3rd Time's the Charm?

It has now been 2 years since we moved to North Carolina. In that time, we have made a handfull of friends whom I really like. There's Kevin and Shawna, the future architect. There's Kyle and Jennifer, the sweet-as-sugar opera singer with a much dirtier mind than you might think. And of course, there's Mark, my male substitue for george. This is our posse. When we have friends over for dinner, these are the people we invite.

But as much as I love this gang of ours, there's something missing. I've had a little bit of trouble finding girlfriends of my own - women whom I really click with on a deep level who I happened to meet without any aid from Tim. With help from the internet, I've met many women here, but before now only 2 of them really clicked with me. The first gal pal I met was Pam, the wine distributor. Pam is really great and she always seemed thrilled to hang out and talk with me, but she had an extremely busy work and social life and ... well, she just didn't have time for me. Plus I got the impression that she hates children & that rubbed me the wrong way (Being Child-Free-By-Choice is one thing. Frequently voicing your dislike of children is another). Next I met Laura - aka Haliburton. Laura was fun & I had a good time hanging out with her & I get the feeling that I was her favorite of all of the friends she made here. But then her husband lost his job and she moved to Austin. Besides, she and I disagreed on a lot of political issues, so sometimes there was a bit of an elephant in the room. Not ideal.

The 3rd time is the charm, so they say. I hope they're right.


Back in January at a big Girls Night Out thingamy, I met Stephanie. She and I had written back and forth & I had a feeling we'd get along, so I was eager to see her face-to-face. We hit it off and I was blown away by her coolness. A few weeks later she invited me out to lunch, but that turned out to be the day that Millie came home to live with us (amongst other things), so I had to cancel. Well, on my birthday Tim and I had a conversation and one of the goals we set for me was to work on this girlfriend issue again. But how? The answer came to me in an e-mail last week. The e-mail was a reminder that Saturday was the annual Handmade Market - an indie artsy craft fair that features a lot of local talent with shops on Etsy. I had a sneaking suspicion that Stephanie would like it, so with some encouragement from Tim, I wrote to her on Friday & asked her if she wanted to carpool. Turns out that my instincts were correct & she was extremely interested in the Handmade Market, so we arranged to go together. Yay!

Stephanie is so cool. Much cooler than me, I think. She's smart and talented and just all-around great. We like so many of the same things it's a bit ridiculous. We read the same magazines, frequent the same websites, vote for the same people, listen to the same music. For heaven's sake, she watches Project Runway and Top Gear. When she discovered this last factoid, Stephanie practically squealed with delight; "You're the only other woman I know who watches Top Gear!" So things are looking up.

Stephanie and I both have gardening on our mind lately and she discovered a nursery in Chapel Hill that we want to check out. Why this particular nursery? Because they carry a plant called "Wulfenii Spurge". We feel that any plant with a name as scrumptious as that warrants further investigation.

You see? I had a feeling that the number 3 would treat me well this year.