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!

Bringing SexyBack With the College Friends

This past weekend I flew to San Francisco to celebrate a bachelorette weekend with my college friends/housemates. The seven of us all shared a house for two years in college (well, technically that's a brothel in the town of Durham, if three or more unrelated women live together, so let's just say we spent time there, but didn't really live there) and try to get together once a twice a year as a group.

Thursday morning, Hubby and the boys dropped me at the airport, and I flew in to San Jose, stopping at my stepsister's house to have lunch with her and my stepmother. Stepsis looked great. She's due with her first baby any day, and is a long-distance runner, so has the perfectly fit with beach ball sticking out in front look. Stepmom was fine, too, even though she seemed to gloss over that she has neglected to return any of my calls since the middle of January. She's either depressed or attempting to get on with her life since my dad's death three years ago September, but either way, if she thinks she can get me out of her life that easily, she's got another think coming!

After lunch, I drove my rented minivan up to San Fran to my friend Amy's lovely home, where four of us made cupcakes. Or rather, Amy made cupcakes, and the rest of us decorated them with "witty" pictures and statements. My first read "Sugar Tits", with an image in frosting and sprinkles of said breasteses. There was also a cupcake decorated with a frosting picture of a sex toy that the other three had bought at the local adult store earlier, a penis cupcake, etc. You get the idea. The red velvet cupcakes were very tasty, even with adult images. That evening, we picked up two more housemates, including the guest of honor, who is getting married in September, at the airport in "the cherry" as I dubbed the red Dodge Caravan, and shared more laughs, cupcakes, and drinks that night.

Friday, our seventh housemate arrived, and we headed to lunch, followed by a walk on the beach with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. We window shopped, we drank wine and discussed serious topics (the state of women at our college, as opposed to what it was 15 years ago, politics, jeans), we went back to Amy's and made a delicious dinner. (Well, again, I had nothing to do with the dinner making, which is why it was delicious.) We watched the DVD copy of two films Jen made in her college film class, in which most of us made our film debuts. They were hilarious. (though in a very artistic and well filmed manner, of course, Jen!) We finished off the night with a game of "Totally 80s!" Trivial Pursuit, which my team won, as I am the 80s trivia master. Well, my teammates did help, but I think I'm the only one who remembers the spin-off series, "AfterMASH". Really, even Jamie Farr has blocked that one out.

Saturday, we walked on the Golden Gate Bridge, then went hiking in the Muir Woods. It was hot and we were all svitzing and complaining as we hiked the first two miles up hill, but we still laughed and talked and enjoyed the shadier half of the hike as we went back down through the beautiful redwood trees.

When we returned to Amy's, we showered, then the real fun began: the opening of gifts. The adult themed gifts were fun and we all laughed and shared stories. There was "The Fiance Game" - a tradition we started at the bachelorette party before my wedding ten years ago. Similar to The Newlywed Game, but played before the wedding, one of the housemates calls the fiance of the bachelorette being feted to ask him questions, then the bachelorette is asked the same questions, and lots of, "Ahh! Isn't he sweet?!" and "Oh my God! I can't believe that!" ensue.

While the gifts and games were going on, we all were getting our drink on, in preparation for our dinner. We took two cabs to the destination: AsiaSF, a restaurant and club with lovely "ladies" as wait staff and entertainment. They really were pretty, though Kelly and I agreed one looked like Latoya or Michael Jackson from too much plastic surgery. I thought most of the ladies looked more feminine than I do, with larger boobs and smaller "guns" as we were joking about my giant muscular arms throughout the weekend. The table of drag queens sitting next to us made me feel better, though. They were all a bit more masculine, so I felt better, and I wasn't retouching my makeup throughout the meal as the lady next to me was.

After dinner, Bachelorette Dawn suddenly got very serious and starting polling/grilling the rest of us about our sex lives, which resulted in lots of laughs and true confessions. We finished up with a short visit to the dance club downstairs, where we posed on the stripper pole, but mostly felt old as we looked at the younger ladies in higher heels. We got cabs back to Amy's, where we all went to bed after downing much water, fearing the impact of the drinking. Sunday morning, Eva left at the crack of dawn, scrambling out to the airport shuttle after the alarm clock failed to go off. I'm impressed she made it so quickly. Julie and Kelly left later that morning, then Amy, Jen, Dawn and I went to lunch and walked around Golden Gate Park. Amy's husband returned from his weekend "Escape From the Crazy Women" - a smart thing to do when the seven of us are together, as Hubby will attest to. (Being awoken early in the morning to "The Sound of Music" blaring from the TV downstairs is a memory he has from my baby shower weekend in 2001.) I drove back to San Jose, where it was 20 degrees hotter, and made my way home to a smelly home -- what is that smell anyway? Does it always smell like this? -- and cranky Harrison, who was out of sorts from staying up too late picking me up at the airport and couldn't decide if he wanted a bath, didn't want a bath, wanted to use the potty, didn't want to use the potty, etc. Much tantrumming and screaming ensued, but eventually he was in bed and I was doing laundry and going through mail. Back to Reality.

Oh yes, the theme of our weekend ended up being "SexyBack", or rather _____Back, filling in the blank with whatever was going on at the time. Overheard this weekend:

I'm bringing:
Cupcakes Back
Frosting Back
Creepy Back (our visit to the "Cell Phone" lot by the SF airport Friday night)
80s Back
Windy Back (The Golden Gate Bridge and beach by the bridge)
Sweaty Back
Lazy Back
Ugly Back
Drinking Back


Seeing my girlfriends was wonderful, and I love that we've managed to stay in touch and have these reunions over the years, as we all live in different parts of the country (San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Philadelphia and New York City - or Brooklyn and Queens). Truly, we're bringing Friendship Back! OK, that was cheezy. I'm bringing CheezyBack.