weekend

We had a nice weekend. It started with a Friday night movie date -- The Departed, which is the first Scorsese movie I have ever wholeheartedly endorsed (Movie of the Year, you heard it here first) -- and, since it was a late one, Matt's mom slept over at our house. And got up with Lizzy the next morning, meaning we slept in until NINE THIRTY... Bliss!

Then we packed ourselves to Lizzy's weekly (I'm not joking) birthday party. This week: Bowling with Nicholas in Annandale! Tonight, I really should post a photo. Those little kids (most of them 4) were cute as snot. Well, um, even cuter than snot. Or something. They would carry the ball to the head of the lane (no small feat), then sort of hurl it down the lane -- if we parents were lucky, it traveled faster than your garden-variety snail, but not always -- and watch it gently kiss the bumper on each side from time to time, until it meandered all the way down and (again, with luck) bumped over a couple of pins. Once, a kid even picked up a spare! I guess the odds dictated that it would happen sometime. Then we -- er, uh, I mean, they -- had Cars cake. And bowling-hall pizza and fries. Yummy! Oh, and their wee shoes were so cute.

Then we stopped to get Lizzy her Halloween costume -- Belle is the princess of choice this year; Halloween stuff now 50 percent off at the Disney store -- and then to Xxxxx and Xxxxxx, where we decided they wanted too much money for drapes. I'm not sure how we came to that conclusion, since we hadn't priced them anywhere else. But I wasn't too inclined to argue, since it's true of every other dang thing at C&B.

And we had a little cleaning. A little grocery shopping. A little helping of some friends to move. A little laying of the hands to rest. A fair amount of thank you card-writing, with promises of much more to come! But it feels good, getting wedding stuff wrapped up.

Now to call the 57 businesses (rough estimate) who will want to know that I'm changing my name... Looking forward to a morning parking it in a chair at the DMV. Ugh.

Oh yeah -- I had something more to say about the party...

Out of the eight little partygoers, Lizzy was the only girl. Which I thought was super cool, and a couple of the parents commented on. She is such an adorable combo of totally girly at times, but also tough like a boy. (at times, I must emphasize. She can overdo the emotional stuff with the best of us females at other times.) Matt was saying how that boded well for the future -- navigating that sometimes challenging space of befriending both guys and gals.
I've been chewing on that ever since. What sort of personality -- or traits -- best lend themselves to this? I'm thinking, it's important not to take certain things to seriously. An easygoing nature has to be helpful here, don't you think? I'm trying to remember what sort of person I was as a teen, and who my friends were. As I recall, I was pretty much scared by the whole social interaction/practicing dating thing (no offense to those who found their true loves in high school -- it mostly seemed like practice, from an outsider's perspective). So I had female friends, almost exclusively. I think I was brave enough to talk to my friends' boyfriends, or to throw around some sports talk with some of the less 'threatening' guys. But mostly -- girls. So, lack of fear, as well, maybe? Lack of concern what people think? But if you don't care what people think, you might tend to disregard their feelings, as well. Seems a tough balancing act at times.
I was also intimidated by the more queen bee popular types. As if they truly WERE better than me, by virtue of clearly thinking it themselves. Of course, on this side of things, I realize how insecure they were, what other crud they were going through, etc.

All in all, I'm glad dating was scary for me, at that age. I'm glad I waited until much later to jump into those waters. But I do hope that Lizzy learns how to be a friend to many, if not all.