This Is Where We Used To Live

At the end of an episode of Girls, Hanna is dancing on her own in her room when roommate Marnie comes home, finds her, and a roommate/BFF dance party immediately commences.  Which is clearly what would happen in real life.

I loved living alone, and of course, I love living with my family.  But when I think about some of the most fun, most hilarious & most memorable moments of my life, so many of them took place in grungy old apartments shared with some of my best girls.  As roommates, we became almost like sisters, closer & more honest.  When you live in as close of quarters as we did, there isn't a lot of room for anything less.  C'mon, let's go behind the scenes of when girls are roommates!

You will turn up the music really, really loud so you can't hear her fighting with her boyfriend. Even at 1am.  You will come home after work to find that an impromptu keg party has commenced, and they need a fourth for Euchre.  You will share everything:  shampoo, cigarettes, Doritos, secrets, money, toothbrushes, intimate details about your booty calls, clothes, modes of transportation.  If your boyfriend dumps you, she will come home with beer, wine, and ice cream - just because she wanted you to have options.  You will get pissed when she eats all of your leftovers that you were saving specifically for dinner that night.  But you'll forgive her when she pulls out some pot she scored that day.  You will have inside jokes that are so old & so complex, you won't be able to remember how they even got started.  But they will still be hilarious anyway. You will have no qualms about walking around naked in front of each other. You will laugh more than you ever thought possible.  You will make up a choreographed dance at 11pm on a Tuesday just because.  You will hear her having incredibly loud sex on a regular basis. And it won't faze you.  You will be there for each other during the big things, the scary things, the life-changing things. A good Monday night will be watching Lifetime Television for Women together while drinking White Zin and eating tuna noodle casserole. You will refer to you & your roommate as "we" and "us" more than often than you do with your boyfriend.  You will actually be more of a "we" and an "us" than you are with your boyfriend. You will agree on everything.  You will fight about everything.  You will feel sadness when you move out of that dirty little apartment because you'll know that it's the end of something.  But you'll also know that you're more than just friends now.  You're so much more than that.  

Lights Out!

A few weekends ago, Boo & I took a little trip out to a place called Herron Island where our bestie, Abra, had rented a house, and, another bestie, Laetitia was visiting from Prague.  Herron Island is pretty remote. No stores, no bars, no nothing on the island except for lovely homes & beautiful water views.  Ahhh.

The weekend we were there, the beautiful views were marred by a little bit of rain.  Okay, a lot of rain.  No big deal!  When you've got good friends, a box of wine, and Team Umizoomi on Amazon Prime, you're in good shape.  We spent the day working, reading, playing blocks, cooking, watching bad TV & crappy movies.  (Well, only if you qualify "Dude, Where's My Car" as crappy which I most definitely do not.)  We watched as the rain grew progressively harder, and we cheered as some rare lightening lit up the Pacific Northwest sky.  All in all, it was the kind of relaxing awesomeness you can only achieve on an island with no nothing.

And then it happened.

One of those rare bolts of lightening lit up the sky, and our little island house turned dark & silent.  Yes, the power had gone out.  Shit.

We had just settled in!  We had just queued up Umi on the laptop for Boo.  We had just started a "Project Runway" marathon.  We had just laid out our dinner plans which most definitely required electricity.  And - OH MY GOD - our mobiles weren't working and neither was the WiFi!  This was a true emergency.

After the realization that we could not check Facebook for an unknown amount of time had fully sunk in, we knew what we had to do.  We all took a different floor of the house to search for candles & flashlights.  We pulled out all of Boo's toys & books to keep him entertained.  We lit candles & placed them strategically around the house.  We corked(?) the box of wine.  And for three hours, we talked to each other.  We played pillows with Boo.  We watched the rain.  We weren't distracted by a text or a tweet.  We didn't pause midway through a conversation to check our email.  We didn't sit in silence for a straight 42 minutes while Tim Gunn & Heidi Klum ran commentary.  We enjoyed both the silence & the dark.

But, three hours later, when the electricity popped back on, we all cheered.  We celebrated that we could once again catalog our every move on social.  We rejoined the "Project Runway" marathon, and we all checked our phones.  Boo watched one more episode of Umi before bed.  But it felt a little like the end of something.

The lit candles were the one indication that the power had ever been off.  And, as we drank our boxed wine and watched the flickering of the flames, we made a decision.  The power would go out again the next day too - whether it wanted to or not.

And so, on our last night on the island, we enjoyed a self-imposed 2-hour blackout.  No phones, no WiFi, no TV, no laptops, no lights - just 3 good girlfriends (and a little Boo too), a box of wine, and a cutthroat game of Monopoly.

Sometimes you can just see everything so much better in the dark.

"In Wine, There's Truth." (And also awesome hilarity & insight)

Yikes, it's been a month since I last posted.  What in the world have I been doing with my time?

I had someone ask me the other day about my "process" for writing or blogging.  I had to think about it.  I don't really have a process.  (Yes, Gentle Reader, that may be the reason why I only blog once a month. You are right.  Now knock it off.)

Well, I might have a process.  It kind of goes like this.

• 545am:  Wake up.  No, I'm not Michelle Obama.  I have an 18-month old, yo.  
• 546am - 8am:  Tend to said child.  Check emails.  Watch Yo Gabba Gabba and wonder how Jack Black can wear that outfit without being self-conscious.
• 8am:  Wake up Tim so he can take over parenting duties.
• 830am - whatever time I am done:  Work.  Think to myself a variety of times throughout this time frame, "Oh, that would make a great blog post" while immediately forgetting what that might be.
• Whatever time I am done - 4pm:  Grocery, clean, laundry, work out (possibly), catch up on gossip news, continue to be inspired to write something awesomely hilarious or insightful which I then, once again, forget.
• 4pm - 7pm:  Pick my child up and begin my other job where my title is "Mommy, Mom, Mama, Mommy, Mo, Mo, Mo".  Have complete creative brain freeze involving anything besides making up awesomely hilarious songs and games to keep my child calm and amused.  
• 7pm:  Make dinner.  Think about nothing except that I forgot to eat all day.
• 8pm:  Finally time for a glass of wine!  Drink 3 1.5 glasses while watching TV.  Repeatedly think to myself, "Oh yes! I'm definitely writing about [insert awesomely hilarious or insightful topic here] tomorrow.  I definitely don't need to write it down because clearly I will remember this amazing idea."  No, really, I *actually* think that.
• 11pm:  Go to bed without recording any of said ideas.  Remember nothing the next morning except that I had an awesomely hilarious or insightful idea last night.

Is it a process?  Yes.  I never said it was a good one.  Imagine what an awesomely hilarious & insightful blog this would be if I just drank wine while writing.

Hey....I might be on to something here.

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere

I go to parties, sometimes until 830 4, it's hard to leave when you can't find the door.

Parents/Partiers - it's a struggle, isn't it?  A struggle to maintain some kind of realistic balance between our parental duties and our partying ways.  And when you add in cleaning and laundry and working outside of the home, well, it's damn near impossible. 

But I am here to tell you - we CAN do this.  (Picture me saying this in my best Bill-Clinton-on-the- campaign trail voice.  It's more impactful this way.)

We CAN find a way to both bring up our children AND bring the funk.  A few things to consider -

1. Our days of partying until 2a or 3a or 4a?  They're over.  Get used to it. 
2. Happy hour is your friend!  Many happy hours begin at 3p or 4p, making it totally acceptable to have a few cocktails and snacks in the middle of the afternoon.
3.  As you need to be in bed by roughly 9p in order to be functional the next day, flip cup tournaments events that begin as early as noon on the weekends are not only suggested, they are recommended. 
4.  A designated parent must be identified before any imbibing begins.  Yes, clearly, it's important that this person drives everyone home safely, but, more than that, this person ensures that Mommy Baby is fed, watered, and put to bed safely.
5.  Babysitters!  If you have a baby-raising partner, then you deserve to enjoy a night out alone together.  If not, you deserve a night out with grown-ups.  Seriously, it's not only okay to get a babysitter once in awhile, it's important.  If paying someone to watch your kid for a few hours isn't an option, guilt trip a friend or a family member, or make a deal to trade off les petits monstres with another family. 
6.  But you still can't party until 2a or 3a or 4a.  Well, you can, but you'll be sad. 

Special thanks to Mera for teaching me that sometimes the 3pm martini is a necessity to everyone's well-being.  Additional special thanks to Abra for her superpowers and superunderstanding of the above struggle. 

Why Don't You Bring Your Baby To The Bar Anymore?

My last post was on Halloween.  I don't think it will surprise anyone that I went back to work 6 days later.  When you are a working parent, the time one has to take babies to bars and then blog about it is greatly diminished. 

Let me catch you up.  Will is now 7 months old.  Here is the new reality.

It's the one day a week that all three of us have together.  We decide that, for research's sake, of course, we should take our baby to a bar.  Obviously, we can't go at night because Will has to be in bed by 630pm.  We can't go from 11a-1p because that's when he takes his long nap.  We can't go after 4pm because that's when he gets crabby.  That leaves after 1pm and before he needs to take his short late afternoon nap.  But on this particular day, Will naps longer than usual.  When he gets up, we need to give him his cereal & fruit.  Apparently, he no longer likes apricots, and he spits them out all over himself, me, the floor, and the cat.  Now we all need to change clothes and clean up apricot slop from the kitchen.  Of course, since he didn't eat his fruit, now he needs a bottle.  Okay, Will's has his bottle, we're all in clean clothes, let's head out the door!

Wait.

It's time to tag team.  Tim gets Will's coat and hat and carseat and blankie and paci.  Will does not want wear his coat or his hat so he is screaming as Tim attempts to wrangle him.  Meanwhile, I am putting together a diaper bag for this 1 hour journey to the local pub.  He'll need 3 diapers and wipes, an extra outfit in case of a blowout, 2 pacis in case the other one gets lost, 3 types of toys for amusement's sake, a full bottle, a burp cloth, another hat, and his stuffed bear. 

Will is in his carseat and he appears to be calm.  We have our coats on.  Keys are in hand, and the diaper bag's on my shoulder.  Let's get that beer.

And then a ghastly, horrible sound emanates from my child. 

Ah, shit.

After extracting Will from his carseat, from his coat, and from his clothes, and cleaning the blowout and the child, it is now 4pm.  He is crabby, needs his late nap, and refuses to wear socks.  Sigh.

Maybe we'll make it to the bar next week.  As for tonight, boxed wine & PBR?  Why not?

Baby in Bartell's

There are some days that you just can't take your baby to a bar.  Those are usually the days when you are most in need of a visit to a place that serves alcohol in copious amounts.  Do not fret.  You always have the option of consuming at home!  It's cheaper too.

Will and I had one of those days on Friday.  In a two birds, one stone scenario, we headed out on a walk to Bartell's.  The walk was to calm Will, the destination, which helpfully sells both wine and Pretzel M&Ms, was to help Mommy.

While shopping, Will woke up and decided he hated Bartell's, hated his Graco, and generally hated Friday.  Undeterred, I motored around the store, grabbing whatever alcohol and chocolate I happened to see first.  As we checked out, the following scene played out.

Cashier:  "Do you need a bag for your wine?"
Will:  Baby scream.
Me:  "No.  I'm going to drink it on the way home."
Cashier & Shoppers behind me:  Silent horrified stares.
Me:  Wild eyes, crazy smile.
Will:  Longer, louder baby scream.

And scene.

Sometimes we have to make our own fun.