Meeting bloggers in real life can be very dangerous - be warned!

Yesterday I met my first real life blogger! The lovely Rhi from Flour Child lives practically around the corner, so we just had to meet sometime. I knew we'd get on when I got an email in the morning to say her daughter would be coming along as she'd forgotten there was no school that day. I have done that so often. We had lunch in a cafe with three of our five children and it was great. I loved that I could finally put an (Australian) voice to the writing.

While the meeting was a lot of fun, I have now also realised that meeting people you meet online can have serious repercussions, so I thought I would warn all bloggers out there:  

meeting online chums can play havoc with your nicely ordered life.

No, Rhi was not an axe murderer. That wasn't the problem. Babes was on serial killer watch, though, because he doesn't trust the interwebs. I sent him a reassuring text message while Rhi was in the bathroom:

The problem is that meeting someone you only knew in bits and bytes before in real life means that they can have real life effects on you. For example - mere hours after Rhi and I met, I was busy cooking a labour-intensive meal of vietnamese spring rolls instead of shoving a frozen pizza into the oven:

(Because I'm a copycat and that's what Rhi was cooking. It was most delicious.)

Even more life-changing is the fact that I have now committed to going to an expat mother and baby morning which Rhi is organising on Thursday and I am rather - ehm - nervous? Yes, I shall say nervous. (I'm thinking "shitting myself" but that would be a coarse way to put it, and that's surely not how proper expat mothers talk.)

I was complaining to Rhi (as I often do) that I don't meet so many SAHMs and that Flemish women are so difficult to approach (think "lionesses with brand new cubs" kind of difficult to approach) and all of a sudden she had spoken the words "I organise an expat mother and baby coffee morning at my house if you'd like to come" or words to that effect. I'm not so sure of her exact words now - I was too distracted by the angel choir descended from heaven singing hallelujah all around her.

I never thought I'd be allowed in at one of these mornings, but - get this - my children are once again my saviours. The mornings are for English speaking toddlers and babies! My children are the expats, and it doesn't matter what their mother speaks. Can you tell I'm doing a little happy dance? A nervous little happy dance?

Of course you all know how confident I am meeting women I don't know. I'm trying to stay calm but I CAN'T BLOODY DECIDE IF I SHOULD WEAR A SKIRT OR NOT, AND SHOULD I WEAR MAKEUP AND DO I TAKE CHOCOLATES OR BISCUITS OR PIE OR PERHAPS FLOWERS - and breathe... Just breathe... Yeah. So that will be fun. No, really, it will be. I have been hoping, praying and complaining until I went blue in the face for this kind of thing to come along for me so now I will bloody well go and enjoy myself, young lady. (Oops.)

Oh, and then finally there's the small matter of my impromptu apple pie baking tonight, which to be honest I cannot fairly blame on meeting Rhi, but it's so unlike me that I will anyway.

I decorated it with piecrust leaves!

...because she bakes pretty things and I never do, so it must be part of the aftermath.

Seriously, though, for a first blogger meeting, I think it went really rather well. Rhi was lovely, we're meeting again soon, I will be meeting more people as a result, and I've been cooking lovely food. I would rate that excellent.