried that we are too far apart and look like we don’t really love each other. Mrs. Vaseline Teeth annoys the living daylights out of me, but she is reported to Get Things Done, and I don’t know anyone else around here who has an alternative to recommend.

Wait a minute. We met with the social worker. We filled out forms. We’re gonna have a baby! Hooray!