The boys went on one of their monthly camping trips with the Boy Scouts so I found myself with time to myself this weekend. My friends and I have been saying that we needed to plan a girls night, and I decided that it was time to plan it and quit talking about it. As busy wives and mothers, it isn’t often that we have a completely child-free moment to kick back and just be girls again. I’ll take it, even though I know my boys are growing up and there will come a day I will want them to come back home. Part of my reason for wanting a girls night stems from how healing I found these opportunities to be after Brian had his colon-tastrophe. I longed for being able to step out of reality for a moment and let loose. So often, we take life so seriously that we can’t even see the beauty of it.
We marked our girls night in on the calendar, after checking and double checking everyone’s availability. (Which we knew could change at a moment’s notice!) I planned the night, ordering the game Cards Against Humanity which I knew ran the risk of vulgarity and debauchery. Just what we needed. Something stupid to take our minds out of being grown up, even if just for a little bit. I got up early the morning of and made a sinful dark chocolate layered no-bake cheesecake. I made it with a little bit of coffee liqueur, just in case we started to fall asleep after dinner. That was completely against the rules. We had to stay awake, at least long enough to play a good game of CAH.
Then, I turned and looked at the rest of my house. It resembled a cross between Hoarders and something that should have been roped off with crime tape. I am not Suzy Homemaker and my living room is far from being on the cover of Southern Living, although I think the squirrel on the wall is probably considered a true Southern tradition. What? No? Hmmm, are you sure? Well, when I win the lottery one of the first things I’m going to do is hire a full-time, live-in maid. You know, like Florence on The Jeffersons, perhaps without all the smack talk. Or with it. That would keep life interesting. As if THAT’S a problem here. Anyways, I couldn’t let my friends see the depth of my disaster so I worked on getting the kitchen straightened up before I headed to the Kroger for our main course.
Even though it’s winter in Georgia, we were well into a “cold snap” and it was in the mid-40’s even at 9 am. But in my house, where apparently I’m nearing the beautiful life stage of menopause, it was about 110 degrees. I was sweating so bad, I turned on the ceiling fan but that just didn’t do anything but piss me off. It wasn’t near cold enough to cool the internal inferno that was raging just underneath the surface of my skin. I opened the front door to try and cool off; I stood there and fanned it back and forth. Silly me, I was worried that I would get cold since the boys wouldn’t be there to get the fire going for me. Nope, the fire was me. I wondered if the Discovery Channel shows of people who spontaneously combusted were based in fact, and if so, would I be their next victim. Luckily, I cooled down just enough to get ready to go to the Kroger, which I went in my capri leggings and Croc flip flops. I did wear a jacket, but I could have sworn the little four-foot tall elderly lady in the produce section whispered to the lady next to her, “Does she think it’s hot outside?” Outside, no. Inside, unbelievably so. Surely, she could remember the days her uterus began to resign from its position and the fire it brewed during its last days. I could remind her, since by this point even in the cold-to-most-people Kroger, I was sweating so bad I thought my bra would probably become a bra-cicle when I went outside.
I got my groceries and headed to the next best place…the liquor store. Keep in mind, I believe I can count the times I’ve gone inside a liquor store by myself on one finger. I’ve been tempted to go when I’ve had the boys driving me insane, but then I would have had to leave them in the car which would probably result in a misdemeanor charge. I just wanted a bottle of tequila to make blackberry margaritas, but I didn’t realize they sold about 50 different brands of tequila. I looked at each bottle and examined the ones that look interesting as though I were buying a car. I quickly culled out the one that was made in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh? Ew. That left the other 49, and I wondered if the cheap ones that were made in Mexico would give you Montezuma’s revenge. That knocked out about five more brands. All this time, the Middle-Eastern man that ran the cash register was watching a foreign language You-Tube video of what I can only assume was some kind of comedy since there was fake audience laughter blaring in between words I didn’t understand. I wanted to ask him if he could recommend a brand of tequila but I scolded myself for thinking that just because he worked there it didn’t automatically make him a connoisseur of tequila. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t really a connoisseur of tequila, I just didn’t want one that would give me the squirts or leave me face down on a plate of 2 am tacos. I settled on a brand I had never tried but the bottle was pretty and every girl knows that must mean it’s good stuff. I went to check out and even though I clearly look old enough for the purchase of alcoholic beverages, he carded me. Perhaps he thought I took way too long picking out a brand and mistook that for youth. The wrinkles on my forehead certainly should have been enough to confirm my age being over 21. I appreciated this gesture, whether it was simply because he was following the law or making an old woman feel young again.
I hurried home to finish the task of getting the lasagna in the crock pot and cleaning the house. I made the sauce completely from scratch. I used tomato sauce that I had prepared and frozen during the summer. I used bell red and yellow bell peppers that my mother in law had chopped and frozen for me when we had gotten a ton in co-op. My freezer still smells like bell peppers, which makes eating ice cream interesting sometimes. The flavor of bell pepper infused fudge ripple begins to grow on you, and you day dream of being on one of those cooking contests using that as your signature dessert. I browned the ground beef and the Polish kielbasa, added onions and freshly chopped garlic. There is something so cathartic about cooking for me. It’s time I use for thinking about life and connecting with the flavors, amazed that God put all of these things on this earth for us to use. I quickly assembled the lasagna in the crock pot, opting for the no-boil noodles, just in case I didn’t have time for it to get all the way done. Nothing will ruin a girls night in like crunchy lasagna. Or seeing a mouse, which was a real fear for me.
Knowing that our mouse problem was still not 100% solved, I worried that we’d be sitting at the dining room table and have a mouse run out over our feet. I had to get the house cleaned up, at least to cover the scent of dirty dog and to ensure that we could see the floor well enough to be on mouse alert. Living with an autoimmune disease that attacks your bones really makes moving difficult, but I powered through like a champ even if at one point I was physically pulling my leg to cooperate with walking. By the end of my cleaning spree, I had just a few things to tidy up but felt like I was going to collapse into the floor. I couldn’t do that because my friends would come over and I’d have to crawl to the door. What kind of host would I be? I encouraged myself the only way I knew how…namecalling. That’s right, I told myself I was lazy and I needed to get moving. After I get my maid, I’m going to install an indoor heated Olympic size swimming pool where I can move freely without feeling like a captive in my own skeleton. I will even open it up to others who need it to help them move, and we’ll do water aerobics like my Aunt Ruby. Until then, I’ll sit on my heated back massager and pretend.
The girls arrived and we promptly opened the first bottle of wine. Keep in mind, I also had pulled every liquor or wine bottle from my cabinet and displayed them all on the counter. It was in that moment that I wondered if I had an alcohol hoarding problem. Well, you never know when red velvet wine may be just the thing to cure a long day at work. Lucky for them, I knew not to pull out my cooking sherry or the vermouth since I didn’t have a clue how to make a martini, dirty or otherwise unless you counted the ones made with a vodka base that were more like alcoholic Jolly Ranchers. Looking back on it, they probably do wonder if I have an alcohol problem or if I was hosting a college party of some sorts afterward. I had three containers of margarita salt. THREE. So perhaps I don’t get a girls night often, so I wanted to make sure they had a good time so that we could repeat it again. But by the looks of my mini bar collection, I planned a night that they’d end up with a face tattoo and a pet chinchilla.
After we ate, I was eager as a child on Christmas Day to play a game of Cards Against Humanity. I knew it would probably be more disturbing than we were prepared for, but I didn’t realize that I would have panic attacks about my browser history. We all had to look up some terms that we didn’t understand and I believe we have been educated on all of those creepy words that we just assume were bad but didn’t know how bad. It reminded me of the time a friend said the words “blue waffle” and then quickly followed up with a cryptic warning not to Google it. Well, you can’t just say something that sounds like a Smurf breakfast food and not expect me to look. My eyes have never been the same. I implore you if you have not already pulled up your search engine, put it down. You do not want to know. Ever.
But, we laughed. We laughed so hard that my stomach is still sore. It felt so good just to sit back and be immature for just a moment. We all have lives that force us to mold to maturity most days and act like the adults we are. But for a brief moment, we acted like adolescent girls that were just learning about sex. We didn’t judge each other for laughing at things we’d scold our children for saying. We didn’t worry about what each other thought about our combinations, even when I used a card about child abuse. We didn’t worry about political correctness or what anyone else thought about us playing such a hideous game. It was just the pure stupidity of it that made it the best free therapy a girl could get. The wine and pina colada’s probably helped just a little, too. We didn’t even open up my pretty bottle of tequila. It’s so pretty, I don’t know if I will ever open it. Oh, who am I kidding? I have to have something to go with my three containers of margarita salt!
I’ve been looking at my calendar all morning, trying to plan the next girls night in. It seemed to go by so quickly I don’t know if I got enough therapy. I will have to schedule recurring sessions so that I don’t end up in a padded room rocking back and forth about my mousepacalypse. It’s a relief to have friends who love you flaws (such as a dirty house) and all. I’d love to have that picturesque home that rivals any Southern Living display, but I’ll take real friends and dust bunnies on a girls night in over that any day.
Messpot Diaries 