Herbs and friendship

Ok, so this morning, Hayley and I were going to go to Red Rooster Waffle Company, because we had a gift card. We got there an hour after the place was supposed to be open, but there were no signs of life inside; all the chairs were on the tables, no lights, and the doors were locked. Crap-a-la-crap-fest... And since we were out for breakfast already, we decided to go to IHOP...

While we were at IHOP, we had the wonderful experience of sitting next to two older, single women. I didn't WANT to eve's drop, but suddenly I hear the older woman say something about a group she gets together, and how sometimes they just talk about herbs, sometimes about friendship, and how it's casual and fun. Of course, I wanted to blog about it, so I wrote down the title of this post on a sugar packet so I wouldn't forget. Hayley asked what I wrote, and before showing it to her, I warned her with a very intense look not to say it out loud. We both kind of smiled at each other and suddenly, we were given a special peak into the lives of these two women.

The not-older-one started talking about a book she was reading, and how it made her think of the older woman's group, and so she started reading a passage. I wasn't snoopy enough to find out the name of the book, but the passage had something to do with how the women of her time were brainwashed by Disney tales like Snow White, because if the mirror had just told the wicked step mother something like, "Who cares who the fairest is, you're great, you're confident and strong, you're great at sorcery, so why bother with comparing yourself to other women!?" then Snow White would have grown up with a strong mother figure, not had to rely on her looks alone, and little girls everywhere would be more confident.

While I agree with women being strong, self-reliant, and having strong female authority figures, this conversation went into how great "The Secret" is (a huge load of crap, in my opinion), how powerful herbs are, the wonders of the feminine mystique, and the value of wearing crystals. (Ok, the crystals wasn't true, but I would not have been shocked to hear it.) All this seemed very funny, and something I would associate with the IHOP crew. Then I looked around.

There was a table of construction workers, one with denim shorts he had rolled up, another table where a woman with a femullet and her husband were ordering vegetarian omelets with holandaise sauce on the side, a large family of hispanic folks, and there we were, un-showered, me with my pretend beard, and our little guy in pajamas. My thought was, "These are my people." We're all a little scruffy, weird, and tired, but we want someone else to make our breakfast today, dangit. It was a funny little setting.

Oh, and don't worry, we kept eve's dropping so bad that Hayley and I had to force ourselves to talk to each other. Great breakfast.