Dancing Without Rhythm

So, a couple of months ago it was my friend’s birthday. You all know her as Code Yellow Mom. I met her in a time and a place when the word “mom” belonged to someone else, and blogging was something you did in the bathroom and didn't talk about.

Since Code Yellow is one of my dearest friends and since we are both bloggers I posted all about her on that day. In that post I referred to a strange phenomenon in our relationship that we discovered years ago. We do all the same things, within 6-12 months of each other. She’s 10 and a half months older than me, so I guess that would be the FIRST thing she did before me. As Benja would say, “got borned”. But there were many things to follow, after we met my freshman year of college. Here is a brief outline of some of these life events.

August 1992 Code Yellow started her freshman year at Ricks College.

August 1993 (12 months later) I started my freshman year at Ricks College and I met Code Yellow for the first time at the house we shared with six other girls. A friendship was born.
The house was owned by two families, Christman and Hopkins so it was called “C & H”. For a while we coveted the classier or more exciting names like “The Riviera” or “Heritage House”, but then we started calling ourselves the C & H Sugar Babes, and that really just made everything better. See how simple life is when you’re a teenager?

April 1994 (8 months later) Code Yellow and I went our separate ways after one year together at school, crying buckets of tears and sure our paths would never cross again---knowing our lives would never be the same.

October 1994 (6 months later) Code Yellow came to Missouri to visit me. After 6 months of late night phone calls and extensive letter writing (HANDWRITTEN, mind you!) it was a glorious reunion. It was then that I learned a thing or two more about the feistiness of Miss Code Yellow. I watched her firsthand demand retribution for a box of stolen Nilla Wafers from a foraging brother. I am the 8th of 9. I didn't do stuff like that. Traci is the 1st of 7, she did. However, to this day, no one messes with my wafers.

April 1995 (6 months later) I went to DC to visit Code Yellow. By then we were confident we’d be friends forever and parting ways was less dramatic. And she let me call her just Code.

November 1995 Code Yellow left on a mission. She went to the Ukraine and had to learn Russian. I was glad to be in Sunny California when she was suffering through miserable winters in dress suits and blue tights. Ukraine or not, there was no way I’d go on a mission. Ever.

August 1996 (9 months later) I left on a mission.

October 1997 Code Yellow started attending Utah State University.

March 1998 (5 months later) I moved up to Logan and crashed on Code Yellow’s spare bed and coveted her head-start and already firm grasp on mainstreaming into the real world. She had a boyfriend and I still jumped when boys addressed me.

However, my first embrace of the “real” world was on a double date with her and David to see Wedding Singer. The guy she set me up with was madly in love with her, and for some reason, she thought she could pass off a tall redheaded goofball as a nice substitute for her small, dark-haired, classy, well-read, composed self. Yeah, she’s smart and all, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out THAT didn’t go anywhere. I could blame it on Code Yellow, but in fact, I didn’t know we were going to see one of the most hilarious movies ever made in the history of movie-dom and I completely lost control at one scene and was convulsing on the floor amidst the dropped theater candy and spilled soda, because my laughter was more than my body could handle. I’m sure that’s not something most guys want to witness more than once. Except maybe Adam Sandler.

Spring 1999 Code Yellow graduated from USU.

Spring 2000 (12 months later) I graduated from USU. GO AGGIES!!

January 2000 While I was finishing up my senior year at USU, Code Yellow rented her first solo apartment. It was a darling little studio right in downtown Salt Lake City, complete with the bed that folds up into the wall. I came to visit her a few times, always having left my very small , 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment that I shared with 5 other girls, and where we had no less than 5 visitors in our home at any given time. The quiet solitude of Code Yellow’s studio was so foreign to me it made me twitch. I remember saying aloud, “You’re so brave, I can’t believe you want to live alone and that you confident enough to do it.” I wondered about her being lonely. She said she wasn’t and that she really enjoyed having her own space for the first time ever. I couldn’t fathom it. Truly, I couldn’t.

January 2002 (12 months later) After 5 months in a North St. Louis 1 bedroom apartment where I slept on the floor because I was afraid of stray bullets coming in through my window, where on Halloween night I hunkered in the furthest corner closet of my apartment for fear of what might come to my door or through my window, where I was harassed daily by my coworkers to GET OUT NOW, I found a darling little studio apartment in downtown St. Louis.

Despite all the previously mentioned conditions, it was actually an inherited and totally crazy roommate that drove me out of my apartment, long before my lease was up. I LOVED living alone, being the only one filling the sink with dirty dishes, eating fried chicken on my futon like it was my first meal in 24 days with no one watching. I loved not having to deal with other people’s crappy artwork on my bathroom wall or knowing when the phone rang, it was for me. I loved not having to share the computer, the remote, or even the toilet paper. I loved everything about living alone, particularly being alone. A year later, I was just like Code Yellow. (minus the fried chicken part, I'm sure)

May 2001 Code Yellow finally realized David had her at hello and they got married.

February 2002 (9 months later) J finally realized I wasn’t just the hottest ticket in town, I was the bomb diggity. Still am. We got engaged and enlisted Code Yellow’s services to have one of the most amazing, stress-free, beautiful receptions ever experienced.

December 2002 Code Yellow had a baby boy. Pitocin, sans pain meds. Yowza!!! She called me shortly after he was born and I always remember her saying with so much pride, relief, joy “I’ve got a chubby little baby boy!”

May 2003 (5 months later) I had a baby boy. I got an epidural in the parking lot.

July 2004 Code Yellow had another baby boy. She could have sworn she was having a girl, but it was really a boy. And what a boy!

March 2005 (9 months later) I had a baby boy. Well, actually, I THOUGHT I was having a boy, but it was really a girl. When I had my mid-pregnancy ultrasound and they told me it was a girl, I was so convinced they were wrong, "Bu-bu-but! Code Yellow has TWO boys, you must be wrong..." I insisted on a second opinion. A week later, she was still a girl. And BOY what a girl!!

So, between developmental milestones of our babies and career milestones of our husbands and emotional milestones of being friends, Code Yellow and I have enjoyed more than a decade of tag teaming, advice giving and consoling because one or the other of us has pretty recently "been there."

But you should know that all of that may be about to change dramatically. And not just for CYM and myself, either…

We have just concurred on a startling new development that may indicate an impending collision of the space-time continuum and it could have earth-shattering, life-altering consequences for everyone who knows us, even just our cyber buddies. And most likely anyone we have met in real life.

Something BIG, and we mean REALLY big is most certainly about to happen, because CYM and I are breaking the 6-12 months rule that has thus far governed our friendship’s existence. Not since the school year of 1993-94 have we done something like this at the EXACT same time!!!

All we’re saying is maybe you all should get your food storage in order, line out your wills, build your bomb shelters and map out your escape-from-earth routes, because not only are we posting eerily similar posts on the same day, but CYM and I are both having our third babies in six months!

If that doesn’t have you concerned about the state of life as we know it, consider that these two third babies from different moms, born within mere DAYS of each other instead of the requisite six to twelve months apart, will also have birthdays almost exactly THIRTEEN months after TomKat’s baby Suri.

This has been quite a surprise for us, but given the glaring warnings, documented in my very own blog, it's hard for me to remain really surprised.

For Code Yellow, a real big clue is her sudden affinity for garbanzo beans. Now, I like garbanzo beans as much as the next person, but to eat them like candy? Like a sugar-deprived 3-year-old eats candy? I don't know about that.

My drug of choice is a Vlasic Kosher Zesty Dill Pickle, mmmmm, delish!! The other night at dinner I confiscated the Zesty Dills from the clutches of my nephew because, well because there were perfectly good Generic Garlic Dills for him to nosh on. No reason for him to make my life more difficult with another trip to the grocery store for pickles.

I would like to submit into evidence, Exhibit A.

Just don't ever say that we didn't warn you. And beware of anyone who is expecting next spring or summer. They may unwittingly be in on the conspiracy, too.

Posted by Angela on Sunday, December 03, 2006 at 12/03/2006 | Permalink