The Napkin Diaries

Sometimes I don't even know how much I miss my girls until I actually get to spend time with them. Holy crap.
So Emily planned a girls' night for herself, Erin and me. We met in Columbia since that was the half-way point for all of us. We stayed on Gervais Street which was perfect, because we were able to bumble up and down the one little road we were on without getting too lost. And BTW, big thanks to DeAnne who sent me a ton of ideas for what to do while in town. I actually printed her email and carried it around like it was gospel and referred to it often to figure out where the hell the next bar was.
We met around lunch time and headed over to Carolina Ale House... where we appropriately started drinking. And can I just seriously say how much I love these girls?! It hasn't been just the 3 of us since college, which was at least 4 years ago, but when we get together, it's like we never missed a beat. You can't put a price on that.
We ended up buzzed and sleepy, so luckily we were able to stop in the Starbucks that was right across the street from our hotel. Mmmm coffee. Of course, as you might know, coffee makes me sweat like a maniac. But only my feet. I dunno. So I had to sit next to the AC with my shoes off for a good hour before I could even think of getting ready.
We were doing sushi at SakeTumi for dinner. Nom nom nom. I introduced the girls to the new best drink: raspberry vodka and diet. I prefer black cherry vodka, but most bars don't have it; raspberries are the next best thing. My only regret was wearing my stupid Spanx. Yes, I have a Spanx. I'm pretty sure almost every woman I know has one. But my teeny dress required me to hike the Spanx up as high as possible so I kept kinda losing feeling in my thighs. Doh.
We went over to this bar called Blue after dinner. It really is blue. Like, everything. The walls, the bar... the people in the bar. This lady sat down next to me and was trying to look sexy, but little did she know that the blue lights from under the bar were shining directly onto her face which made her look more like an Ax-murdered than a cougar. (Insert squeaky knife/ thriller movie music here) So, you'd think that the slew of diamonds strewn about all of our left hands would encourage men not to talk to us, right? Pshh wrong. This drunk ass comes stumbling over and he's all like "Heeeeey ladies, I'm Brandon." I was like "Hi Brandon. We're married." Brandon was like "Well that's perfect because I've been getting shot down by women all day! You won't do that since you're all taken." WTF. That did not go as planned. So Brandon asks us our names: Nikki. Lee. and Tabitha. Yes, Tabitha. We had a conversation earlier in the day about how that is pretty much the worst name ever, and so when Emily tried to introduce herself as Tabitha, or Tabby for short of course, she literally couldn't speak because she was laughing so hard. I guess Brandon likes girls named Tabitha because he bought us a shot. But his shot was not nearly as delicious as the Pineapple Upside Down Cake shot that we had several minutes prior. He eventually left us alone. But then, there were these 3 idiots behind Emily that were trying to get our attention, so every time I would look at Emily, they would like hang over the bar and flail their arms like they were in some Montel Jordon music video from the '90s. Ugh. Men.
We headed over to Liberty Tap Room after that and got all sweaty on the dance floor. Some dude was kind of dancing with me, and I wanted to be an asshole, so I held up my beer to proudly display my Clemson koozie that encased it. It was a total backfire though because the guy was just like, "What? I don't care. I'm from VA Tech." I'm a moron.
We got our fill of dancing and even learned some new Electric Slide rendition and headed back to our hotel which was conveniently right next door. I came prepared with White Cheddar Cheez-Its and Wheat Thins, so we had plenty of good drunk food to soak up all our vodka, sake, beer and pineapple shots. Mmmm.
We had brunch at Liberty (the same place we shook our asses the night before) before we left to go back home. Emily and I attempted a Bloody Mary but failed miserably. I want to like them so bad! I'm fully prepared to teach myself. I have a bottle of Zing Zang in the pantry at home and I'm picking up some Pepper Vodka after work today. The next free Saturday morning I have will be spent learning how to enjoy Bloody Mary drinks.
I had such a freaking blast with those girls. Ohmygah. I seriously could not ask for two better best friends because holy crap, do we know how to have a good time. Mmmm hugs.

My birthday was supposed to be February 28, and I mean, it happened, but not the way it was supposed to. I ended up driving to Delaware with Dave to go to my Great-Grandmom Talley's funeral - she made it to 100!
We stayed with Jen and Pete and rocked out to Sing Star. And on my actual birthday, I was with almost all my family members on my mom's side of the family, which was cool because I've never spent a birthday with them. We had some cake (that had beer shaped candles on it) and just hung out. It was nice.
I had planned to go out full-force in Charleston so when that didn't happen, I knew there was only one thing to do: reschedule. So we did - for Friday the 13th. We had a big cook out at the house with 14 of our closest friends, then went to meet up with our favorite Sniders at Pearlz downtown. I was already a bit lit and I made that painfully obviously when I dropped the bottle of wine on the floor before ever leaving the house. It put a dent in the kitchen floor. Sshhh, don't tell Dave.
We had our obligatory oyster shooter(s) at Pearlz and caused a scene. Screaming "BIRTHDAY" continued on for this weekend too. We really scream it every weekend. But maybe we should come up with other two-syllable words to shout.
Birthday do-over did not end there because the next night, Dave, Michael, Billy and I were out for Winnie's birthday and then we partied at Bucca's. We were the loud kids in the corner that needed to be put in time out.
This night was particularly entertaining because we thought that taking camera videos was a great idea. Well, it was for everyone except for Michael who ended up being the entertainment on the other side of the lens. The four of us were toasting our little teeny shot cups and Michael managed to tip his over and spill it all over the table. Well, that's alcohol abuse so we had to make sure he could enjoy his shot and asked our waiter to bring us 1 straw. I'm sure he was like "WTF," since we all had beer bottles in front of us. Eww, beer through a straw. So when I said, "go" Michael began sucking up Royal Flush from the table. And I began filming. And then he began to nearly barf. If any of us had been anywhere close to sober we would have realized how disgusting this was. Instead we found it wildly amusing and encouraged him to keep sucking. When the "pre-puke face" showed up though, I was like "Nooooo. Stop! It's not worth it! Stop now." So he did. Even though Billy pointed to the spilt mess and just said "Finish it."
We obviously spent Sunday recovering by watching Role Models and Madagascar II (Rooooooaaaaaarrrrrr)
Dave and I took off Monday and my brother stayed in town, so we started drinking again. What else is there to do on your day off? Billy came over with his super fun new girlfriend, Sally and we raised hell. We started off with a game of truth-or-dare Jenga which led to Moonshine cherries being eaten, which led to Sally licking a pine cone, which ultimately led to Sing Star. Dave and Michael did a wonderful rendition of "99 Red Balloons" that I happened to accidentally video tape... ah, the camera video recorded. Gotta love it. All you can see is them dancing from the back, like Party Boy of course, and screaming the words to the song at the top of their lungs while trying not to laugh hysterically. I heart video.
I also heart birthday do-over weekend!

I don't know about you, but when the "accidentally awesome" nights happen, it makes me love my life even more. Joe and Laura were in town last night so a group of us got together at the Wild Wing in Mt. Pleasant. And not just any group... but a good group, one good for causing trouble, might I add: Joe & Laura, Jules & Adrian, Amanda & Jay (and Jay's roommate) and me & Dave.
Prior to this meeting, Jules, Adrian, Dave and I were at Tsunami accidentally getting wastey on Riesling and sake. We were happy by the time we made it to Wild Wing.
So we started drinking, then we started taking pictures, then we get really loud - the usual. Apparently our "usual" behavior made our waitress hate us because she seriously quit checking on us. I started going to the bar about 2 hours into our visit. Or maybe she just got sick of watching us pass around Amanda's hats that she conveniently brought or perhaps her eardrums hurt because we screamed "BIRTHDAY" every 3 minutes. Either way, she hated us. Thanks to Laura, we left her a nice note spelled out in toothpicks when we left.
So of course we're not ready to quit at 2 AM. Who does that? I'll tell ya who: Quitters. And that we're not. No brainer about where we're going next: Thee Southern Belle!
By this point we had lost Adrian & Jules, but the other 7 of us were still out in full force. We busted up in there like we usually do. I led the pack as close to the front of the club... as I usually do and we took over the front corner. We managed to take over the wheely chairs after a few minutes, so we had front row seats. As usual. I went up to the stage to politely give a dollar to one of the pretty ladies, and when I went to sit back down, I noticed my phone had fallen out of my purse and was in the crack of the seat. When I picked it up, I was like "Wait, this isn't miiiine," and without batting an eye, I shoved the new found phone into my purse and didn't say a word. I apparently turn into a kleptomaniac after ingesting 10 vodka drinks. So whatever, we hang out until about, oh who the hell knows what time it was... we just knew it was time for late night breakfast. So we left. And we managed to spilt up accidentally because mid-drive Dave decided that he hated IHOP and demanded we go to Denny's instead. So it was now down to Joe, Laura, Dave and me. We were providing a recap of the evening and just cracking up about all the debauchery and I was like, "Oh hey, look what I found." They were like "what the hell?!" and found it hysterical that I failed to mention for hours that I stole some dumbass' phone. I wanted to keep it. It was pretty. Dave told me I wasn't allowed to keep it, but that didn't mean that we weren't allowed to fuck with it.
Joe snatched the phone from the table first and started scrolling through the last numbers dialed. He happened upon Caitlin. Poor Caitlin. She received a text from Joe letting her know that "You were almost as good as your sister... almost." We then sent a few more texts, snooped through the stupid pictures, made fun of the toolbag names he listed his friends as, such as Vegas Joey and G-Money Nate, and gave ourselves a pat on the back for being complete assholes to some poor helpless clueless girl. We had several missed calls from Caitlin in the morning. Bahaha.
We had no idea what to do with the stupid phone so we figured we might as well just destroy it. We wanted to like blow it up or throw it off something tall, instead we opted to run it over in hopes that it would exploded. Okay, seriously, this was the most anticlimactic event ever. I did the honors of rolling over the phone in the Celica, and apparently my car is too wussy to do serious damage to anything because when we rolled over it, nothing happened! It was like and that was it. Nothing exploded, no shards of plastic came flying from my tires, nothing. Just and done. It squished some of the numbers and cracked the screen and now it won't turn on, but man, that was a disappointing end. The stupid thing is still in my car, just hanging out in the center console, patiently waiting for the perfect opportunity for a real going-away party. I hope the dude that lost that phone never reads this blog and puts it together. He's gonna be pissed.

After a typical Friday night consisting of binge drinking and board games, I woke up surprisingly early (and perky) on Saturday morning. I decided that I could no longer stand the sight of the weeds that were taking over our front yard. I hauled out the weeding tools, the mini wheel barrow, and the gardening gloves and sat down amongst the shrubbery and rocks and began to curse as I pulled the first ugly weeds from my yard.

After clearing out about a pound of unnecessary out of control grass, I also realized that it wasn't just the weeds that I hated, but the bushes as well. Especially the monster cacti-like things that lived in the corner that just looked evil. They were evil. I'd try to pull the weeds from around them and I'd end up looking like a cutter because I'd have tons of mini pricks and scratches all the way up my arms until about elbow-height. And that shit hurts, just FYI. So I'd end up all pissed off and sweaty and wondering why anyone in their right mind would ever plant such a horrendous "plant." Devil plant.

So I grabbed ahold of two of the larger "leaves" or whatever the fuck grows off of these painful things and pulled as hard as I could. It came out of the ground rather easily. So I moved on to the next one, which apparently had a giant family of worms that lived beneath it. Sorry worms. I had to seek out the assistance of my husband to pull out the mother cactus that lived between the two smaller ones. That thing was giant. And quite the bitch to get out of the ground. We cussed a lot. I bet our neighbors hate us... We finally got the damn things out of the ground and stuffed into paper bags that could easily hold a human and called it quits.

Well, called it quits momentarily. I then decided that I also hated these little wussy leafy shrubs that were in the flower bed area. I took a shovel to them and added them to the paper bag.

I apparently forgot to think ahead and actually plan for what I was going to do after I ripped these stupid bushes out of my yard. So now, I just have these massive holes in beds of mulch. And needless to say, we now own a "how to landscape" book. I have no idea what I've signed up for but I can tell you one thing, I sure as hell won't be buying any damn cacti.

For a good 20 years of my life I was scared to death of guns. Like, I couldn't be in a room with one. They made my heart pound. When I was about 21 I finally sat down next to one and held it. Then I placed it neatly back into its little bag and didn't look at another one for a couple of years. Gave me the heebie jeebies.

Well Dave has since gotten me more familiar with them. And it just so happens that I've been raging mad for the past few weeks so the unanimous decision was for me to learn how to finally shoot one of these bastards. Wait, I mean, learn to shoot a gun. Not shoot a person.
And if you care to know why I'm so pissed off these days it's because I'm completely sick of men treating me with complete disrespect because they think they are "older and wiser" than me. Wow, I don't know how much longer I can bite my tongue but if one more person makes a comment about how getting married young is a terrible decision or decides they are going to "shoo" they're hands at me and tell me to "go do my little HR stuff" I'll probably pull my hair out. I mean, did people never learn the phrase "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" Ugh.

So we went to the gun range. I picked up a 9 MM, fumbled around with the bullets, which by the way, is the hardest part about guns - trying to get them into the little holder is extremely difficult, and then I made sure my giant ear headphones were on and my cool yellow protective eyewear were on my face right and then I aimed at the paper target and freakin pulled the trigger.

I shook. It was CRAZY! Like, I'll never forget that moment in my life. I fired the gun and I managed to hit the paper target guy that I had strung up. I put the gun down and waited for my hands to stop shaking and then I decided that I liked it. So I tried again. And again and again and again. I realized that I couldn't keep my eyes open when I was shooting because it was so damn loud. So I practiced trying to keep my eyes open and I tried out different ways to stand and I basically thought I was a total bad ass.

After getting more comfortable with the freaking weapon that I was holding, I remembered just how mad I'd been for the past few weeks and took aim at the target's face. I shot a round of bullets and brought the target back to me to inspect my damage. Yeah, hi, I shot a line of 4-5 bullets in straight vertical line down the guy's face. Apparently I'm a good shot, so we've learned. My catch phrase of the day: I'll shoot you in the face!! And my husband's response: I should have known she'd be good at this... she's Italian.

So needless to say, I'm glad I got over my fear of guns. I'm pretty sure it's the best form of stress relief I've found. Visiting the shooting range is like my new favorite thing. Oh, and PS: they have pink guns. I'm not even kidding.