Monday, April 10, 2017

Ladies Night Out

My delusion of what we look like on Ladies Night Out
PC:  soheather.com
The five of us have been friends for over a decade.  Four of us have birthdays in December and one in March.  So semi-annually, we have a ladies night out to celebrate, which at our age is actually more commiserating our birthdays together.   I'd say it's a big affair, but the biggest affair is trying to schedule it.

Seriously, why do I have so many Scorpio/Sagittarius friends?  November and December are already insanely busy with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not to mention Christmas vacation.  THIS IS A REALLY INCONVENIENT TIME FOR BIRTHDAYS!  I don't even like my own birthday for this very reason.  March is usually a tad easier.  But, there is spring break to contend with.  The e-mails to organize LNO started in February.  And yes, old people make arrangements on AOL.  Which is precisely why we're not old yet, because we have Gmail or yahoo accounts.  Duh.

After several proposed dates and a month of e-mails back and forth, finally we confirmed a date all five of us could commit to and we marked it on our paper calendars in ballpoint pen.  Ok, maybe I'm the only one who still has a old school calendar featuring beautiful vistas hanging next to my home phone. Yes, I still have a land line.  Although, my girlfriends are more tech savvy than me, making me the old bitty of the group, even though I'm actually the youngest.

The week of LNO, that was scheduled for April because no one could do March, one of us bails.  Three of us have kids who are seniors in high school and she's taking her daughter for one more look at a college before she makes her final choice and she's leaving the Friday night we're going out.  Ironically, she's the one with the March birthday we're going out to commiserate.  And we can't reschedule because do you know how long it took to schedule in the first place?  Plus, April and May,   are chock full of attending senior breakfasts with our kids, sending out graduation announcements, organizing parties and scheduling a session to go cry at our financial planner's office because how are we going to afford all this?  So, the birthday party will go on without the birthday girl.

And that's what we did.  In our mom jeans paired with breathable cotton tops and sensible flat shoes.  We all wore earrings though, which in middle age in casual Colorado basically constitutes evening wear.  When we arrived at Till, a hip new restaurant filled with millennials, just before 6 we ran to the bar to catch last call before Happy Hour ended.  Because we're practical like that.  And we're saving money so our kids can come home from college at Christmas.  Forget Thanksgiving, it's way too expensive to fly your kid home then. They'll have to find another student with a family that's local to take them in and be thankful with on that holiday.

That's when things really got wild.  I ordered a spicy, carb-loaded green chili gnocchi.  Spicy food often triggers my Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  And after just coming back from vacation, the last thing my sluggish middle aged metabolism needed was carbs.  But, this was a special occasion.  My friend's birthday.  My friend who wasn't even there.  And since we're breaking the diet anyway, we need to get her a cake.  And then text her a picture of us eating it.  Happy Birthday Bailer!

We sat at the table for hours talking about our kids.  Because we're lame and had no plans to go out to a bar afterward.  Where would we even go?  Downtown?  Are you kidding me?  That's like 15 minutes in the other direction!  Then we'd have to find parking and shout at each other over the music. The waitress kept coming around.  "More water?"  Which everyone knows is server code for "Get the hell out of here already!"  So after a few rounds of water on a Friday night, at about 9 or maybe 9:30 we all headed home.

When did we go from Girls Gone Wild to Girls Gone Mild?

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