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  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

I talk to my coworkers while I’m in the office and I talk to my husband at home, but that’s pretty much the extent of my adult in-person interactions. I almost never spend time with friends, not for a lack of wanting to do so, more as a result of incompatible schedules and locations and priorities.

I don’t have many friends, really. I am shy and reserved and I find it hard to accept the inherent vulnerability that comes with friendships and I’m not good at maintaining them and I’m terrible at reaching out and sometimes I wonder there’s something fundamentally broken in me in this regard.

I fill this friend-shaped void with the internet and I don’t really know if that’s sad or sensible, if I’m a pathological dork or someone who’s just making connections where she can.

The last time I spent time with a group of like-minded friends was last summer, at BlogHer. For all the anxiety surrounding BlogHer—meeting new people! Figuring out what to pack! Finding a familiar face in an intimidating conference room!—it was deeply enjoyable to briefly shed my normal life and be a social person, someone who talks with actual out-loud words instead of clattering keystrokes. It was wonderful to step through the computer and actually be with people I’ve only known through webpages and emails.

Unless something fairly miraculous happens, I don’t think I’ll be able to go to BlogHer this year. And maybe it sounds silly or even kind of pathetic, but I am stupendously brokenhearted about it. I don’t care about parties or sessions or keynotes, I just wanted to spend time with friends.

I am not normally a crafty motherfucker nor am I particularly clever when it comes to entertaining the kids, so you’ll have to forgive me for a bit of bragging when I say to you: BEHOLD THE BEST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, EVER.

You start with a kid’s table that the kids rarely use and you get yourself two fabric-covered bins from Target. Drill those guys right into either side of the table, like so.

These are now Lego containment devices. It’s all official and shit. This is where the Legos go, instead of sprinkled festively across the carpet or painfully lodged in the instep of your right foot.

Go for broke and get the real blocks, not those big clunky Duplos. Tell your toddler that if he eats one, he’s going to have to crap it out like a MAN.

Sit back and crack open a book during daylight hours for the first time in five years, because hot damn, these kids are set.

Of course then the 4-year-old will start whining because the 2-year-old took Legos from HIS side and the 2-year-old will be crying because the 4-year-old built a helicopter and won’t let the 2-year-old break it and the bins will be bendier than you expected so they’ll start hanging at an angle and you’ll still be cleaning trillions of Legos from the couch cushions and kitchen table and oddly, your underwear drawer, and fine, maybe it wasn’t actually the best idea in the history of the universe when you consider things like the Polio vaccine and cheddar-pizza Combos . . . but for like two whole minutes there you will feel like a parenting GOD.

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