Girls just wanna have fun!
September 22nd, 2010
I’ve gone through a lot of phases in my life and one of the more recent ones was the, “When I was in college…” Thing is, college really wasn’t all that long ago. But then again, I think about it and I graduated college over 3 years ago, and I started college over 7 years ago. So to say, “When I was in college…” really is more reminiscent about yesteryear than it is about yesterday. (And after saying that, I realize I’m old and now I’m going to go to bed promptly at 9.30p…)
This past weekend however, I actually RELIVED some of my old school college days. My college girlfriends came to visit me! And by “relived,” I mean we went to bed LATE (Midnight…) , and went OUT (for dinner…) and DRANK (one single glass of wine…)
Now after we graduated, we all ran to the chapel and married our sugar plum boyfriends, stood up in each others weddings, and then ran to all ends of the country to begin what we call “long distance girlfriend dating.” One’s in Mississippi, I’m in Cali, one is in the West side of Michigan and the other one is in the South East side of Michigan. So this is the first time in a year and a half all 4 of us are back together! And we had a GREAT TIME! Nothing like a little girlfriend time to make everything better!
So when they got here Thursday, my Super Awesome Super Chocolate Bear bbq’d for us and then joined us for riveting games of SATC trivia and Catch Phrase. The boys beat us in Catch Phrase, but we kicked some serious boy booty and won the SATC trivia/charades game. I guess I can’t blame them too much though, SATC (aka Sex and the City…) isn’t really their cup of tea, and thankfully! I think we’d all be a little worried if they knew what Mr. Big’s first name was (it’s John, by the way… you find out in the last episode of Season 6)
Friday we spent at the beach and moved our way into the pool when it got too cold. “Cold” out here means less than 70 degrees on the beach. (Yes I’ve become a sissy and gone soft since I’ve moved away from the Frozen Tundra.) After thoroughly enjoying our Vitamix soup, we got ready for our CRAZY NIGHT out – sushi and a dueling piano bar. And of course, sushi was AMAZING (only my 2nd time ever!) and I tried my first Saki Bomb! Then we met up with the rest of the crew for a night out at our favorite joint – The Derby. We got home around midnight and hung out with the boys till about 1.30 just drinking, and talking and hanging out, just like the good old days of college. Good girlfriends, good drinks, good (and usually inappropriate) conversation made up many of my nights with these girls from back in the day.
Saturday was an early morning for the Michigan football game (which again, we WON! GO BLUE!) . The Hus and I made a pancake breakfast (complete with tequila shots… breakfast of champions!). We watched the game and then my lovely ladies and I drove out to Temecula for some fine wine.We spent the rest of the afternoon in wine country being classy connoisseurs describing how we could taste the oak or the cinnamon or whatever else they “found” in the wine. I wasn’t as classy though. I held tight to my favorite dessert and white wines. My palate just isn’t refined enough for red wine. I thought I’d be classy post college and drink full bodied red wines, and be able to fully appreciate all the tanins and flavors. Nope. But at least we’re not drinking Franzia boxed wine anymore!
So after a wonderful weekend with my best girlfriends, they headed out Sunday morning. With everyone’s busy lives, husbands, jobs, long distances, always short on money and other important priorities, it’s hard to get all of us together. I really felt loved that they made the trip out to see me. Next stop – possibly Mississippi to visit Emily OR there’s talk of a Florida trip in January with the husbands.
It’s been really cool to see how we’ve all landed and how our relationship as girlfriends has changed, yet it still stays the same. Our conversations have moved from recapping our wild nights and crying together over horrible professors and other trivial, petty things. We now talk about our futures, how wonderful our husbands are, our careers, spirituality and other “adult” topics. The 4 of us have essentially “grown up” together in our formative college years. We’ve been through a lot together – blood, sweat and tears. And through it all, we’re still together. Still the same old best friends who love each other and would do anything for each other. We’ve supported each other through our weddings and marriages and all the struggles in between. We pray for each other and call each other out and send loving texts, emails or cards. We’re still a tight knit group of girlfriends and although we hadn’t seen each other or even talked in MONTHS, catching up was like I’d just seen them yesterday. We all flowed and still continued to just “get” each other in ways only a girlfriend can “get” you. And we all got really lucky, landing 4 perfect gentlemen who treat us like princesses and there’s nothing any of us would change about our husbands, but there are some girl things the boys just don’t get. And for my girlfriends, I am eternally grateful.
Merrick asked me if seeing them made me want to move back to the Hand State, and I surprised him by saying no. I’m still not ready to make it back there. As long as I get girlfriend time every once in a while (hopefully more than every 18 months from now on! And hopefully before all the babies start coming in the next couple years!) then I can keep on keepin’ on out here in sunny SoCal. In the meantime, we’ll continue with our long distance girlfriend dating and as they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder. And it’s true. I’m loving these girls and appreciating them more every day and more since we’ve graduated and become women of the working world.
Even as women of the working world, girls STILL just wanna have fun!
