May 30: Girl-y weekend

Ah, how good it feels!  The hand of an old friend.  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I had a fabulous weekend, and I’m exhausted, and I’m extra-glad that tomorrow’s a holiday so I have time to recuperate a bit before the busy-ness of a new week begins.

Yesterday afternoon April and I met up with our Boise girls, Deanna and Debi. They drove over to Portland for the long weekend and invited us to join them at their hotel downtown. We’ve all been friends since high school, and it had been way too long since we’d been together. We sat in their room and chatted for a while and then walked down to Kenny & Zuke’s for an amazing meal of pastrami Reubens. More chatting was followed by a walk back to the hotel and delightfully delicious cocktails, prepared by Debi. In case you were unaware, Debi is the best person EVER to have near a liquor cabinet.

TANGENT: Debi is the booze wench who came up with the infamous Dew-Mi. There are many other drinks she’s created for me in the past, but they were so good I don’t remember them. Last night she played bartender—the girls had packed a small stash for Portland, lucky us!—and although I don’t think she set out to create a memorable new cocktail, that’s exactly what she did. A li’l bit of Absolut berri açaí, some Rose’s lime juice, and tonic, poured over ice, and I SWEAR TO YOU, it tasted like gummy bears! We still need a good name for it; suggestions are welcome.

Funny that we were all grateful for time away from our kids, but we talked about them more than anything else. Isn’t that just the way it goes? Of course, there was also much talk of our incredibly supportive and helpful husbands who single-parented for the weekend so we could be together. We love them! We adore them! We owe them big-time!

Of the four of us, three of us got a decent night’s sleep. Poor ______ had to deal with the other three’s snoring, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.

This morning Deanna, Debi and I said good-bye to April—she had plans with her family—and walked down to Mother’s Bistro & Bar, where we enjoyed an amazing brunch.

ANOTHER TANGENT: You’ve heard my thoughts on the two Portland Lisa Schroeders—one is the nice, sweet, author friend of mine, and the other is the evil, screaming chef who screwed my 20th high school reunion. I just gotta say, Chef Lisa’s food is so delicious, you can almost forget she’s the Devil Incarnate. I hate being supportive of mean people, but I’m making an exception here. Soooo good.

Then came the shopping. Exciting news: Debi, Deanna, and I all have matching shoes now. This makes us utterly precious, doesn’t it? But these are super-duper cute shoes, right? And who could resist the bargain we found on them? Certainly not us.

Totally comfy. And did I mention PRECIOUS? Yes, we’re dorks.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I won’t bore you with photos of everything else we bought, but we totally wore ourselves out carrying all the heavy shopping bags. Our weekend together was short but cram-packed with treasures. We laughed and laughed so much. We shared silly and frustrating things about our kids, our friends, our coworkers. We used the “cancer card” whenever the opportunity came up. Many stories were prefaced with a strict order that “this is not for the blog!” (I think my friends don’t entirely trust me). We saw lots of volleyball players who completely ignored us. Some of our more frequently used phrases:

• “…and it comes with a free cat toy!” (thank you, Trevor)
• “sugar-lumps” (thank you, hilarious Flight of the Conchords song)
• “Obama lover” (thank you, some jackass Debi knows)
• “But… I have (she has) cancer!” (thank you, cancer)
• “I’m a bagel! I can do it myself!” (thank you, Dorothy)

Best of all, we completely enjoyed our time together, catching up and reminiscing. There’s nothing like old friends.

Good friends are good for your health. ~Irwin Sarason