Love Bites, or Love's Mom Crush Part II

Please forgive the delay in getting back to my Mom Crush story, but I have a good excuse.

It was my birthday and anniversary this week, so my husband has been busy taking care of all of my whims and most don’t involve my laptop.  One of those whims included the cutest Coach bag EVER. So I’ve been spending hours in front of a mirror admiring myself wearing it.  I’m a one purse kind of girl, and I haven’t had a new bag in three years, so it was so long overdue.  I feel like now that it is mine, maybe people will think I have some idea of how to dress myself.  But probably all they have to do is look at my shoes and realize I’m hopeless.  Forgive me for hating designer high heels – I like how they look on other people but I look like I’m a drunk prostitute when I wear them because I’m walking down the street tripping and swearing like a sailor and my clothes have fallen off and my hair is all tousled in the process because it takes a lot of energy to make the walk from the train to my office and then bandage up my mashed up, bloodied feet. So I stick with simple Naturalizer kitten heels, the favorites of corporate butch lesbians everywhere. I’ve explained how one of my greatest fears is being butch, but I have to side with those ladies on this one.

All of that was almost enough to take my mind off my mom crush story for a few days.  Okay, so I think where I left off was how I met this sparkly, beautiful rarity (you know, a mom I might actually welcome a play date with) named Kirsten through a daycare forum. So we had our conversation where I fell in love with her, and then it all came to an abrupt end when the conversation about the daycare we were thinking about sending our sons to was over.  Then I vowed to make her mine.

This took some strategy.  I went about it much like I would pursue a boy crush – and let me tell you, BD didn’t make it easy for me to land him, so I thought this might be a piece of cake compared to my stalking pursuit of BD back in the day.

So here is an outline of my general pursuit strategy:

1. Find someone/something that I absolutely cannot live without.
2. Make sure said someone knows who I am, and ideally wants me to stalk them even if they don’t know it yet. You can determine this by whether or not they file a restraining order. If no restraining order, proceed to Step 3. If restraining order, abort mission. Chances of success are quite low.
3. Find a common interest. If none exists, manufacture one.
4. Ask for their help, preferably on something that requires a lot of quality time with them.
5. Show them how cool I am and subtly persuade them that they cannot live without me.
   1. Try sober humor first.
   2. Follow up with lunch/dinner/cocktail invitation. Drinks optional.
   3. If 5.1. or 5.2 fail, get drunk and dial, unless you know where they are.  Then get drunk, find them and profess your love. (You’ll see this one in action here)
   4. If 5.3. doesn’t work, flash boobs.
      1. Avoid 5.4 if this is a mom crush, unless you are currently breastfeeding a child under 12 months old.
      2. Avoid 5.4 if you don’t have big boobs.
      3. In other words, 5.4 is totally out of the question for me, but some others might find this a useful strategy.
6. Get target to declare their love for me. Solidify bond through exchange of bodily fluids.
   1. In the case of a non-sexual pursuit, a secret handshake will suffice.
   2. In the case of a food item, gentle mastication and prolonged digestion will suffice.
   3. In the case of a celebrity of the same sex who has her own talk show, write emails to her or her producers every day/every other day about why you should be a guest on her show and write a blog that proves the depth of your loyalty by giving her a shout-out every day, along with constructive criticism.  When she finally sees you are The One and invites you to be on her show, admire, then touch, then ask exactly how she did her hair (see example here).
7. Never let them go. Never. Remember how much work it was to land them?

Simple plan, right? Oh, and for those of you who can see the genius in this strategy, all this stuff is copyrighted and will be in my memoir one day, so don’t even think about reproducing it in written form.  I know it’s a risk to publish that list now, since they are ideas that the world has not seen, coupled with the fact that they have been proven to work every time, in every situation.  However, by all means, use this strategy in your own life and then tell Oprah about how it changed your life and who told you to do it.  Don’t forget that part about who told you to do it.  Oprah and I are still struggling to get through step 6.3, but I have total faith one day it will happen. Perhaps with your help.

So sorry – back to Kirsten. My dearest Kirsten. The Mom that was born to be my best friend. Okay, so we get off the phone and I decide that if Kirsten is sending her baby to that daycare, then I should probably send mine there too. I trust her judgment. Her little boy started there only a few weeks before our first call and mine was due to start within the next few weeks.  This daycare was a home daycare where the lady made you spend two days with her and your kid there before the kid could go on their own.  Kind of a pain in the ass, but it seemed like a good idea and it turned out to be for sure.  When I went there I met Kirsten’s little boy, E.  E was the cutest baby (besides mine) in the world. But he was unhappy at that place. He cried a lot and the lady said he was just really hard to soothe. I agreed with her. Whenever she just put him in a saucer by himself, he cried. Whenever I gave him attention or picked him up and played with him he giggled. Go figure. He may have been giggling because he was happy to get love and affection, or it could have been because he wanted me to be best friends with his mother and call me Aunt Love one day. I’m pretty sure it was the latter. But still, it bugged me that it didn’t seem like this daycare lady was very compassionate to this little guy. He did not like her. So after my first couple of “observation days” there, I called Kirsten.

I told her that E didn’t seem that happy at the daycare and I was a little concerned. Was he always cranky? She said he was the happiest baby ever, but he’d been home all summer full-time with his dad, so there was probably just an adjustment happening.  The daycare lady’s assistant was very kind and I saw that E liked her. Kirsten noticed too. She was a little nervous, but was pretty sure it was all good since he liked the assistant so much. I suggested we keep talking and keeping tabs on the place. Pursuit strategy step 2 – check.

(Note: I kept looking but didn’t find any better daycare options and I was running out of time for my guy, so I paid the deposit for this daycare.   To make a super long tangential story short, I didn’t wind up sending my son there. That lady was just too batty. By the grace of God, the day before we were supposed to start, I found another daycare that I loved.)

I called Kirsten again, but only got voice mail. I told her what we decided and suggested she come over to our new daycare. She emailed me back. She was going to stick it out at the one she was at. CRAP. No, FUCK.  Now Kirsten and I no longer had a reason to become BFF, besides that destiny dictated it.  Still though, I think I cleared the Pursuit Strategy hurdle Step 3.

It was time to up the ante move on to Step 4.  Asking for assistance.  So at this time I’m a PhD student and I’m in a class based on ethnographic research in marketing.  For simplicity’s sake, ethnographic research involves interviewing people as a form of research and observing them in their natural habitat.  I decided that my paper for that class was going to be called “A Postmodern Exploration of an Emotional Consumption Experience” which really meant that I had a really good excuse to ask Kirsten to be a participant in my new study, because it was about choosing daycare.  So I emailed her about it and asked her if she would be willing to be a subject in my research. Actually, she was the only person I emailed about it. And she said she would do it and she suggested we meet at ——- wait for it ———– McDonalds.   My heart leapt out of my chest. McDonalds!? Kirsten likes McDonalds?! We are so, so right for one another. Pursuit Strategy step 4 – mission accomplished.

Before you thought this story was creepy, but now you can see the genius of this plan, no? So I have to interview her about her decision as a mother to choose a daycare and now I can ask her all kinds of background questions so I can figure out if her husband is right for mine and make totally, completely sure that she and I agree on all things.  So far, we were totally in sync.  And she was willing to give me 90 minutes of her weekend – a huge deal for a working mom.  I was beginning to think she was starting to fall in love with me too.  And I was doing research. Killing two birds with one genius stone.  God, sometimes I can’t believe how good I am.

We met at a McDonalds playland, sans kids, and I bought her lunch. She ordered a salad. Not a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.  But maybe she only ordered a salad because that maybe that is what I was going to order and she didn’t want to seem like the sort of person who loved Value Meal #2.  Well, that is what I told myself. I was a little disappointed with her choice, but I remembered that she was the one who picked McDonalds, and there is nothing wrong with salads, right? Right? Right. Of course not. It’s all good.  She and I were the same height, she was probably a dress size smaller (salads, probably) and she was good looking in an all-American kind of way. She would look really good at the family J.Crew inspired garden parties I had been fantasizing about for so long.

After I got over all of my nervous giggling and tongue-tiedness, we were finally able to make it through the interview.  I learned much more about her life and circumstances and I loved her even more and her husband and her kids and I think at that point I was pretty pissed that I hadn’t gone out to Jared the Galleria of Jewelery and bought matching half heart pendants that had “Best Friends” written on it when you put the two together, because I was ready to get down on my knee and present it to her if I had it.  I mean, Step # 5 had come for sure.  It was time to ask her out. But I couldn’t do it then because I was thinking that maybe she would think my research was bogus and that I just asked her because I was obsessed with her which was true. I had to be professional and not let her know the depth of my personal interest. Plus, I had to buy some time to pick out our matching pendants.  Silver or gold? I just wasn’t sure what she’d prefer. It would take many more hours of thought to make such an important decision.

So a week later, I decided to plan “The Kirsten Party” at my house (I kept the theme to myself). The only problem was that the only people I knew that would come to a party I had were people I’ve known my whole life or were my neighbors or were my colleagues at school, who all knew each other.  She’d be the only person there who didn’t know anyone. And that might be fishy. But what the hell? I had to get her and the family to my house.  So I planned a BBQ, in her honor. But I didn’t tell anybody except BD, who told me I was psycho. He warned me against it. But I think that he was secretly afraid that her husband was going to turn out to be his BFF after all and he just wasn’t ready for the emotional depth a commitment like that might require. Or he thought I was psycho.

I sent out Evites. And waited. Some people said they’d come, but they weren’t really important except as proof that I had a life and friends that Kirsten could easily assimilate into.  Kirsten didn’t reply. Not Yes, No OR Maybe. So I made Evite do that thing where it reminds you that you haven’t replied.  And no reply. IN FACT, there wasn’t even a record that she had viewed the Evite. But I had the right email address. What to do? Did this mean she didn’t realize that we were meant to be? Or that it just went into her junk mail? Or that Evite was blocked on her work email?  It seemed like I’d be forced to call her.  And you know how I hate the phone. And if I called, what if she said no or sounded like she wanted to say no but didn’t know how to and it was totally awkward when I started sobbing and moaning softly on the other end? I didn’t have her home address, so a paper invite was out of the question.  While I have no moral dilemmas to stalking someone if I’m only trying to give them the gift of me, I don’t want it to be obvious to them. Step 5.2 was not working as well as I had hoped. It was almost time for the drunk dial as required in Step 5.3.  I had two glasses of wine. I was feeling a bit more bold. I was going to call her, dammit, because it was really for the good of everyone involved.  So I did. And I dialed the wrong number and the person was mean and my swagger dissipated and I drank another glass of wine and passed out. And then I tried to cancel my party. But BD wouldn’t let me.  So we had it. And Kirsten didn’t come. But my other friends did and they were cool and why did I need another friend anyway? I am SO busy. I mean SO BUSY.  I don’t even have TIME for another friend, you know?

So I let go of my dream of Kirsten…kind of.  Except for when two years later and eight months pregnant with my second son I decided it was time to rekindle my love affair with her.  I’ll save that for my next post: Hysteria, or Love’s Mom Crush Part III.  My fingers hurt now. And my ego too. But it gets better…