When you live in a city as exciting and cosmopolitan as New York, you inevitably will have guests and visitors come from all over the place not just to see you, but to see and experience the city. One of my friends came to visit today with her now husband, and since they were coming over to grace me with their presence, I decided that since I was still feeling good, I’d make one of her favorite childhood cookies, the snickerdoodle, and send her off with some. Unfortunately, the Serious Eats recipe did not come out as I’d hoped (immediately out of the oven and a few hours later they were good, but passed that, they didn’t retain their soft, chewiness the way snickerdoodles are supposed to.
The two of them had been engaged since 2014, around the time Chris and I got engaged, and so my mom used to always say annoying things about how at some point, they would get married, never tell me, and not invite me to the wedding. “You can’t just assume that just because you invited someone to your wedding that they will invite you to theirs,” she started. “Maybe they don’t have the money to invite you, or maybe they just don’t see you as close enough to invite to their wedding.”
I thought about these constant jabs when my friend revealed that the two of them had gotten married about two weeks ago, in her parents’ backyard with just immediate family in attendance. Great, I thought, now my mom will be smug because she was right. Though it wasn’t like some grand affair that I was just left out of as my mother would want to imagine.
Not only did they get married in the last month, but they’ve also bought a home in the Bay Area. Talk about a double whammy in just one month.
I told my mom this later in the evening, which excited her to no end. She wants all my friends (at least, the ones she knows) to get married, have kids, and “settle down.” “Did you know that she’s your prettiest friend? I used to think (insert another friend’s name) was the prettiest. But no, SHE is the prettiest of them all!”
Yes, because I rank all my friends by how good looking they are. My mother really cannot help herself from comparing, as comparing people is one of her absolute favorite things to do, which annoys me to no end. Why can’t someone just be pretty or smart and that’s it? Why do they always need to be compared to someone else….?!