Guest Post: Episode 2. A Day at the Park

Mel spent the weekend at my house here in Nashville. While she was here, she wrote Episode 2 of her ongoing saga trying to meet friends in her new city. I’ll write about our weekend that included Faith Hill, Johnny Depp’s house and Mel making ME a friend. Before all that, it’s time we released Episode 2 of Mel’s story, first.

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Girls Night Out ended and I waited to hear from one of my hopeful new friends. (To read the story, click HERE).

Nothing has happened. No new Facebook friend requests, no calls, no interest. Oh well.  I’m Mel. I fart and SO DO YOU.

I’m not giving up, yet.

My husband, Chris, is normally pretty quiet when it comes to strangers or really any talking in general.  His philosophy is ‘if you don’t have something important to say then don’t say anything’. Mine is, ‘Say whatever you want and see where the conversation leads you’.  As you can imagine, we are opposite but still fit together nicely. STOP thinking about the bedroom you PERVS.

High points: Chris took our daughter, Kennedy, to the park. I stayed home to cook dinner (a rarity). Chris came home excited saying he met a ‘super cool’ couple. The wife is from Seattle and the husband seemed really cool. They exchanged info.

OMG. OMG. OMG.  This is perfect.  Chris did the leg work for me and simply passed along the contact information for me to reach out.  DONE. I was on that shit and was so excited.  Cool couple, new to Virginia (just like us), the wife is from Seattle and they have 2 small kids.  I mean how could my husband possibly steer me in the wrong direction, RIGHT?  The next morning I got up determined to send the perfect email.  Naturally, I reach out to a few friends (not in Virginia…obvsies) and share my excitement and ask for suggestions on how to create this. perfect. email.

One of my friends wrote an entire mail suggestion:

Hi! My name is Mel Brown and you met my husband yesterday at the park – I think you guys discussed maybe meeting up sometime? Well I’m TOTALLY in. Unless, of course, you’re like uber religious or something because we don’t do too well with the thumpin crowd. Oh, and if you don’t drink. If you don’t drink sorry, but you’re totally off our radar. And if your wife is a mousey no fun no style type with a ‘wake up and brush it” hairstyle and hasn’t seen a mascara wand in years.  Maybe you could shoot me a pic of her and I’ll decide if she has any redeeming features based on physical appearance alone? If she’s the elastic waist in public type I think maybe we should stick to playdates. Wait, only if your kid isn’t a total brat. (or ugly). If he/she is a whiny boring kid who constantly has snot running down their face we’ll have to skip that too. In that case maybe you and Chris can just hang out. But be honest, if you’re stupid (and people know if they are, don’t F with me here) he’ll ditch you based on a premeditated exit strategy we concoct over dinner tonight.

Ok, gotta run, I put Kennedy was in time out so I could finish off a bottle of wine in peace and type this email.

Hope this works out buddy!

Love, Mel

I laughed my way through that entire thing. Seriously, tears and all. I loved every piece of it, but I couldn’t send it. I mean I wanted to SO BAD, but there is a small percentage of people that could handle that email and I had to give this ‘cool couple’ a chance to survive so, with careful editing, I came up with the following:

Hi there-

My husband (Chris) came home last night from the park and told me about a super cool couple he met – apparently he was talking about you and your wife. So, your wife is from Seattle?  Does she need a new friend?  We can talk about how much we miss home and how no one here has a true love for Hunter rain boots – which I think is a travesty. But that’s just me.

I hear you just had a baby a few weeks ago?  How’s the little to no sleep treating you? Is your wife excited when she can manage to sneak in a shower and a clean pair of elastic waisted pants like I was? Or is she actually able to manage getting up, showering AND makeup with 2 small kids? Either way – good for her and I wouldn’t judge either one.

We would invite you all over for dinner but we don’t have a dining room table yet since we had to do a major downsize. Sooooo…would you all like to meet at the park again sometime soon? Not sure about you but Chris and I travel to the park with our plastic tumblers about half full of our favorite booze. You too?

Let’s talk real quick about where the nearest Nordstrom’s Rack is located and where in the bloody h*ll can I get a new pair of Havaiana flip flops? Seriously, these are problems that need to be solved with the quickness.

Hope to hear from you and hopefully my dry sense of humor made you at least laugh a little bit.  Chris is the super laid back one, and me, not so much. I’m dry. I have little to no filter and I’m about as real as they come.  However, I also have an incredibly large heart, loyal to a fault and take my friendships very seriously.  The world is nothing without good friends and a few great people in your corner. 

Have a great afternoon

Melinda – but my friends call me Mel (no I am not a dude…just have a dude name…THANKS MOM!)

Within 48 minute-ish, I received a response from the husband. It’s not what I had expected…