Like strawberry wine.

Last week, an old friend of mine called me on the phone. I hadn't talked to Misty in at least five or six years, and maybe longer than that. I honestly can't remember the last time I talked to her.

Misty got pregnant and had her first baby when we were seventeen. She dropped out of school to raise Madison. I was so intrigued and jealous; I remember thinking that I could get pregnant with my boyfriend Jimmy, and that we could totally handle all the responsibility and PLUS then maybe my mom would let me spend the night with him. THIS proves how book-learnin' doesn't always count for that much, and that young women can be BLIND AND STUPID when it comes to babies, marriage, and boys and their potential as life-partners and fathers. Luckily Misty's situation was much better than mine would have been, had I decided to start a family with a nineteen-year-old boy who drove a Maverick that broke down regularly and lived in a house where we often sat around and listened to gun shots and then tried to guess at which neighboring house someone had just been killed.

Misty married Drue, Madison's daddy, and I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. They went on to have another baby, Clayton, and she got her GED, went back to school, and became a dental hygienist (I think; if I'm wrong, Misty, I'm sorry).

Now she's divorced AND remarried, and is very happy and lives just down the street from us. We talked and Madison and Clayton are, respectively, the same age and at the same school as Kane and Jude. We decided that we really should get together with the kids so they can play and hang out, and without the kids so WE can play and hang out. We laughed about old jokes, and about Misty telling me after she had Madison that the placenta looks like a blue potroast, an observation that Jason has always vehemently agreed with.

When we talked about my family, all my boys, she immediately said, "Oh, Buffy, so you don't have ANY help, do you? You do all the laundry." And I had this momentary, tiny release, just a little spurt of "JESUS thank you." It was just this miniscule sense of commeraderie knowing that I was talking to someone who immediately got that shit is nuts at my house sometimes. Jason helps out plenty, but he is a BOY, folks; he generally, and admittedly, just doesn't really think about laundry and dishes and scrubbing the tub that much on his own.

Just yesterday, I bought a few of those Arm and Hammer fridge and freezer packs that are supposed to suck up odors in your fridge and freezer, and I told Jason that we needed to clean out the fridge and put those in there because some of the stuff, the milk and the water, smelled and tasted funny lately. Jason replied, "I'm glad you think about that stuff, because I just DON'T." And, you know, I get it. I wish that I didn't think about all that stuff so much. But I guess one person in the relationship has to; otherwise we'd be drinking milk that tasted like the floppy carrots that were still in the refridgerator after three weeks.