Couple Friends and Football

So the wonder that is Sparky tells me I need to add pictures to my posts.

Happy now?

Yesterday, the Tennessee Volunteers played the Georgia Bulldogs.  What better way to celebrate than asking the couple next door over to watch!  Knowing full well they root for the other team!  Well, that’s exactly what TechPapa (his insistence of a nickname since he has now started reading) and I did.

This was a first.  See, we may have been married 8.5 years, but aside from a couple he knew before we were married and my best friend growing up and his wife (all of whom live out of town), we’ve never invited a couple over to just hang out.  Sad, eh?

I am a hermit, koo koo kachoo.

Here.  Let’s heighten that impression.  Sparky and her family have lived next doorish to us for 7 years (8 years?).  It has only been in the past few months that she and I have started becoming actual friends rather than just “wave and occasionally relocate a wayward child” encounters.  So when TechPapa and I decided we wanted to venture tentatively into the oceans of having actual friends, I wrangled her into bringing her Bulldog FratBoys, both big and small, over to watch some football and enjoy a few adult beverages on a lovely Fall afternoon.

They arrived in full Bulldog colors.  I immediately ran upstairs to put on at least a little orange.  They came bearing homemade chili and Palmetto cheese with BACON.  I pulled out bottles of wine.  The kids sat about destroying the house by slinging Matchbox cars hither and yon.  The grownups broke out the beverages.  The kids hijacked TechPapa’s phone and made all kinds of insane squealy videos.  There was football on, but we watched with only half interest, more interested in conversation.  I ordered pizza for the kids. We dove into chili.  Kids screeched about.  We wondered about the pizza.  I realized I’d never actually completed the order on my phone.  Cars were smashed, there was laughter, there was jousting with plastic arrows.  Pizza came.  Kids got tired.  We played musical houses and musical parents and musical kids until the wee small hours of the morning when I threw my sleeping kid on my back and trodded home barefoot.

It was so much fun.  I know that because this morning, we found a wayward paci under our recliner, Earl slept until noon, and TechPapa and I are absolutely happyexhausted.  And maybe just a little hungover.  And three pounds heavier thanks to all the food and Palmetto cheese with BACON!

It’s hard to make friends, especially as an adult when you’re no longer thrown together with new people in classes or work.  Generally, it’s not a good idea to start by inviting over people who root for your rivals, but you begin wherever you can.

Here’s to great beginnings.  Here’s hoping it lasts!