Baby bar (not of the soap variety)

So basically after you have kids you make well-intentioned dates with your mom friends via phone. Sometimes all you can muster is a phone call. Sometimes you just don't care and you need to get out. It usually goes down like this:

• Kid takes nap---call friend. At least one end of the conversation is usually peaceful in this scenario. Exception; child wakes up prematurely (translation: before you are ready to deal with reality). Loudness ensues on both ends of call until it escalates to the point where a mom simply cries "Uncle" and ends the call. Kind of like the game "chicken" where the first party who bails loses. Except in this situation little Noisemaker wins. Every time.


• Kid is driving you INSANE--call friend. Lock self in bathroom. Hope to self that it doesn't occur to child that she can bang on bathroom door and scream at the top of her lungs to great effect. Although the nice thing about that at least is I can be in another room and still know that she is safe. It's the "sound" part that doesn't jibe with Momma's master plan.

During either of these two scenarios both moms are wistful. They crave adult conversation, commiseration and something to ease the pain of a nerve-wracking day. They crave cocktails. In each case they make a date. Eighty per cent of the time one of them flakes and the other is slightly relieved because she didn't want to face the mirror, get out the crusty old MAC and apply it to her wan and tired face. But when things work out it's never long enough that we can simply coexist with a person who "gets" us.

Whoozyerfriend and I lucked out tonight. We were able to slip away for a cocktail with one caveat; Whoozyerbaby came with. I wasn't about to subject Whoozyerbaby to a tired Daddy who can crash on any surface and in any temperature-- despite umpteen decibels-strength auditory assault from any conceivable direction or other discomfort that would wake a mortal man.

Yes, my friends, Whoozyerbaby was delightful company as I had my rum punch and Whoozyerfriend sipped her lemon drop. She was stunning in her strapless black top which, she confessed, was the only thing that was clean. Whoozyerbaby smiled a wide, knowing smile as if she too undertood the difficulty of finding a clean and flattering outfit--she's witnessed the Great Hunt For Clean Clothing. Her momma conducts the search on an almost daily basis. This all-knowing happy little Buddha is welcome most anywhere. Must be 21 to enter? Pshaw... Were we desperate? Probably. But who isn't? For a mama-- empathy is the most intoxicating potion of all.