What Are The Odds?

I met her in the hallway outside the dojo last summer: we were both watching our respective children in one of the classes through the window.  She told me that she had just moved to town from Switzerland and had taken some classes herself before, and I encouraged her to try the ones I take, which she did.

Although we are very different, we quickly grew close.  We joke that my role in her life is to talk her off ledges...she is as dramatic and high-maintenance as I am not, but she is a good, genuine soul and a loyal friend.

The first time I met her husband, I was immediately struck by how much he physically reminded me of Himself's best friend.  He's a runner, too, and one of the few who can keep up with Himself.  Since both wake up early, they regularly run together on weekend mornings now, and they finished 1-2 in their age group in a 15-K race they ran over the summer.  The husband is also a wine drinker, a mid-level guy at a pharma company, and the father of three young kids, so the guys have a lot in common beyond running, as well.

Their two oldest are almost exactly the same ages as Thing One and Thing Two and in the same grades, but at different schools.  Both are girls, but that doesn't seem to bother any of the four of them, and it brings Petunia into the mix as well.  The five of them get along famously.  (The sixth, their youngest, was a surprise, and at slightly under 2, doesn't fit the group dynamic as well.)

They had us over for dinner tonight.  All five older kids disappeared together the second we walked in the door and only rematerialized for dinner and dessert.  We four adults had a lovely dinner in peace (only interrupted by the odd toddler intervention) and some good wine.  As it happened, my friend needed to talk tonight, and that was OK, since I knew I wasn't leaving my husband in an awkward social situation with hers.

Usually, if I particularly like the wife of a couple, my husband doesn't really click with her husband, or vice versa.  Murphy's Law and all that.  I can't think of another instance where the husband of a good friend of mine is a legitimate, no-joke good friend of my husband's.  Add in the fact that our collective kids love each other, and that's the icing on the cake.  A very happy situation, indeed, and I didn't really think about it until tonight.