"The Click"

A couple of months ago when Beth was still pregnant, and the world was coming to an end, and gas prices were out of control; I  was seriously worried about how to afford driving to work. 

You see, I live in St Paul and work all the way in Bloomington, and to those unfamiliar to what this means, it simply means I drive close to 40 miles everyday as my commute. Which quite frankly, sucks!

Well Beth knows my pain... she also lives in St Paul. 

So after talking about how ridiculous gas prices were we made the hard commitment to carpool, and I say hard because Beth likes getting into work really early. And If you know anything about me, you'll know this much... I love sleeping in (and to this day I still think it is inhumane to get into work at 7:30am), so it was a commitment on both parts. Mine was to wake up early and pick her up; hers was to be flexible in case I didn't wake up (which you'll be surprised how often it happens).

And thus, without knowing it yet... the beginning of "the click"!

It was short lived, cause later that summer Brooster (a.k.a Sam, Samster, Beth's baby) was born. And with that the lonely commutes.

But wait!! Here's where Emily comes into the story. Emily was hired in July, and she also lives in St Paul. So after Beth left me all alone, and I started complaining about gas prices again... Emily and I made the commitment to carpool.

In this case I think it was me who convinced her to the "early-to-work" deal (what was I thinking?!).

Anyways, carpooling is fun... I'm not that poor. Mission accomplished.

After a couple of weeks, I started the traveling extravaganza (more on that some other time)... so Emily and I stopped carpooling, and Beth came back from her maternity leave. So, silently we all made a commitment to pollute our environment. We all drove our individual cars every morning, at the same time (yeah, we're THAT tight!)

Ok, back up! 

Remember Emily started working with us shortly before Beth had Brooster. Which means that they didn't know each other enough to want to carpool, and well... what's a girl to do when her carpooling buddies are strangers? Coax them into becoming carpooling buddies themselves!

How I did it? Easy. They're both Anxious Annies, and I said exactly that... and get this: IT WORKED!

So I'm still in "traveling" mode, and Beth and Emily are carpooling buddies. 

But we finally have the "carpooling" conversation, how do we do it? Meet somewhere? One person picks up the rest... at what time? boring, boring boring... 

Somehow the girls decide that on snowy days it's MY turn to drive... Here's the kicker though, both of them are native Minnesotans. Born and bred in the snow. Me, I'm Guatemexarican (Guatemalan, Mexican, Costa Rican... everything but Minnesotan, right?) snow is a fairly new experience to me, and somehow the Anxious duo trust me to do the driving in crazy MN weather... whatevs! I'm not loving this plan, winter in MN, snowy days is every other day... not gonna work. So they carpool, I play hookie.

One morning Beth calls me, asks me to pick her up, something about her car. (right Beth?)

So I do, and we get into work... and as I'm parking, we see Emily pull in. Anxious Annie #1 (Beth) freaks out cause Anxious Annie #2 (Emily) might think we didn't want to carpool with her. So Beth freaks out and emails Emily and explains the situation... And Emily's reply was something like: "Yeah, I guess I'm not cool enough to be part of the carpooling click".

So there it is... long and boring intro. 

I'm sure you hope this failed blog gets better... can't promise anything, though.

But I will promise a carpool fart story tomorrow -- If I decide to leave the beach side and blog that is!