I'm Blogging About a Lunch I Was Invited to Because I Have a Blog

So remember a few months back when I had my first face-to-face meet up with a blogger? Remember how I kicked my shoe off in her face and made her look at a dead cockroach? Well, this past weekend I had my second blogger meet up and I have to say, it went about the same.

The lovely Kristina from Pulsipher Predilections (she’s a big deal, yo) hosted her third lunch for local Utah bloggers to meet, eat and cackle out loud about how hairy David Hasselhoff is. Okay, that last bit about cackling about the Hoff’s hairiness might have only been me.

Anyway, like any other blogger out there who is getting ready for a meet up with another blogger, I was super nervous. Would they like me? Would I make an ass out of myself? Would my hair sit right? I was hoping all signs would point to YES.

I believe there were close to 30 lovely blogging ladies lunching Saturday and everyone was wonderful and so much fun to talk to. When I reached the banquet room at the top of the stairs, I made an immediate bee-line for one of my favorite people, Green Jello from May You Lead An Interesting Life. She claims she saw me first because my poofy hair preceded me by about four seconds. Four seconds, Green Jello? Really? All the rain must have matted my hair down a little. Typically, with weather permitting, my mane has a six second lead on me everywhere I go.

Here’s a picture of Green Jello and me with wide smiles and full bellies.

Here’s Green Jello with admitted lurker and stalker of Green Jello, Val of the South. She blogs over at Livin' la Vida Utah!. She’s awesome. She made me laugh. Then I challenged her to a drag race on I-15. Wisely, Val declined. She claimed she had errands to run. I claim she was chicken.

Here’s Kristina shouting at me that she’ll cut me if I post this picture of her online. Oh Kristina, you are so funny. When you weren't looking I rummaged through your purse and aside from a pair of tweezers and a Kenny Loggins Greatest Hits CD, you're totally harmless.

Here’s a blurry picture of Green Jello, me and the hilarious S of Lady of Perpetual Chaos. (I swiped this image from Kristina's site.)

I’m so glad I was seated near S as I’m pretty sure she could be a stand up comedian if she wanted to. You know how people tell you stories about their children and sometimes you’re all um, yeah….uh huh….okay, are you done now? Well not with S. She had the wittiest way about her and I left wanting to hear more of her tales but I was fearful she would get nervous, call the authorities and have a protective order issued against me if I kept up with all the questions. And folks, I just can’t have another one of those blemishes on my record.

Here’s all the ladies that attended the lunch on Saturday. Kristina and Green Jello both claimed to be giants and quite tall, but, um hello! look where the line peaks at its tallest. It begins and ends with my hair. And if you were paying attention from earlier in this post, you would recall that my hair was matted down from the rain.

One of the more unlikely highlights of the lunch was when two women approached me when they heard that I was a friend of a “famous blogger”. They were giddy like schoolgirls as they probed me with questions about their cyber crush, Captain Dumbass over at Us and Them.

Girls: Are you really friends with him?
Me: If the money’s right.
Girls: Is he really that funny in real life?
Me: No. Not even close.
Girls: (blank and horrified stares)
Me: You know? I don’t even think those are his kids in the photos that he posts. And the bald guy? I hear he’s just one of those stock photography models. No one really knows who the Captain is or what he looks like.

I spent the rest of the lunch dropping his name randomly into conversations in the hopes that my one-degree of separation from greatness would earn me a free pasta lunch, but all the Captain’s name brought me was a second refill on my lemonade.

As a side note: I contacted the Captain yesterday (can you hear the squeals all the way from Utah?) to tell him just how far reaching his fame had become. During the conversation I inadvertently offended him by referring to him as a slightly older, okay really older, version of a Jonas brother, but with way less hair.

The Captain seriously has no idea how big the Jonai or his bald head are in our fair state.

What Happens When You Meet Me

Before we left for our Moab trip last week, one of my favorite bloggers, Green Jello (GJ) at May You Lead An Interesting Life and a local gal to boot, emailed me to say that she would also be vacationing in Moab at the same time. Holla! We traded phone numbers, departure times and lodging information. If the sun, moon and Jeep Safari trails all aligned, GJ and I would surely meet face to face.

Thursday afternoon GJ texts me to let me know she’s only 30 minutes outside of town. Me? Why, I’m at a small dive arcade with two small children, the eldest of which screaming “Fiery Fist of Pain!” because he spies a run down roller coaster outside. Rather than expose GJ to that, I offer to meet her in a drug store parking lot because I’m classy like that.

GJ kindly insists to meet up at the arcade since her children might find it mildly entertaining. I warn her with buzz words like “lame” and “salmonella poisoning” but do not go so far as to mention the dead cockroach in the women’s bathroom or the “Play at your own risk! NO REFUNDS!” signs hanging about. I also decide against telling her about the hi-hop dance tutorial DVD that the teens tending the arcade are pretending not to watch every time I re-enter the lobby. That spectacle will be a nice little surprise for her.

I’ve always pictured what it would be like to meet my very first blogger face to face. I imagined that I would spend hours obsessing on what I should wear. I would apply extra shine elixir to my hair and maybe even splurge on a festive mani-pedi for the occasion. I would breeze through the doors at the Starbucks where we have arranged to meet and the whoosh of the double doors would create a small breeze that would blow my hair back dramatically. Of course the sun would graze my face in such a way so that my Bare Minerals foundation would do its job and make my skin appear flawless. All of this, of course, happening simultaneously as music from a cool new band that no one’s even heard of yet is piped through the speakers.

How. It. Really. Went. Down.

I’m in the women’s bathroom arcade, the one with a lock on the outside of the door, not the inside with my two children. I’m bent over desperately trying to pry my four-year old and 18-month old off the floor and shouting things like, “Don’t touch!” and “Mama’s gonna lose it!” because both children are trying to touch a dead cockroach that has gone belly up, literally. This is the fourth trip to bathroom because both kids were fixated on the dead insect. (I always thought cockroaches were indestructible.) I know people outside the bathroom can hear me because I can hear them “working” and practicing their righteous dance grooves.

I say “working” because all those damn kids did while we were there was stare at their iPod Touches, practice hip-hop moves and suggest that I drag myself, and my two kids to the McDonald’s next door to retrieve coins because the arcade, that houses machines that run on quarters, had only 75 cents in their till.

I kick open the bathroom door and my purple flip flop goes sailing into the air. There is no breeze, no sunlight, just the sound of my four-year old yelling “I DON’T WASH MY HANDS! EVAAAAH!” echoing throughout the arcade.

I see a semi-familiar face standing in front of me and I loudly squeal, “Green Jello!” and limp on my one flip flop to bear hug her in the hopes that my raised voice and intrusion of her personal space will distract her from noticing my nappy hair with unkempt roots and stained track pants. Again, classy.

I’ll never know if my distraction worked because within the first two minutes of meeting GJ, her delightful husband and awesomely adorable daughter, I made sure to point out the dead insect, my overgrown roots and my face sans Bare Minerals OR any trace of lip gloss. Gah!

I’m sure the rest of our meeting was just a slice of heaven for GJ. I mean who wouldn’t just love standing around and watching my children go up and down a playground slide, bang their fists on an aluminum door and shout, “Look what I can do!” as they begin kicking their feet on the same aluminum door.

Although our meeting was brief, I’m sure I’ve made a life-long friend in GJ. Of this I am confident, even given the fact that just a few hours later I barraged her with a string of text messages where I did all of the following:

• Accidentally called her an ass
• Invited her to “my place”
• Uninvited her to “my place” because that sounded sort of skeezy
• Re-invited her to my place solely for the purpose of showing her my freshly washed AND conditioned hair going so far as to hint at the possibility that she could smell my fresh hair if she were so inclined
• Bragged to her about my hair now being shiny and full of bounce
• Apologized for being braggy about my shiny, bouncy hair

Our two-hour texting frenzy ended when I asked GJ and her family to come over and watch 27 Dresses on HBO in the dark because my husband and children had fallen asleep and would kill me dead, or at the very least, harshly mock me if I woke them. Wisely, she responded to my request with “No habla.”