The Ides of April

Geez, is the month already half over? How did that happen?

I went to Philadelphia last Thursday to see my college girlfriends. The seven of us took over K's townhouse and kept her husband sufficiently annoyed, I'm sure. He stayed in his office on the third floor most of the time we were there. Also, since there was only one bathroom and all of us glorious women, three of whom were also gloriously pregnant, things got a little crazy, and I'm sure K's husband was rethinking saying yes to letting us all stay there!

We did stay, though. And baked. The first day, A made some lovely lemon cakes and buttercream frosting. JS and I frosted the cakes for our Friday afternoon baby shower activities. JS's was a ducky on blue frosting; mine was a frog (my favorite!) on pink frosting. Good stuff. We did iron-on onesies with some cool images D found and printed. Then we played some baby shower games that JD thought up, and they were sufficiently challenging, but not so much that the never pregnant among us (still two of them!) couldn't play, too. I won, because I'm awesome. Well, my teammates helped on the first game we won (a password type game involving baby words), but my second win, on the word scramble, was all me. The three pregnant ladies opened their gifts, then we took the beautiful singing plastic travel mug I won for my hard work in the baby shower games, and we walked to a coffee house nearby so I could annoy all in my surroundings with the mug. Really, it only plays just enough of the song ("Don't Worry, Be Happy!") to be barely annoying. The song is fitting, since JD sang in an a capella group in college. And it does cheer me up, because if nothing else, at least I don't have a landlord kicking me out of my home and I have a bed. (Seriously, if I were in the same situation as the person Bobby McFerrin is singing to, it would be a wonder I hadn't found a loaded gun already. But, then again, "when you worry, your face will frown, and that will bring everybody down!" Don't want that to happen! It's all about you, worrier, isn't it? How selfish of you to be frowning about not having any money, love, or a bed. You're bringing us happy people down!)

Anyway, after our coffee trip, we rested a bit, then got ready for dinner out. We walked to a tapas restaurant (visiting friends who live within walking distance of restaurants is always fun for those of us who live in the suburbs, or in sub-suburbs, in my case) and had a wonderful dinner and sangria. Well, the non-pregnant ones got sangria. The four of us were not very thoughtful in that we still drank even though our friends couldn't.

Saturday, we headed to the Philadelphia Art Museum in the minivan D rented for the weekend. Some of us ran to the top of the steps, ala Rocky. Then, we waited in a long line to get into the Frida Kahlo exhibit, which was very crowded, but still very much worthwhile.

I love seeing art in person that I've seen in books. Seeing "The Two Fridas" in front of me was amazing. I had never realized how big it was. The exhibit didn't include several of Kahlo's well-known works, and didn't have my favorite work of Frida's from the modern art class I took in college: What the Water Gave Me. It did have many works I had forgotten about that were wonderful to see, in that "Geez, that is sad!" sort of way, like The Broken Column and Henry Ford Hospital. (You'll have to Google those. I'm lazy and need to take a shower now!).

Off to shower. I'll post more later.
Saturday

I'm back. It's now Sunday. It's snowing. Big, giant, fluffy flakes. It's been snowing/sleeting off and on the past three days. I would have really loved this snow in November, December, January, heck, even February. It snowed a little in March. That was fine. But come on, Weather Gods! It's APRIL! April SHOWERS bring May flowers. Remember that little rhyme? It wasn't April SNOW showers. Come on! The boys and I are signed up to go on a little sailing day trip Thursday afternoon. When I signed up for the late April date last month I wasn't thinking it would be freezing cold. Well, it's not quite freezing, at the very least. The snow is slowly melting after it hits all my pretty green plants and new flowers. We'll see what survives.

So, back to my trip. Saturday afternoon we did the fabulous "Bachelorette Party" part of our weekend (the original sole purpose of getting together in spring to celebrate, until all the friends started getting knocked up!). JD opened gifts and played Madlibs -- yes, we still do that. There was a great catch-phrase we were saying all night from the Madlibs, but of course I forgot it. We also did the pre-wedding game of the Newlywed Game, which we've done with each bride-to-be since I married back in 1997. One of the friends calls the groom-to-be and asks assorted questions about the bride and their relationship, and then we ask the bride-to-be the questions in person. It's fun and you get to know more about the groom, which is nice, since most of us don't really know each others husbands as well as we know each other. After games, we went to dinner, and then had a lovely time in a private room at Fuji Mountain, a Japanese bar, where we sang Karaoke, or rather screamed it, as we were all hoarse after two hours of that. A room full of Japanese college kids joined us at one point, and weren't driven out by our singing, but actually said, "You guys are choosing great songs!" Ha. The highlight for me: Dueting to the super-cheesy "Never Been to Me" with K, and of course singing it the way K learned it, substituting the line "sipped champagne on a yacht" with "sipped champagne on a rock." I also got to sing "Take it to the Limit" as my four-year-old version, "Take it the Liver." See here for that. I just realized we forgot to sing Journey's "Open Arms." Damn! We did sing "Don't Stop Believing", though which rocked. And we actually knew the words since they were right in front of us.

Saturday upon returning to K's house, D showed me this great clip, which I drunk-emailed Hubby. He emailed back that he still prefers Yacht Rock. Yeah, I'll give him that.

Sunday we went to lunch, then all headed our separate ways. And this past week I had a slow recovery. I arrived home at 12:30 a.m. Monday, and wasn't too surprised to find the house messy. I was tired and jet-lagged and really didn't want to get back to normal life. Oh well!