Making Babies in October

June is ridiculous. Including only close friends and immediate family we celebrate 7 birthdays in June. Seven. Add on the summer bridal showers and baby showers that all seem to happen around the same time and it makes June really expensive. Mike and I aren't planning on having kids for a little while, but I think I need to make it a personal goal to not have a baby in June. Maybe something magical happens in October for people (Oktoberfest?) but jeeze-oh-pete, June is a boom.

Or maybe I'm just friends with a lot of Gemini and Cancer signs because I'm a Pisces and supposedly I get along fine with crabs and duplicitous twins. Reputably, I'm not supposed to get along well with Sagittarius - which is funny because I think my Father-In-Law is a Sagittarius and we get along fine. I hope. haha. Is anyone else a Sagittarius? I guess I don't know too many Sagittarians... maybe because I'm a Pisces. Oooo...spooky!!!

I'm not really all that into astrology but I sometimes wish I knew more. I remember back in college I went to a couple of parties at the home of a guy who directed a couple of movies you've definitely heard of, but probably wouldn't have seen unless you had kids. He was a really nice guy (despite wearing sunglasses at night). Some of his parties would just be about 20 people in his den and some of them would be so big I'd never be able to guess how many people were there. In either situation I'd always find that it would be really hard for me to talk to these Hollywood-types. I was a college film student and they were all working in film. You'd think I could have come up with something. If I had realistic networking skills (which I don't) and if I was really good at selling my own sh*t (which I am not ) I probably could have worked my way into the biz at all these parties I had the opportunity to go to. (I just felt like a leech even talking about my writing and jobs in those situations... maybe I should have tried harder to get a writing agent... then they could have been the leech for me.) Anyway, I'm getting off topic.

At one of those really big parties where he didn't have the time to play host to me the entire night, I ended up wandering off to a corner with a couple of girlfriends. A woman sitting near us was left alone as her date went to go pick up another drink. On his way, her date tripped (or did something awkward like that) so he deflected the awkwardness by making a funny comment directed at us so we were all laughing together for a split second.

Normally, after a moment like that I try to have a quick light-hearted follow up comment with the strangers involved and then turn back to my familiar group and continue conversation in a desperate attempt to avoid eye contact (see...that's how good I am at social situations. Nice.) Well, the woman (who was gorgeous) introduced herself to us (she was good at social situations) and we all started talking about how we all ended up at this party. That conversation lasted maybe 5 minutes and I began to fear the awkward silence and the well-it-was-nice-to-meet-you-but-we-don't-have-much-to-talk-about-so-we're-going-to-go-over-there-now moment, when she suddenly asked my friend and guessed correctly, "Are you a Libra?"

As her date returned with her drink, she proceeded to tell us how she could tell that my friend was a Libra and all the personality traits and compatibilities. I asked her if she was an astrologist and she explained that she didn't even really believe in it for horoscopes or anything, but knowing personality traits related to astrology was her hobby.

We ended up talking with her for a long time about personalities and compatibilities until another party goer pulled her away to introduce her to someone else. We had something we could talk about without knowing anything else about one another and without having to share a common interest in music, film, ideas or people. I would have never thought that astrology would be a useful hobby to someone who had no interest in horoscopes but here she was able to talk to complete strangers about something we had serious knowledge about - ourselves. It's an instant go-to conversation piece.

The rest of that night was kind of a blur. We met back up with a few of the other girls that came along with us to the party to discover one of them had taken full advantage of the open bar that night and was currently stumbling down the steep windy driveway leading to the house telling people she couldn't believe she actually got to go to a Hollywood party. Yah. It was embarrassing. I think one of us actually ended up having to put a hand over her mouth to get her to stop yammering.

I eventually lost touch with the director guy (ok, really, I just felt awkward talking to him after my girlfriends all told me I was dense for not being able to tell that he was trying to be "more than a friend." I think it might have been Jessica who pretty bluntly said on the car ride home, "Dude. He wants to do you. Big time." See, I had a boyfriend at the time but this guy would randomly call and e-mail to say hi and invite me up to his house when he was having friends over for dinner. Being about an hour away, I usually had to turn down his last minute invites but never really thought much of it. For some reason, at that time, I assumed that when you tell someone you have a boyfriend they know better than to try and hit on you. I also assumed all his friendliness was just because he wanted to actually be my friend. Apparently when my friends saw him interact with me in person they could see a whole different side of the story. His side of the story involved some sort of funky sexy time.) BUT the point is that I still remember that woman and I might even recognize her if I saw her on the street now.

So. I learned many valuable lessons that night. 1) Astrology can sometimes be useful. 2) Don't bring drunk girl #4 to cool parties. Ever. And lastly, 3) man-penis-brain is sneaky.

Lessons learned.