#23 finding out your best friend is pregnant

i should preface this by mentioning that i have plucked up several "best" friends over the years. they are all from very different places in my life though, so i think they can still be called my best despite the fact that best really implies a singular entity. i feel like i should give a shout out to them all (and include really flattering pictures for visual aids):


tiffany is my best childhood/lifelong friend. we met at church when i was two weeks old and she was five weeks old and we had a common love for napping, eating, and pooping. now our interests have changed and we enjoy watching bad movies and playing scrabble and...well, we still love eating. tiffany is an incredible nurse, currently working in a nicu here in virginia.

zoe is my best college/roommate for life friend. we were roommates our sophomore year of college. she saw me through some of my most dramatic moments and has been a constant source of wisdom. we have a common love of randomness and writing. she's one of the most profound thinkers i know, which is good for me because i tend toward the shallow, and she's an incredible photographer. i secretly think her mind powers come from her gorgeous curly hair. here she is with manny, her husband!

mikkele is my best post college friend. we were roommates for the year before i married jeff. in fact, we became roommates a few weeks before jeff and i were engaged. i knew when i met her that we were going to be very good friends and i even briefly considered asking her to be a bridesmaid, but decided that would be weird and put too much pressure on the future of our friendship. i was right in the end though, which leads me to believe that snap judgment isn't always a bad thing. mikkele and i bring out the best in each other. i don't know who is reading this, but i know you would have fun hanging out with mikkele and me. we are amusing. i'd give examples, but they wouldn't do us justice. also, she is probably the coolest person i know due to various things including her taste in music, craftiness, willingness to do anything, and ability to pull off these sunglasses:

arabella is my best virginia friend. we share a love of bad television, good literature, judice and the merrell sisters, and singing original songs together that one of us makes up on the spot. she is a talented actress but doesn't let acting consume conversations, and she's a really terrible origami-ist. some day we'll make movies and our production company will be called "texifornia." 

but this is really all about the zoe. zoe called me on june 2 at 1:44 pm, while i was at work, to tell me the good news that she was knocked up. since i was at work, i was not able to fully emote, and the joy i was feeling nearly burst out of me via tears. i just welled up in the end, but i can't explain the excitement. here, i'll try: it was the feeling i'd get if i went to disneyland on christmas day to see an ingrid michaelson concert while eating in-n-out. that's a lot of excitement, folks. 


this is a first that i will be happy to repeat. good thing i have three more best friends and a sister. get busy, girls. (well, start dating a boy, get married, and then get busy, girls. except you, arabella. you get busy now.)

#12 getting congratulated for being pregnant

this wasn't a new thing that i brought upon myself. at least i don't think i did. i really don't think my shirt was that unflattering. i mean, pregnant women are beautiful (hi, erica!), but it's not fun to be called pregnant when you're not pregnant, especially when you love snacking as much as i do.


anyway, the conversation went like this:
"congratulations!" - unnamed person who was smiling so squintily that i wasn't entirely sure she was looking at me
"umm..." (look behind myself and no one is there.) "me?" - me, giving her chance #1 to realize that i don't know what she means and that if i was pregnant, i probably would know what she meant
"yes, you! congratulations!" - unnamed person, still confidently smiling
"umm...thanks. for what?" - me, giving her chance #2 to back out
"your pregnancy! aren't you pregnant?" - unnamed person, still confidently smiling
(i hide behind jeff.) 
"i'm never wearing this shirt again!" - me, slightly mortified


i realize i could have lived up to my middle name and handled that about 1000 times more gracefully since she was probably just mixing me up with erica, the wife of an actor slightly similar to jeff in the program, and she was just being nice. but my kneejerk reaction was hiding. i really am 12 sometimes.