Je Suis un Inadapté

I want to go home.


There I've said it.


I've made something of an idiot of myself and I want to go home.



Friday night was Sabrina's end of season soccer party and one of the other soccer moms offered up her house for the party. I was really looking forward to the get together because I hadn't really had a chance to visit with the other moms, plus after days and days of cold rainy weather, Friday afternoon turned into a beautiful day with actual SUNSHINE.


And the party went great. But here is where I screwed up.


When we were leaving the party, I looked around at this nice woman's expertly decorated house and saw that there were beer bottles, wine glasses, plastic cups, bowls, napkins, and other party paraphernalia everywhere. And all the guests were making a beeline for the door. So I told the hostess that if she would like, I would be happy to help her clean up - I just needed to run my husband and kids home and then I would be back in a jiffy to help her. Of course, she protested and said, "No, no. I don't need any help." I said, "Really - I don't mind at all." And she said, "Well, OK, if you want to come back that would be great."


So I left her house thinking, "Cool! Maybe we'll get to gossip about all the other moms while we load the dishwasher! Find out who does her hair while we wipe down counter tops! I'll get the scoop on her vegetarian chili recipe while we wrap up leftovers! Three cheers for female bonding!!!"


But when I got back to her house a mere 20 minutes later, I was greeted with, "Oh. I didn't think you would actually come back."


"Well, of course I came back! What can I help you with?"


"Nothing. I don't need you to help with the cleaning up!"


"No really, I came to help."


"No really. I don't want you to help."


Which left me just kind of standing there thinking, "Well, this is awkward." I mean it's not like I showed up at her door with a bottle of Windex and roll of paper towels, but I don't know these people well enough to just pop in for a social call. Standing there in the doorway, I could feel the blood rush to my face as I tried to figure out how I misread the signals. Was I supposed to come back over, or not? If I say, "Oh - OK" and turn around and leave, will that be rude? If I walk in and put my purse down and start picking up beer bottles, is that rude?


At this point her husband tried to come to the rescue by offering me a drink. (Warning: This is the part of the story where I REALLY make an idiot of myself.) I told the husband thanks for the offer, but I brought my own. And then I pulled a Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade out of my purse and twisted off the top with my shirt hem.





I know. Real. Classy.


Maybe I could blame it on a sudden onset of nervousness, but see, at the party earlier everyone was drinking wine and some weird kind of beer and I can't drink wine (migraines) and I am kind of particular about my beer (as in I only like Coors Light), so when I dropped my husband and kids off at home, I ran inside and grabbed a Mike's just in case there was still drinking going on.


So anyway, I ended up sitting in their formal living room drinking spiked lemonade out of the bottle (until the husband discreetly took it from me and poured it into a wine glass) and having polite conversation for about an hour. Of course, by this point I had worked myself into a nervous wreck and was just feeling completely inappropriate (do you know what I mean? where everything you say and do feels exaggerated and too loud and too, I don't know, too MUCH?). Like when they asked me if I had a job, I am pretty sure I said in a high pitched, self-righteous kind of way, "blogging is my passion, but I also do some human resources consulting on the side." Somehow I finally managed to say something about how the time flies and how I really needed to get home. I could practically hear them rolling their eyes and laughing at me as I got in my car.


As I made the short drive home, I realized the experience left me feeling kind of cheap, and kind of desperate. Like I had misread the signals and showed too much enthusiasm by coming back over, even though I could have sworn I had been invited.

I felt like I had let a boy go too far on a first date. Do you know what I mean?


Back at home, I found my husband waiting up for me in the dining room. "Did you make a new friend?" he asked.


"I don't think so. And, by the way, I want to go home."

Um, hi.

Okay. So. Here I am approximately 1,987 miles from where I was born and raised (the great state of Texas). The hubby's job moved us across the country and life has become suddenly much more funny. So funny, in fact, that I decided to blog about it.

Some background - aside from my super wonderful husband, I share my life with two beautiful and brilliant children (you'll hear LOTS about them I am sure), and a small, but sturdy, dog. Life was great in Texas, but I am keeping an open mind on our new adventures here in the northeast.

Back in August, when it became apparent that my husband would accept the job offer and we would have approximately 20 days to find a house, pack our crap, register for school, etc..., I started prepping my kids (ages 6 and 8) on some of the lingual differences between Massachusetts and Texas. We all made a conscious effort to eliminate "fixin' to" from our vocabulary (as in, "I'm fixin' to make supper"), we really worked hard on enunciating the "g" at the ends of our words (we are working, not workin'; cooking, not cookin'),and started to substitute "ya'll" with "you guys." So instead of yelling, "I'm fixin' to start spankin' butts if ya'll don't start cleanin' this room quicker than a dog chews dropped meatloaf." I practiced saying, "Children. Clean this mess up. NOW." See, shortly into our practicing our more refined language skills, I found that really I did much better if I just kept my normal ranting and raving down to short, succinct commands.

And then of course, I prepared my children for the northeastern phenomenon of misplacing the letter "r" in most words. You know, the whole "pahk the cah" (park the car) and whatnot. We watched Good Will Hunting (a most excellent movie) and paused it whenever there was a demonstration of this type of thing. My kids, being so so brilliant, caught on in the first five minutes and finally told me to stop pausing the movie already.

SO. We did the big move and it was a pain, but manageable. I somehow managed to get the kids into a really neat school and boxes unpacked in record time. By week three I was able to find the school, the grocery store, the gas station, and the Old Navy without the assistance of my GPS system. Fast forward five weeks and it is time for the first "parent/teacher conference" with my daughter's first grade teacher. After going though all the reading and math assessment results (all glowing), we started talking about how my sweet little girl was getting along with her new friends. The teacher gave a little chuckle and states that my sweetie was making friends just fine, but there was a teasing incident because of some speech differences. Darn! I thought we had the "ya'll" thing dealt with!! But surprise, it wasn't the "ya'll" that was causing the teasing. It was the word "the." Apparently during read-out-loud time, my child said "the" (as in rhymes with "we") and the kids laughed! The teacher informed me that here in Massachusetts, the word is pronounced "the" (as in rhymes with "duh"). Somehow in all of our preparation, we missed the word "the." The teacher said she had a talk with the class about how people say words differently in different parts of the country and she would not hold it against my daughter. Go figure! After that I figured that our family, ok, really just me, should accept the fact that we are different from those around us and people are going to laugh and maybe even tease us right in front of our faces. But that is okay because we can laugh back at the silly things they do here (like oh my gosh there are Dunkin Donuts and pizza places EVERYWHERE!!! ).

In fact, I find that when I am in a prolonged conversation with anyone (and this includes the grocery checker guy), it makes things more interesting if I really play up the southern accent. I think it is kind of funny to watch the expressions on their faces when I say something like, "My God, it's colder here than a dog's balls in belly-high snow!"