Blog-Meets

I'm pretty new to blogging - started some time last year - and didn't know anything about blogmeets - I thought you only met people virtually. Then I started getting into it more and finding out there were organised blogmeets but had never bothered to participate in one, for a variety of reasons. Then, of course, the baby shower egroup started the ball rolling and suddenly there was this superactive gang of galpals who hung out everyday pre and post shower, yapping about anything under the sun - it felt like being back at hostel again. And what with my surprise baby shower, was very curious and eager to meet Madmomma who was one of the instigators.

With one thing and the other various weekend plans didn't materialise and then last week I had decided that I had to make this happen when up popped a message in my gmail account - MM wanted to come over and meet us. Great minds think alike! We tried for lunch on Sunday but A had to go in to work so that scuttled it, and then decided we'd meet up in the evening. I chivvied my one single maid all day - the stay-at-home maid is on leave and this one had been skimping on work since I'd hardly been home so Sunday I had her under my beady eye, hard at work putting our house into something like order. A and I were in the local market that morning so we picked up dhoklas and milk cake, which are both pretty delish at the sweet shop there.

Finally, by afternoon, the house looked less like a tornado had hit it and A retired to snooze, while I balefully sat with my laptop trying to finish the giant load of work I was struggling with, with one hand, while playing Ludo with Chubbocks with the other hand. After tea, we arranged ourselves in the living room, and I had the first-date feeling - you know, where you know lots about someone on a fairly surface basis and are meeting properly for the first time. I'm like that - when I meet old friends after a long gap, I always wonder whether we'll still be the same as ever or different. Mostly because it's happened a couple of times that a friend and I didn't change in the same direction and suddenly had nothing to say. Of course, the kids didn't let us sit demurely - they were all over us, with Chubbocks checking on a second-by-second basis - What's the time? You said they'll come by 5:30-6? Is it time? Finally I told him in sheer exasperation that if he asked me one more time I would ask them not to come ( Yeah, that mom of the year award is getting farther away from me every minute!). Luckily, just around then, the doorbell rang and there they were.

MM, OA, Brat and Beanie. MM is much prettier in real life than the photographs do justice to and taller too - the way she describes herself, I thought I'd see this shortie. Stylish and very warm, I felt at ease with her and OA immediately and so did A who usually takes time to warm up. The Brat and Chubbocks immediately made friends and went off to play together, Chubbocks eager to show off his new Hot Wheels racing set. The Brat looks cute in all the photos on the blog but in person he is so handsome he takes your breath away! And the Bean is such a cool little person - very self-possessed, with enormous, limpid eyes and a tiny little thing that just cries out to be picked up and hugged. Puddi alternated between clutching me and going inside to play with the Brat and Chubbocks. Chubbocks and I played our new favourite party trick of springing his dinosaur book on MM ( It has very realistic pop-out pictures of dinos including a T-Rex), and made her scream. Soon Puddi was enough at ease to go to MM which is quite rare right now. We chatted together easily and I was wishing we could ask them to stay for dinner. But I knew the maid had probably stuck us with leftover and thanks to momnesia, it never occurred to me that I could whip up something quickly or that we could order in.

So all too soon, their visit finished, with promises to get together after we get back from vacation next week. I had a warm feeling as if this was the 'beginning of a beautiful friendship', to paraphrase Casablanca, and I am so looking forward to meeting up with them again, not to mention other blogmeets that are due to happen.