I've always wanted to say that!
Last night my friend J called me up to ask me what I was doing today. Duh... nothing! I don't really plan things out day to day. I try to do something every couple of days, but it's never anything that is necessary to do on that one specific day. That way, I can take advantage of last-minute plans with friends. So when she asked me to meet her for lunch, I was more than up for it.
We went down to a Mexican restaurant that Kurt and I used to go to on a pretty frequent basis, but we've really gotten out of the habit.
And so for an hour, hour and a half, J and I were able to catch up with each other. She's been really busy lately; lots of things have been going on with her. So I haven't really had the opportunity to sit and catch up like we used to.
It's hard living here where I do and not be part of the workforce. I don't have many outlets to make friends, and the few places I've been to try to put myself out there have not been very fruitful. It's like being the new student in high school all over again -- everyone has their group of friends that they hang with, and they're not really willing to welcome in a new person. It'd be a different matter if I lived on base because military people just tend to gravitate towards one another. We know what the other person's going through and can easily relate. Sometimes civilians find out I'm military, and that's enough to kill the conversation. They're unwilling to put forth the effort to make friends with someone who's just going to leave in an year or so. And I look at a year as nearly forever, as transitory as I've been throughout my life. I can't fathom living in one place for 43 years, like J has. In fact, she only lives about 20 miles from the house in which she grew up. I have only been in one place for four years max, though I spent 19 years in Virginia.
All this adds up to my trying to hold on to the few friends that I've got with both hands. I try really hard to call every so often to make sure things are going all right and see how people are holding up. I knew J was getting pretty stressed out last week, so I brought her cookies. She was hugely appreciative; I don't think anyone would turn down yummy chocolate cookies!
I did have one friend down the street where the friendship just sort of poofed! into thin air. I was quite all right with that, surprisingly enough. R's son is six months younger than Gracie, but he's developmentally lightyears behind her. R kept asking me when he'd quit being quite so larval in nature (because he was just basically a lump of dough laying around the house, unless he was fussing), and I didn't know what to tell her since Grace was never larval in nature. Even when she was a newborn, she was aware and tracking everything that happened around the house. She wanted to know what all was going on and why she wasn't involved. Then when she crawled at 7 months, cruised at 7 1/2 months, and walked at 10 months, my friend started really pulling away. Still R's son isn't walking, though he's 13 months old. I don't think anything is wrong with that; every kid develops differently. But I don't think R can handle the major difference between Grace and her son.
Plus I pissed her off at one point by pointing out that one has to look at who pays for a scientific study, to make sure that the study is completely unbiased. If you've got a heart medicine that needs to be proven safe, and the drug company developing the medicine is paying for the study, that's clearly a conflict of interest. I pointed that out to her, and she got severely annoyed because in her eyes, all scientists are honest and pure and would never skew results. I'm sure most scientists are like that, but there are some who have skewed the results one way or another in order to get the desired outcome. Since she is a scientist herself, she took offense at my opinion.
Oh well.
As you can see, I'm not terribly upset by the loss of that friendship.
Speaking of childhood development, I do harbor a slight concern about Grace and her talking. She still only has about six or seven words in her vocabulary, although she's switched from "Mom" to "Mommy." Most everyone I have talked to have said that their child's vocabulary exploded between 15 and 18 months, and Grace is already nearly 20 months old. (Don't worry; if people ask me how old she is, I rarely tell them "20 months" or however old she is. I generally just say, "just over a year and a half.") However, I know she understands nearly everything I tell her because she responds appropriately. I ask her if she needs a diaper change, and she says, "yeah!" and runs off to her room. "Do you want breakfast/lunch/dinner?" and she says, "Sure!" and heads to her high chair. I ask her to throw something in the trash, and she can do it. It's really quite amazing. She does have language; I am just slightly concerned that she's too lazy to learn English, that she expects us to learn HER language.
Kurt and I think she's speaking Mandarin. Or alternately French. Too bad neither of us speak either language!