It’s So My Mom.

Photo from Slate.com

So I was watching how the Real (BARF) Housewives of Orange County interacted as one’s house was turned into a “bow-tique” (the brunette housewife’s words) of designer duds at a girls-only party. The “friendly” cougar infighting over wardrobe selections somehow made me wonder why my mom doesn’t have such, um, engrossing friends. Hers are mostly boring, annoying, or out of the picture, now that her kids and theirs have graduated the same schools.

I like only one of my mom’s friends. Grace is seemingly normal, and cute. My mom talks of lounging in the “cabana” of Grace’s “unbelievable” house, which is exactly what my mom needs. What she doesn’t need, in my (and dad’s) opinion, is that particular one that lives to proselytize about Jesus, the “conspiracy” of Hormone Replacement Therapy, and the expensive Shaklee vitamins she peddles. (The kook’s daughter was “extremely talented” as a Play-do sculptural artist. She attended a San Antonio university as a lackluster art major, because, she proclaimed, she was just passing the time to find a husband, anyway.)

Anyhow, as I beheld a brief moment of the housewives’ reclining and relaxing in leopard print, I immediately thought of my mom and Grace, gossiping and munching, poolside.

I even inserted myself into this fantasy—now of age, just one of the women (ahem, the younger one). But with enough wherewithal and stature to joke with my mother and Grace: “Come ON mom, the blog wasn’t that bad. Didn’t you like this and such part?” Like friends do. I just don’t have that sort of relationship with my mom.