This past weekend one of my lifelong friends and her daughter, who was celebrating her 21st birthday, came to visit me here in California.

After three days of preparing my house for the festivities and four days of entertaining, along with pee-your-pants hilarity, I am exhausted.

My friend T (names will be shortened to the first initial of first names) and her daughter K are very special to me.  T is one of those friends that it doesn’t matter how much time has passed since we last talked or saw each other.  Every conversation or visit takes place like its been mere moments since the last.  When I’m with her I feel nineteen again.  And sadly, we often act like we’re teenagers when life allows us to have these brief but special visits.

T lives in my home state of Michigan so we only get to see each other once a year, if we’re lucky.  We met when I was fifteen and she was eighteen.  I knew the very first time I met her that we would be friends forever.  We’ve been partners in crime for 25 years, and every time we’re together we seem to have these unforgettable moments that take my breath away.  Like, literally, I’m laughing so hard I can’t breath.  And there are tears running down my face.  And I may or may not pee my pants.  That may not seem like a big deal, but when you’re laughing that hard so often, it begins to hurt.  Joy can be extremely painful.  And embarrassing.

I love you, T!

This past weekend was filled with laughter, silliness and varied shenanigans.  Here are my top five favorite moments from the weekend…

1.  In our attempt to find one drink K would like on her 21st birthday, T and I got shit-faced while drinking all her cocktail rejects. We ordered her ten different drinks trying to find one she liked.  We failed.  K remained sober while T and I partied like it was 1999.

2.  T smuggled a Moscow Mule out of the bar in her purse.  Her excuse?  “That drink cost $12 and I wasn’t about to leave it behind.”  She pulled it out of her purse when we got home and gave it to my babysitter, who apparently loves Moscow Mules along with delivery bar service. (Yes, my babysitter is over 21 and is a part-time bar tender.)

3. On one of our cab rides, our cab driver ran every stop sign and attempted to channel his inner Mario Andretti with us in the car.  I think he was showing off for K, who is an extremely gorgeous young woman.  While we were clutching the arm rests and hanging on for dear life, my phone rings and it’s the dispatcher telling us that the cab we ordered has arrived at my house.  I tell the dispatcher that we are in the cab, but obviously this isn’t the cab that was supposed to pick us up.  Who is this cab driver?  Holy shit, are we being kidnapped?  I attempted to communicate my distress over the cabbie’s driving skills over the phone, but the dispatcher seemed to feel it was just a mix-up.  I wanted to use a safe word so the dispatcher would know we might be in trouble, but telling the dispatcher our cabbie was fucking crazy seemed like a bad idea since I didn’t know if he was a kidnapper or not.  The dispatcher then told me to have a good night and disconnected the call.  Thankfully, the cabbie dropped us at our destination before we all died in a fiery crash, or we ended up at the bottom of a well with cabbie man using our skin as a cape.  I’m only listing this as a top five moment because now that it’s over, and I’m not dead, kidnapped or skinned alive, I can laugh about it.

4.  My birthday gift to K was tickets to the Comedy & Magic Club to see Jay Leno.  It was a blast and Jay was awesome!  We had good seats, great drinks, and it was an awesome night.

5.  We treated ourselves to massages at the spa, and it was one of my favorite activities of the whole weekend.  Since I started working out with my trainer three weeks ago, my body has been in a continuous state of soreness and pain.  Everything hurts, but in a good way.  I can feel myself getting stronger.  But I have knots in my muscles everywhere and no amount of stretching can work them all out.  So I paid to have a massage therapist, aka torture artist,  work them out for me, and while it was 60% pain versus 40% relaxation and pleasure, I needed it desperately.

Overall the weekend was amazing.  We laughed, we danced, we had girl talk and reminisced about days past and our epically bad behavior.  We laughed hard, played at the beach, ate amazing food at amazing LA restaurants and giggled as K stalked and fan-girled over the LA Clippers basketball players working out at the gym.

I’ve missed these girls, and I cried when they left.  They don’t make women in California like they do in the Midwest.  We are a breed unto ourselves and having them here made everything more beautiful and more fun.  🙂