where are we now?

We just had the pleasure of a visit from old and dear friends, the dog family, who moved from San Francisco to Seattle a few years ago, and incidentally the stars of this wonderful blog

I have made lovely friends since having the kids, but find there is something extra special about those friendships that were forged in the fires of bars and clubs, over episodes of Melrose place, and washed down with more bottles of wine than people should ever consume, and yet have survived through our delayed path into adulthood, marriage, serious jobs and parenthood. Friends who when presented with my current haggard world weary self still see the hip sexy chick with the belly button piercing and multicoloured hair who threw up all over their carpet on her 27th birthday.

Maybe we all just need glasses, but when we get together I feel us all slipping back in time just a little and taking back our youthful glow. I feel proud of us too, we've all become such successful accomplished adults, and to be honest, if you been a fly on the wall some nights back when we all shared an apartment building, you might be surprised at how well we all turned out!

The icing on the cake is of course our children. The dog boys are such fun and lovely kids, getting smarter and more adorable every time I see them (which is not often enough). I take a special satisfaction from watching our kids get along so well with my friends children, and this past weekend the kids had a blast together. They also did a marvelous job of all being generally very well behaved and a credit to our clearly excellent parenting, but also being pleasantly rambunctious and occasionally getting overwhelmed, as young kids do. I should thank Little Dog for holding up his end of the three year old bargain, and having a couple of decent meltdowns, so that my Geekygirl was not the only one who had to sit for a while on the naughty chair.

I was, however, the only mother who managed to lose a child on our visit to the aquarium. Since geekyboy bobbles randomly about in crowds, following a Brownian motion pattern, I was keeping a closer eye on him than on Geekygirl who I had trusted would keep her eyes on us. But the crowds and undersea darkness meant that once a small person was more than five feet away, they vanished into the sea of denim legs. I had just strapped geekyboy into his stroller to take the elevator up to get lunch, turned around and could not see Geekygirl anywhere. The longest five minutes of my life flashed by in slow motion, running through the thronged, darkened maze of fish tanks shouting her name, until a kind attendant appeared with my distraught child holding her hand. She had just got over her "nemo" initiated fear of fish too, and was actually enjoying the aquarium experience up until this point.

The incident had rolled off her by the time we reached the restaurant though. The San Francisco aquarium has a very nice restaurant with a selection of delicious local ethnic foods, and though fish was not on the menu (do aquariums ever serve seafood?!), we did order a rack of asian marinaded ribs. My friend and I are vegetarians, but our kids are decidedly not. Geekygirl eyed the ribs with delight, and we sawed her off one. She chewed and chewed until her face was a giant joker smile of marinadde, and continued gnawing at the bone. "We suck the bones to get the flavour out" she informed me. I think I'm raising a cave child, and certainly not a natural vegetarian!

The weekend was filled with more delights than I have time to describe here, suffice to say that our house is sadly quiet now that the dog family have returned home.