is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
You know it's a good night out with the grrrls when...
Monday, April 21, 2008 
* Two days before your big day, you throw out the idea of meeting up for a birthday celebration to the women who hold work/family/social schedules that rival Hillary Clinton (minus the sensible suits and matching scarves but with just as much of the "What colorist gave you those killer highlights, mama, and can I snag her card?!" talk I imagine Hill to have with her grrrls) or at least Lindsay Lohan, but without all the drugs and rehab and stringy hair and leather leggings (OK, maybe one Halloween there were leather leggings, but that's long been forgiven and archived with the photos of bi-level haircuts). And this time, taking into account seventh grade baseball season openers and breastfed babies and boyfriends and commutes to the waaaaay south side, it works and all the grrrls are there in one circular naugahide booth together.
* When we get to the heart of the matter, bullshitless, no dance around the big matters with idle chit chat or courtesy smiles. When we ask outright about honeymoon babies and engagements and why in the world one of my grrrls won't let her man-friend keep so much as a toothbrush at her place...after dating for years, where in the world to find a bra like that one that keeps those other grrrls up prominently and in place.
* When the discussion goes to having such a raging and naughty appetite while pregnant that, even when you can't see around your belly and frankly don't even care who is under there, you are still going for it with vigor only weeks before the baby is born.
* When the conversation then turns to a complete and total disinterest in being touched by whomever that was underbelly once the baby's born, being breastfed and claiming every bit of energy you have to offer. And gentle reminders that those feelings do end. Not for a long time, but they do indeed end.
* When a table circled with sassy, sophisticated, savvy women is hysterical while one grrrl admits she has a no-poop rule with her sisters -- her beautiful, professional, equally sassafrass sisters -- at her sleek new condo. Why? Because they have reputations of being (ahem) regular toilet cloggers and she will have none of that, thank you very much. And you know what? You all get the rule completely. Totally get it. You think it is hilarious, but you do get it.b (And yes, this is the stuff that makes my grrrlfriends wrestle the bloggy notepad from my purse while I'm ordering another Newcastle. They know who they are, and they know they don't hate me, just understand the need to monitor me. Closely).
* When you all know there are gimlet get-togethers and those evenings when you all had your nails did and martinis are in order, but that this night, most of these nights are clearly about the beer. Nothing too fancy, nothing that you can't pronounce, simply good beer. Oh, and not the giant cans of PBR the hipsters in the corner are drinking and who you can't stop staring down for being so striped knee-high, Arcade Fire-loving, thrift-store-looking but really $48 t-shirt-wearing, girls-in-skinny-jeans, boys-in-skinnier-jeans ridic.
* When one of your grrrls picks you up, one drops you off and they all get you gifts you would have picked out for yourself but probably not bucked up to buy. When they know you -- maybe not always the everyday details -- but in the same way they did when you were dancing on platforms at Medusa's, sneaking Malboro Lites and crushing on boys you all still squeal with disbelief because they are gay gay gay.
* When they still get you -- even though you've changed and evolved and grown up, sometimes together and often quite separately in your own parts of the city, the country and your very different lives -- and remind you of it with winks and inside jokes that are going more than twenty years later and with the kind of prodding and support only those kinds of grrrlfriends can offer after so much time of seeing each other through.
* When you all intersect, even after being in such different places, by being mothers and stepmothers, married and separated and single, working and staying home and somewhere in between. You may not huddle together in a bathroom stall to wait for the results of pregnancy tests, scribble notes to boys or whisper over who is on the pill or who has your Girbaud jeans, bitch about after-school jobs as lifeguards and babysitters and telemarketers, talk honestly about sex in cars and seven-hour hair braids and blossoming boobs. But you meet anyway, or when and how you can. The words are different and the conversation is strikingly the same.
* When you can all get on the dance floor and work a Depeche Mode song like it is 1989 and you are on fire and afraid and all shaking it, singing it, sharing it together.
