I Inspire My Friends to Keep Their Expectations Low

Shar with Benny and Lucy on the playground.
This picture was taken back in the day when we all lived on the Upper West Side.

My friend Sharleen came over yesterday. She used to live in Manhattan but she betrayed me and moved with her husband, Marc, and her son, Ben (who happened to be Lucy’s best friend) and went to live in Connecticut, with her annoying little herb garden (“Let me cut you some fresh basil for the sauce”) and her ridiculously roomy backyard full of trees and flowers (“I spent all day in the garden yesterday and can you believe it?...I broke a nail!) and her enormous house (“Sometimes I lose Marc and it takes me forever to walk through the house and find him”) and her charming country neighborhood (We don’t even have to lock our doors…) Blah Blah…country life is great…I barely miss you…blah blah blah. That was the gist of our conversation yesterday.

And birth stories. We told gory birth stories because she’s six months pregnant and gory birth stories are on her mind.

Sharleen told me that I’ve taught her two valuable things. I was almost flattered until I heard what they were. Apparently my legacy in this friendship is that I inspired her to (1) keep her expectations low and (2) how to make the perfect crab cake. Not exactly the kind of thing that will get me on Oprah, but not so messed up I’ll have to talk about it on Dr. Phil.

Actually, the low expectations part is about the birth plan – not having your heart set on some delusional fantasy delivery that will never happen. So, I guess that gets me out of the horrible friend category, but I can forget that career in motivational speaking.

Shar, if you're reading (and since you are, like, my only reader from Connecticut, you better be reading) - have a great birthday! It was great to have you guys here!

xxxooo YM