Be All That You Can Be

Marti and I are not ones to let grass grow under our feet. We are tuned in, plugged in, wired up, linked and text-paged to every new idea and trend that comes out...at least, as up as you can be while living in a moderately small southern town.

So when the new Pan-Asian restaurant opened in the not-even-finished-park-amongst-the-construction-vehicles Friendly Shopping Center, we decided it was time to hop on down and see what all the fuss was about.

While we are ever the trendsetters, Marti and I are not followers. We waited a discrete two months before venturing forth. I mean, one doesn't like to appear anxious.

Anyway, the revolving front door is flanked by two huge concrete stallions. I don't want to be the one to say anything, but I think it takes away some from the appetizing appeal of a place to have horse butts positioned in such a way as to make one think of what would happen to them if said concrete steeds had been the genuine article.

But I digress.

We step inside, out of the bright sunlight, into a dark cavern of a room where all the waitstaff is wearing black and the tables have lit candles on them. We are led to one of those tables out in the middle...You know, the ones that make you think you must not count for much because all the other people are sitting in booths? What do they think we are, stupid?

I said, "We'd like a booth please."

The little girl in black blinked, then led us to a horseshoe-shaped booth that would've seated eight of us.

We took our poster-sized menus and perused them long enough for me to realize there were no lunch menu prices and Dear God, we're going to pay $15 for lunch in a chain restaurant! Our waitress must've thought she had to make up for ripping us off by yapping on and on about the items on the menu. She continued even after we'd ordered and were deep into catching up on what had been going on for the past week.

Couldn't she see we were in the middle of an important discussion?

Apparently not. At one point she started futzing around with the condiment tray, making up some concoction that looked more like a biology class experiment gone wrong than a hand-mixed seasoning for our lunches. Looking back on it, I realize now she was only trying to join in. I mean, who in their right mind wouldn't? There we were in all our glory- two hot, passionate, vibrant, interesting women with real damn lives! Puh-leeze, if you don't want to be one of us, what else could you be? That's right, your other choices are Nuts or Boring.

I know, I get carried away. It's just sometimes I forget how wonderful it is to eat lunch with my best friend. It's like going on vacation without having to pack or pay for it.

So, our food arrives and it's a good thing the waitress had blended the special seasoning for us because that high dollar food was just regular Chinese food dressed up and called Pan Asian Cuisine. I guess that's how they justified charging big money and printing their names on matchbooks.

But you can plop old Marti and me down anywhere and the results will always be the same...We will solve the problems of our own universe no matter what environmental obstacles we have to overcome.

Sometimes Marti and I get bogged down in the day-to-day frustrations of being the two hottest living mothers in the universe and forget to channel our inner wonderfulness. In short, we get cranky. We take it out on other, perhaps not-so-innocent bystanders. We completely forget the only destinies we really control are our own.

So, in light of all our renewed determination to be the best women we can be- without causing a nuclear holocaust at home or elsewhere- we have adopted a new motto and will be having appropriate T-shirts made up so we can clue the rest of the world in...

"Be the Woman You Are, Not the Bitch You've Become!"

I think it has a certain ring to it, don't you?