All right ladies – in 21 hours I will be enjoying time with my college girlfriends. And I have just one girlfriend left to write about – Dana.
Dana was actually supposed to be born a princess. I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty positive.
She loves all things pink and sparkly and girly. She loves princess movies, too.
I’m not kidding.
The three of us who will also join her on this trip have sat through Ella Enchanted and The Prince and Me. But the thing is, with Dana watching, all excited and believing in true love to the end a.k.a. Charlotte, they’re actually fun to watch.
Dana’s also beautifully unpredictable. She is one of the classiest people I know, and she is my social behavior barometer for what is right and what is wrong. But one night, one glorious night, when I came back to visit my girls after moving to Colorado, Dana’s barometer slipped a little bit, and I’m so happy for her that she let it.
We were sitting in a bar in Iowa City and the clock was moving toward midnight when a waitress asked Dana if she would like to participate in a wet T-shirt contest. And the beautiful tipsy-barometered Dana said yes. I will leave the details out of this story, but just know that Dana not only embraced the wet T-shirt contest, she rocked that party. And that’s why I love her. One day, she is sitting with you talking about why you will get married and have 2.5 children and a drive a Volkswagen and why that’s the right thing to do and the next day she’s dancing like Beyoncé in a wet T-shirt contest. How could you not love this girl?
Beyond that, Dana is … just Dana. I can’t describe it. She makes you feel comfortable and secure and like no matter how tumultuous life might be at the moment it will all end up all right. She’s like a baby blanket for adults.
I love you, Money. See you, well, 21 hours!
P.S. Thanks in advance for the ride. And the weekend. And the friendship. XOXOX
Okay, so in continuation of my tribute to my girlfriends in honor of our trip this weekend, I wanted to highlight Karen.
If I could clone Karen and give her to everyone in need of a girlfriend I would because you couldn’t find a better one. She is the most loyal person I’ve ever met – she will take your side even if she thinks you’re wrong (she’ll also be sure to tell you that you were wrong later, but she has the decency to do it when you’re no longer in public). She has a sarcastic wit that will make your lips curve even on the worst of days, and she is dedicated to fun more than anyone I know. If there was a bar crawl that had 100+ people involved in college, you could guarantee she was a part of the planning process.
And as if that wasn’t enough, she has an enormous heart. She wants everyone to have an equal chance. She wants everyone to be able to live a good life, from here to the far corners of the world. Sometimes my heart breaks for her because it’s not an easy world when you want that for so many. But she doesn’t just talk about it either, which I find myself guilty of sometimes – she does something about it. She’s planning her career around it. I’m so proud of her.
And she’s got this way of knowing just what her friends need when they need it.
When I was moving to Colorado and leaving all of my friends behind (they were such good friends I had to return shortly after) she gave me her favorite pair of sweatpants that she would come downstairs wearing on our “I’m hungover and need nothing more than to watch a movie and eat fried food” days. Karen and I studied abroad at separate times, and I know she knew to give me these because of that experience. A couple of years before this, I found myself in Ireland, 10 days in to a 5-month stint, away from friends and family and loved ones and though it was an amazing experience, I had a horrible bout of homesickness all of a sudden. I called my mom crying and said, “Mom, can you please send me my Iowa sweatshirt? I need it.” It was silly. It was a sweatshirt, but that sweatshirt was home. Karen knew those sweatpants were home to me. They were a symbol of the best days I had with my girlfriends. I packed them up and smiled.
And I wore them often.
I wear them still. I’m packing them for this trip as a matter of fact.
K-HO, I love you so. Thank you for entering my life.
Yesterday John had the following conversation with the boys, and it was so cute, I felt I needed to capture it.
The boys were stuffing themselves full of eggs and turkey sausage when John sat down to have a “man to man” talk with them. He pulled his chair right up to their high chairs as they sat, oblivious to his discussion, covering their face and hair with eggs.
It went something like this.
“Boys, you know I love you very much. But there are some things that have happened in the past 16 months that I just don’t know how I feel about.
I haven’t slept well in 16 months. I drink too much caffeine. I don’t work out enough, so I’m overweight (he isn’t by the way, but he thinks he is because he doesn’t make it to the gym very often any more). I’m going to be spending my afternoon watching a kiddie band.”
He shook his head lightly. The boys continued to watch him, a little more interested in the conversation, but not enough to stop grabbing hunks of egg with their hands, stuffing whatever they could grab in their mouth.
“I eat way too much frozen pizza, and dinner is at 9:00 now, when we finally get you both to bed. I don’t eat any fruits and vegetables, and thus, I need a little more fiber in my diet if you know what I mean. I have two hobbies – hunting and golf – and I don’t have enough time to really do either anymore.”
John sighed and looked at both boys. They were now caked in egg and bits of sausage had escaped their bibs and sat on their shoulders – Sully – as usual, had egg on his eyebrows and a little on his earlobes.
“But I love you both very, very much.”
I guess that’s what parenthood is in the end. Sacrifice. Late, and sometimes, non-existent meals. Very little sleep.
Well I’ve been sharing embarrassing moments, and in my own moment of insightful therapy this week (I think I was brushing my teeth) I realized the moment where all of my embarrassing moments began.
I was 7.
I was in Mrs. Wells’ first grade class. Actually, I had a lot of embarrassing moments that year now that I take myself back to that classroom, but we’ll start here.
It was story time, and all of the kids were gathered in a semi-circle around a desk chair that sat in front of the blackboard. One of my classmates, a boy named, well, let’s say Mark, was going to read a story to us that day. I sat, smack dab in the middle of the pack, and listened intently no doubt (this is back when I thought it was cool to wear two pairs of socks at the same time and roll one color down over the other, so I was figuring out just the exact measurement to make it look like I had on one magical two-colored sock).
And then I filled the room.
With a fart!
Horrified, I thought quickly of what I should do while my face and ears turned beet red.
Determined not to give away my embarrassing moment and take fault (what a coward I was), I looked all around the room trying to giggle just like every other 7-year-old in the place, except my giggle was a nervous giggle.
Mrs. Wells’ called out, “Calm down everyone! Mark, please continue reading.”
But I can still hear those giggles that continued well into his next few pages of reading.
Then, I looked up and caught Mark giving me a wry grin as he read the next page of his book.
Did he know I was one the one who farted?! I ducked my head down and played with my socks again.
As story time came to an end I got up and quickly went to try and hide in the section of the room where we all hung our coats, planning an excuse to stay back there for a while, and I bumped into Mark.
I looked up at him confused that he wasn’t stepping out of the way.
“I know it was you,” he said, looking at me again with that wry grin of his.
Mark ate glue.
I’m not saying this because I feel a need to get back to him, but because for some reason, it seemed even more embarrassing to be discovered and called out by someone who ate glue.
“No it wasn’t,” I said, but I knew my cheeks were red. I have never been able to lie. Ever. I suck at it. My mouth says one thing but my face says another thing entirely and thus, I’m an honest person, not because I’m a good person, but because my face doesn’t allow me to be anything else.
“Yes it was,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Yikes! I’d been had! What would he do? Would he tell everyone in class? Oh my God. I would stand all alone during recess and look longingly at the friends I’d had before the day I farted during story time.
While my mind raced with the thoughts of all of the horrifying things that would happen when my friends discovered it was me who’d made music during story time, he walked off.
He left me standing there in the cloud of an embarrassing memory!
In the end, Mark turned out to be a very nice person. And it turned out not to be my most embarrassing moment ever, sadly, but there it was. The beginning of my embarrassing moments.
I think.
That therapy session while I brushed my teeth was only about 3 minutes long, so I may shock you with an embarrassing moment from when I was 4 later on.
I love my girlfriends. I consider the fact I’ve remained partially sane the past two years is much their doing. Memorial Day weekend, I’ll get to join three of my best girl friends for two days of fun and I’ve been looking forward to it for quite some time. Over the next two weeks, I’ll tell you why it’s likely we’ll get into a lot of trouble.
First, Kimmy.
Kim can make me laugh without trying. Kim cusses like a sailor. She is drop dead beautiful – to the point you really want to hate her, but you can’t because she’s the best person to veg out with when you need a girl day.
Kim called one day and shared this story with me:
Kim: Some asshole keyed my car today.
Me: Oh my gosh, that sucks! I’m so sorry.
Kim: Yeah – they keyed the word “ass” right on my passenger door.
Me: Ugh. Was it someone you work with?
Kim: I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I got that mother ****. I keyed the word “nice” right above it.
I died laughing. I could so imagine Kim driving around the mountains in Vail with a car that read “nice ass.”
Kim: I figured I was going to have to paint the door anyway, you know?
Okay not really, because there was quite the saga in getting him home. It went something like this (I’ve still only slept periodically this week minus a very good Saturday night, so please forgive any blunders).
Friday at 6:05 John called. Four hours and 55 minutes from when his plane was supposed to land. Not that I was counting down or anything. Not that I was pretending I would hand him both children and run out the door to the nearest bar/mall/spa or anything. Okay I did think about that.
But only about 467 times before he made it home.
John: I may not make it home tonight. We’re supposed to take off in 30 minutes but it may not work out. If not, I won’t make it back today.
Me: Turning from the counter where I was cutting up pears to the two children in highchairs anxiously awaiting dinner with grimaces on their face. “All right.” Mental sigh.
John: I’ll call later when I know more.
I fed the kiddos. Watched Suls mash some pear in his hair while I cut up more food for Will (P.S. Children on steroids for croupe have crazy appetites – if only they had sleeping habits to match).
John texted at 6:40: Please find me flight times home tomorrow.
Me: Looking at the two kids who now had food in their hair, down their shirt, dirty diapers, a need of a bath, pajamas, and a bedtime story, their medication, and me having needed to go to the bathroom for about 4 hours. I didn’t glorify the text with a response. There were employees at the airport in blue uniforms who were trained to find flights. I was in the middle of a battle here.
8:45 rolled around and I hadn’t heard from John. My mom had come to help me and I now owe her one million, four hundred and seventy-seven dollars and a month of vacation. The boys were finally getting sleepy – the Benadryl the doctor finally told me I could after four nights of 2-hours of sleep was setting in and they were hugging their blankets. It was the most promising sight I had seen since Monday.
John called.
“I’m going to make it back.”
Perfect. Not that I didn’t want him back, but we’d avoided taking a car to the airport because we hadn’t heard from him in two hours and assumed it was a no go on the flight home for the night. Now my mom and I had to pack up the now sleepy children, take a car to the airport and drive back, hoping they would go back to sleep.
I followed my mom in to the airport. She drove my car to drop off for John and I drove John’s – the boys sound asleep in the back. While my mom was pulling the car into a parking spot at the airport I was focused on texting John where he could find it. Big mistake.
My mom hopped in the car and said, “Okay. He has a spare key to get in your car, right?”
My eyes got wide. “No. Those were the keys. The keys I had you leave in the car.”
“Well I was asking you that but you were on the phone.”
Oh. My. God.
“Plus, sweetie, your laptop was in there. I wasn’t going to leave the car unlocked.”
I put my forehead on the steering wheel and we both looked at the car that now had my keys, safely locked inside. It was now 9:45, John still had no way home. I glanced in the rearview at the two now-sleeping children in the back seat and my head began to pound.
“Okay, we’ll go home and pray I find my spare key,” I said.
But I wouldn’t.
John sometimes uses it to pull my car into the garage in the morning, and versus running back inside and having the boys go through two temper tantrums in one morning about me leaving, I’d left it under my radio in my car that week.
I was losing my mind.
My mom, being a saint, said she would drive back to the airport in her car and wait for John. I would call a locksmith in the morning.
We tucked the boys into bed and I showered and crawled under the sheets myself at about 10:45.
John made it home safely and the boys nearly slept through the night that night and I woke up with a lot less head pounding (that is until I remembered my poor little car sitting the airport).
And then, then a very good friend made my day. Miss Erin, thank you so so much for dropping off a meal for us. I cannot tell you how much it made my day. I don’t know how you do it. Kiss the kiddos for me.
Okay. I’m done. I’m checking flights to some far-away island and I’m bringing all of you with me. Who’s coming?
Sigh.
I wish this were true. 24 hours in review. (John’s out of town on business in Vegas so thank goodness family is here to help).
Yesterday morning I ran Suls to the doctor again – his croupe-like cough had returned. I learned that if he gets it again, it may not be croupe – it could also be that the feeding tube he had in the NICU caused some irritation and he may have scar tissue built up, in which case they would need to do a scope if he doesn’t get better soon. Fingers crossed this is over in two days.
I get Suls home and run into the office for a meeting. Meeting prep. Meeting. Back home. Luckily, my glorious mom made dinner for us and my mother-in-law was staying with me to help me through the night (Suls on steroids is a not-so-sleepy Sully).
Fed the boys dinner, changed them, read them stories. Put Sully to bed. Put Will to bed. Started working on a work project while eating cheesecake at 8:15.
There isn’t enough cheesecake in the world that would have made me feel better about what was about to happen.
8:45: Sully wakes up. I rock him.
9:15: I get Sully back to bed.
10:00: Sully’s up again. I rock him.
10:30: I get Sully back to bed.
11:00: Will wakes up. I rock him.
11:45: I get Will back to bed.
11:55: I finally lay my head down on my pillow.
12:00: I hear Will crying again. I give in and give him a bottle.
12:30: I get Will back to bed.
12:40: I lay my head down again.
12:45: Both boys wake up. Sully’s croupe-like cough on the monitor is filling my room and I feel horrible for him, and Will must not have been able to get comfortable (he’s getting the sniffles) and he was wailing a wail I think Will reserves for moments when he knows I’m on the brink of losing my sanity.
1:00: I wake up my mother-in-law. I need help. She is my hero.
1:05: We give Sully a bottle. We watch the boys run around the living room like it’s 6 a.m. I was so out of any energy to manage the situation I plopped down on the ground and let them crawl on me like I was a jungle gym and wipe their noses on my sleeve.
1:30: They aren’t losing any steam.
1:45: Still going …
2:00: I take Sully back to his room and rock him to sleep.
2:30: I head to bed. (Thank you Diane for staying up with Will – I can’t tell you how much you saved my life).
3:00: I hear poor Diane try to get Will to bed and he screams.
4:00: Will finally goes down.
7:00: The boys are awake and ready to play. I am not-so-awake and not-so-ready to play.
Thank God I can work from home because I look beyond frightening today and think I would scare small children.
