Girls Trip 2016

March 17, 2016 / Wanda / 14 Comments

Hello, world!

It’s been awhile. I’ve been absent from my blog for almost two months now, in part because life is so busy and requires my complete and total attention, and also because for a while there I just didn’t have anything interesting to share with you.

However, I’ve recently returned from my annual high school girls trip and that is definitely worth sharing! Every year in the spring I go on a girls only trip with three of my great friends from high school. Last year we went to Charleston, SC. This year, my girls came here to Los Angeles.

LA is a big city, and for most of the vacay we wanted the feel of paradise. Originally, we had planned to go to Catalina Island, but El Nino is an asshole and we couldn’t predict whether or not the weather would hold up for us. So we opted to stay at a resort in Palos Verdes called Terranea. It’s one of the most beautiful properties I’ve ever seen, and spending four days there was absolute heaven. We hiked the trails around the cliffs of the resort, took a whale watching tour out on the ocean, laid by the pool and drank fun cocktails in the sun overlooking the Pacific. We laughed, cackled at each other, talked and caught up on everything that’s happened over the past year. Yeah, we know how to girls trip!

The view from our room!

From the pool, looking out over the Pacific ocean.

A Sea Cave!

Hiking trails

Whale watching!

Sea Lions!

There were, shall we say, moments that weren’t so perfect. But my annual girls trip wouldn’t be what it is without some mayhem and madness along the way. As usual, each of my friends has elected to use the name of their alter ego to protect their privacy and what’s left of their reputations. We come from a small town, so….you know.

The first night at the resort was the most intense. And by intense I mean absolutely, fucking, bat-shit crazy. Belinda lives a very responsible life of dedication to her family and her community. So during girls trip she likes to let go. With us, it’s a safe zone. Jasmine is slightly more tame than Belinda, but only just. Piper is far more restrained and likes to relax and rest during girls trip. I’m somewhere in the middle. I enjoy going out and having fun but I don’t want to feel like death for three days, so I try to balance my alcohol intake and late nights in a way that allows me to enjoy the entire weekend.

After an afternoon of drinking by the pool, and then drinking at dinner, Piper went to bed to read her book while Belinda, Jasmine and I went down to the lobby bar for some live music and more drinks. I was tired, so I knew I wouldn’t stay out long but wanted to experience the hotel and I love live music. After one drink in the lobby I went back up to the room, leaving Jasmine and Belinda behind to no doubt wreak havoc on the other guests and each other. (I later heard some stories about a male, Armenian ballet dancer???)

An hour and a half later, the girls staggered into the room. I have no idea what Jasmine promised Belinda to get her to go upstairs, but I have no doubt bribery was involved. When intoxicated, it takes an act of God to get Belinda to leave a party. Regardless, they had the brilliant idea to turn our spa-style bathtub into a “hot tub.” Piper was sound asleep. I wasn’t. I laid there listening to them filling the tub with scalding hot water, sloshing water all over our luxury hotel bathroom. The conversation was as you’d expect. Drunk, nonsensical hilarity. They didn’t have a candle for the ambience so they put Vick’s Vapor Rub in the “hot tub” water to make it smell like a spa. And do you know what happens when you’re drunk and you get into really hot water, which then thins your blood even more? That’s right, it heightens the sensation of being drunk, makes you dizzy and disoriented. And do you know what happens when you’re drunk and become disoriented?

I heard Belinda say, “I’m not feeling so well.” Annnnnd, here it comes. I was actually glad she got sick. That way she could expel all the alcohol from her stomach and she could just pass out and sleep it off. A little while later she stumbled to the bed and fell asleep next to me. I got up to use the restroom and spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up the bathroom. Water and vomit. Good times.

I tried to go to sleep. It wasn’t happening. I was so tired and I had Puky-McPukerson on one side of me and Snory-McSnorerson on the other side of the room. Jasmine was sick with a chest cold, wasted and passed out, snoring like a damn freight train. Somehow Piper slept through the cluster-fuck. I laid there, forever, pissed off and contemplating the purpose of this nightmare. Why was I awake and unable to fall asleep while everyone else caused havoc and then slept peacefully, unaware of how much I was hating the whole world in that moment?

Then it happened.

I heard Belinda making a weird noise next to me and realized she had begun to get sick in her sleep. I jumped up, rolled her over and ran to the bathroom to get a towel. At one point Piper woke up, saw me standing there with a towel in one hand and a pillow covered in puke in the other. Our eyes met and she registered what was happening. She smiled a smile that said, “better you than me,” and she rolled over and went back to sleep. Bitches.

I cleaned her up, made sure she was turned on her side, and tried to go to sleep. I’d like to think I was awake all night because I was meant to save Belinda from an ugly, Jimi Hendrix style death. But there was nothing I could do to stop Jasmine from snoring all night. So I laid there in my expensive, fancy hotel room. Hating the world.

I think I finally fell asleep sometime after 4am. The last time I looked at the clock it was 3:45am. Then at 6am, Jasmine gets out of bed and starts moving around the room. She slams the bathroom door, twice. She opens the heavy draped curtains and let’s a flood of light into the dark room that blinds me, even with my eyes closed. She staggers to the phone next to me and starts randomly punching numbers in the dark, trying to call for room service. Then she stage whispers as loud as she can, “I’m so sorry. Did I wake you up? I’m still drunk and I feel like shit.” Then she says to the person on the phone, “I need a spoon! Can you bring me a spoon? I need a spoon for my yogurt. Does this room have coffee in it?”

Are you kidding me?! Awake….at 6am….for a spoon.

Much later in the day I was able to laugh about it. After I had taken an afternoon nap and stopped hating everyone. Belinda felt really bad. She thanked me for taking care of her. That’s what friends are for. You should never worry about drowning in sick while in the company of life long friends. And I know that if I was at my worst they would take care of me. Probably. If they weren’t all passed out drunk. Except they wouldn’t write about it and tell my sad tale for the whole world to read, which actually makes them better friends than me.

Sorry, not sorry. 😉

This is how I know I’m getting old, Part 2

December 20, 2015 / Wanda / 13 Comments

Several months ago I wrote a post titled, This is how I know I’m getting old. I talked mostly about how my attitude and perspectives about various things have changed over the years, for better or for worse.

Well, my attitude is not the only thing that’s been changing. As my 94 year-old Nanny would say, “Getting old is not for sissies.”

Here are a few more tell-tale indicators that I am officially old.

1. When I was younger, if I had a weird pain in my abdomen I wouldn’t think twice about it and blamed it on the pizza I ate for dinner. Now, weird pains in any part of my body makes me worry about kidney stones, ulcers, cancer and any number of horrible diseases that seem to be an inevitable part of aging. I’m 41, and it’s logical to think my shit is going to start falling apart. I didn’t worry about my liver in my twenties. Now, with every cocktail, I worry that my liver is 41 years-old and may not appreciate my love of wine and margaritas. The same holds true for all my other organs. I think to myself, “Damn, my lower back hurts, I hope my kidneys aren’t about to have a mid-life crisis.”

2. I have sun spots on the back of my left hand, but not on my right hand. My left hand is my driving hand and the hand that gets the most sun exposure when I’m in the car. Now I hate myself for not putting sunscreen on that hand before driving every day for the last 25 years. No one thinks about sun spots or sun damage on their hands when they’re 25!

3. When I was eighteen, my mom warned me that as I aged the elasticity around my eyes would be one of the first things to go. Her intention was to provoke me into a routine of good skin care. Thankfully I listened to her, for the most part. But she was right. The skin on my eyelids isn’t as tight as it used to be, and I can no longer wear any type of shimmer eye-shadow because it accentuates the loose skin and makes me look like an old hooker.

4. Saggy boobs. Sigh. I won’t go into too much detail about this because, you know, TMI. But I will say two things on this subject. 1. I would kill to have my 25 year-old boobies back, and 2. Gravity combined with Age is a double whammy of a mother-fucker and I hate you both.

5. More often than I care to admit, I will walk into a room to do something and realize I’ve completely forgotten what I entered that room to do. My short-term memory is for shit at this point, and it never fails. I will walk all the way back downstairs and then remember what I walked upstairs to do. So then I have to walk back up the stairs, which is hell on my knees. And this leads me to #6…

If you’re too young to get this reference, then I feel sorry for you.

6. About two years ago, I noticed my knees were starting to hurt when I walked up stairs. Then it was my ankles. I went from being able to do jogging intervals during my workouts to low impact incline intervals because my knees and ankles couldn’t handle the impact from jogging anymore. Also, whenever I bend at the knees or ankles, twist or pivot those joints, everything goes snap, crackle and pop. The other night my knee popped so loudly it sounded like bone snapping and my husband looked at me and said, “Holy shit, was that you?” Arthritis runs heavily in my family and my mom and grandmother have both had knee replacements. After multiple workouts with my trainer that resulted in extreme pain in my knees and ankles, she insisted that I stop ignoring the problem and see an orthopedist.

About two weeks ago I had my first appointment with the orthopedist. During the appointment I was shuttled between various techs, X-ray, and the doctor’s physician’s assistant. At one point, two techs got into an argument over which one of them was to assist me to an exam room. Here’s how the conversation went:

Tech 1: I’ll be taking you to exam room 4.

Tech 2: No, she’s with me in room 6.

(I’m standing in between these two guys who are towering over me. They’re young, perhaps in their mid-twenties.)

Tech 1: Are you trying to steal my patient? She’s with me.

Tech 2: Dude, she’s with me. She want’s to be with a better looking guy anyway.

Me: Boys, settle down. This isn’t a bar and you don’t need to fight over me. And by the way, everyone here is good-looking, so that’s not a qualifier. (I live in LA. The staff in this doctor’s office all look like they stepped off the cover of some trendy health/fitness magazine. And the fact that they were arguing over me and I was annoyed by it is further proof that I’m officially old. It wasn’t flattering. I wanted to knock their heads together and tell them to grow the fuck up. See, I’m so old.)

Thankfully the physician’s assistant came to my rescue and directed me to the room she wanted me in. When my doctor walked in my jaw almost hit the floor. He did not look like a distinguished orthopedic surgeon. As my husband so aptly described it, he looked like a Swedish porn star. Tall, definitely younger than I expected, athletic, easy on the eyes. I could imagine him more clearly in a wet suit surfing on the beach or posing in a photo shoot for a men’s health magazine before I would imagine him in an operating room. (I realize this information is completely irrelevant to the topic of my post, but when your doctor looks like he could be working in a strip club, that certainly adds an element of holy-crap-I-have-veiny-legs-and-I-have-to-let-hot-doctor-touch-them stress to the situation. Hot doctors are not a good thing, and they add to the discomfort of the situation. I already feel old. Now I feel old and self-conscious about whether or not I shaved my legs good enough that day. The struggle is real, folks.)

It’s an angry needle.

He sent me to get an MRI and the results showed that I’ve lost most of the cartilage around my patella/knee caps. I also have the beginning stages of arthritis in my knees. The treatment at this point is a series of shots in my knees to replace my joint fluid and lubrication, along with physical therapy. I almost lost my shit when he asked if I was ready for my first shot. I’m not thrilled about letting anyone stab me in the knees with a four-inch needle! So, I said, “No, thank you.” He said, “PT is going to hurt like hell if we don’t do this, and it will help alleviate the pain and inflammation in your knees.”

Rock, meet hard place.

So I sucked it up and got the first of six shots. If you’ve never had a shot in your knee, let me say this….it was unpleasant, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’ve endured. It was fast and I didn’t scream or curse out loud. That’s good for me considering I dropped a ‘mother-fucker’ during my mammogram. But I had to grit my teeth and my back involuntarily arched off the table in physical response to the sensation. For me, dental shots are worse. An epidural is worse. Mammograms are most definitely worse. And considering I need three shots in each knee to complete the treatment, that’s a good thing. My knee was sore for the rest of the night and I rewarded myself for my bravery (yes, I’m calling it that) by having wine and sushi for dinner. It was a treat, and my old, broken-ass deserved it.

In summary…my Nanny was right, getting old is definitely not for sissies.

Labor Day weekend, a wedding and a lot of wine!

September 15, 2015 / Wanda / 9 Comments

Labor Day weekend Dan and I went to Chicago without the kids for a wedding. One of my college roommates was getting married and we haven’t had a grown-up only weekend in almost a year. It was fantastic!

When I travel without my kids everything is different. I can drink wine on the plane, only pack for myself, and read smutty chic-lit on my Kindle instead of entertaining two kids for four hours with snacks, Ipad games and constant reminders to stop kicking the seat in front of them. I relaxed, enjoyed the flight into my favorite city, and did my best to get over the fact that I had to sit in the suck-hump-middle seat in order to sit next to my husband on the flight. No one likes the middle seat, on any airplane, ever.

Chicago was amazing, as always, and the wedding was so fun. I’ve been blessed in my life with the gift of incredible, life long friendships, and my college friends are some of the most outrageous, hilarious, intelligent, dynamic, beautiful women I know. We’ve all gone on to do different things with our careers and family, but when we come together it’s like no time has passed and we’re all nineteen again with fake ID’s trying to sneak into bars and pick up hot guys, except now those hot guys are our husbands.

Here’s the recap, and nicknames have been given to protect the guilty.

On the way to the wedding, TSGHLM’s (This Summer’s Gonna Hurt Like A Motherfucker-her requested nickname) dress split up the side. Dr. Evil and I took turns sewing her back into her dress on the Uber ride into downtown Chicago. Unfortunately, Dr. Evil gets car sick, and trying to sew TSGHLM’s dress caused her to become extremely nauseated. She managed to hold it together, I took over the sewing, and no pre-wedding car sickness occurred. TSGHLM’s dress was repaired and I can now add car seamstress to my list of party tricks.

During dinner Dr. Evil kept trying to build a glass pyramid on the table with all the empty wine and champagne glasses. The wait staff would calmly walk over and dismantle her pyramid without too much fuss and take the empty glasses. She would wait until they walked away and we would drain our glasses so she could re-build her crystal masterpiece. We had a lot of glasses. When they finally reprimanded her for her inappropriate behavior, she responded by adding another tier to her tower.

Also, at some later point during dinner, someone who’s judgment was definitely questionable decided that the party favors on the table, which looked to me like crystal candle holders embossed with the bride and groom’s name and wedding date, were actually small wine glasses. So they became wine glasses, and I’m still unclear on their actual function.

During the reception, Trixie decided to re-create the Patrick Swayze/Jennifer Grey scene in Dirty Dancing by crawling across the dance floor, on her hands and knees, in her evening dress, toward another of our friends sitting at a table. She completed the crawl but might have been too drunk to get back up. I was laughing so hard I missed part of it, but I’m pretty sure she had to call for an assist.

During an epic dance performance, I may or may not have allowed Dr. Evil to motor-boat my chest on the dance floor. I’m super classy like that, and you may be realizing why we call her Dr. Evil.

The Bride, whom we shall call Ellie, got busted in the bathroom for smoking an e-cigarette. The event staff had to reprimand her, at her own wedding! She also had her sister cut the tulle out from under her dress during the reception. Nothing says good times like vandalizing your own wedding gown on your big day!

There was a really beautiful moment when the DJ played Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper. Our small, drunk army of roommates and friends gathered around Ellie and circled her on the dance floor. We danced around her, singing at the top of our lungs while each of us took turns dancing with her in the center of our circle. It was a complete and total love fest as well as a gesture of loyalty and solidarity that has remained unchanged for the past 23 years.

I’m pleased to report that there were no public displays of nudity or pressed ham. And believe me when I say that’s progress, folks. At this point in my life, with this group of friends, I could never run for public office. There is way too much photographic evidence of the good times we’ve had in life. Dan showed me cell phone video of me rocking out with the ladies like a wannabe 80’s rock goddess on the dance floor, and I said, “Oh, that’s the wine talking. That’s ugly dancing! Delete that and we shall never speak of it.”

I woke up the next afternoon feeling like road kill. We spent the day like we would’ve in college. We laid on the couch, watched movies, ate good food and made fun of each other and our epically bad behavior. We’re forty! It’s like all maturity goes out the window when we’re together. We egg each other on and enable each other for the sake of entertainment and bragging rights. When I expressed this to Dan his most wonderful and appreciated response was, “I love your friends.”

Yeah, I love them too.

Wanda Says…Great Laughs, Great Friends and Good Times in Charleston.

April 22, 2015 / Wanda / 10 Comments

Every year I take a girls only trip with three of my great friends from high school. This tradition actually began when we were seniors in high school and we drove from Michigan to Florida for the week of Spring Break.

It was a big deal.

Everyone at our small school had their knickers in a twist over four seventeen/eighteen year old girls daring to drive fifteen hours to the heathen state of Florida for some fun in the sun. We survived, had an amazing time, and made it home without one traffic ticket or incident of indecent exposure.

And we did it all without the aid of cell phones, GPS, or online internet maps. We used real maps. You know, the ones kids today don’t know how to read. We called our parents to check in from pay phones. And no one died because they weren’t able to reach us every second of the day.

We were totally independent, smart, capable, badass teenagers.

Fast forward twelve years of being sidetracked with college, jobs, boyfriends who became husbands, raising children, and some husbands becoming ex-husbands, we resumed our tradition of the annual girls trip. Except now we fly instead of drive because we have more money and we’re scattered across the country. We’ve been doing it now for about ten years, give or take a year off for unexpected complications.

Pineapple Fountain at Waterfront Park

This year we congregated in Charleston, South Carolina.

My travel itinerary wasn’t fun since I was basically traversing the country as far as possible from the west coast to the east coast, but once I got there I was completely charmed. This was my very first trip to Charleston and I have to tell you, I was not disappointed. It’s a fabulous city!

We stayed in the historic district and walked everywhere. We took a carriage ride through the city and our guide detailed everything from minute details of residential architecture to churches and buildings of historic significance. We shopped in the open market on Market St. and I bought Sweet Grass Baskets for my children as souvenirs. We walked the waterfront to Battery Park, which has some of the most beautiful trees I have ever seen. We toured Rainbow Row and marveled over the charm of flowered window baskets, burning gas lamps, and real wooden shutters that add an undeniable ambiance to the already weighty, historic feel of the city.

And the restaurants in Charleston are amazing!

I fell in love with the houses of Charleston!

One of my favorite restaurants was called Poogan’s Porch and they serve gourmet southern cuisine. The food was fantastic and the service was incredible. If you go to Charleston, plan to eat there, but make a reservation in advance or you won’t get a table. I had the beef fillet with blue cheese dumplings, and it was to die for!

The other place I would highly recommend is called Kaminsky’s, and it’s a dessert bar. It’s a bar that only serves alcohol and dessert.

Genius!

The line to get into this place was staggering. Thankfully, we had stopped in there for hot drinks one afternoon when they weren’t busy and got to know one of the bartenders. It was raining outside and we wanted to warm up with some spiked coffee. The next evening we decided to go back to try their dessert menu as well, but there was a mob of people waiting outside to get in. It would have been over an hour wait, but our dear new friend, the bartender, was able to snag us some seats at the bar and took excellent care of our dessert and cocktail needs for the rest of the evening. The place is fun, charming and has some of the best dessert Martini’s, ever. And I don’t like Martini’s, so that should tell you something.

Oak Trees in Battery Park

Now, two of us, myself included, already had established alter egos. I am, of course, Wanda. One of the other girls is known as Belinda, but only when she drinks. Not wanting to leave the other two girls without a fun, alter ego to enjoy the weekend, Jasmine and Piper were born out of much alcohol consumption and consideration of naming preferences. I shall refer to my friends by their alternative names out of consideration of their privacy, and well, just because it’s more fun.

Jasmine received a chiropractic adjustment to her back, shoulders and neck by a local homeless man named Byron. I’m not kidding. We were walking down the street and observed this man cracking another man’s back while standing on the sidewalk. Jasmine yells out, “I need some of that!” Byron then crossed the street and began to work his magic. I was shocked. I was waiting for him to feel her up. He was standing behind her with his arms across her chest, working her arms, back and neck. At one point he said to her, “Lean back and put your head on my shoulder. Trust me.” And Jasmine said, “But I just met you.” It took every ounce of self-control I had not to piss my pants right there because I was laughing so hard. Jasmine decided to trust Byron, and he proceeded to give her, as she claims, one of the best back adjustments she’s ever received. The look on her face was orgasmic. She tipped him ten dollars. He rode past us on his bike a few minutes later and shouted out, “You’ve been Byronized!” Yes. Yes she had. (We found out later from our friendly bartender friend that Byron is a bit of a local celebrity, and every one knows him, loves him and he provides back cracking and adjustments free to anyone who needs them).

I love this house!

Belinda was good this year. She managed her alcohol intake well and there were no incidents of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ this year. We were really proud of her.

Piper just had a baby last year and is still breastfeeding. It became fun for all of us to mimic the sound of the breast pump which occasionally made her boobs tingle trying to release the milk. And we were treated to a special visit by her eight month old baby girl. Piper’s husband drove down with the baby so she could meet her Auntie’s and enjoy an afternoon with us. They live a couple of hours north of Charleston. I’m not kidding when I say she is one of the most beautiful babies I have ever seen. I gave her a pink bear, which we named Flo, and she loved her, which means, by extension, she loves me. So that means I’m the favorite Aunt. Just sayin’.

Waterfront Mansion

As for myself, well, I had a Ross Geller moment while at dinner on Saturday night. I wore skinny jeans that night. I never wear skinny jeans because I find them to be tight and uncomfortable. But, to shake things up a bit, I wore skinny jeans to dinner. We walked to the restaurant which was about a mile away from our hotel. It was warm outside and I was sweating slightly by the time we got there. Do you remember that episode from Friends where Ross wears leather pants on his date? And he goes into the bathroom of his date’s house to air out his pants because his thighs are so sweaty? And then he can’t get his leather pants back up and uses baby powder to absorb the moisture on his legs, but the powder mixes with his sweat to form a paste? Yeah, well, my incident was sort of like that but without the baby powder. Skinny jeans don’t like to be pulled up or down sweaty legs. I went to use the restroom when we got to the restaurant and got stuck in the bathroom for a while trying to get my stupid ass skinny jeans back up my sweaty legs. Never again.

In short, we had a great weekend. Great laughs, great friends and good times!

PS–We are considering options for next year’s girls trip, so if any of you have a suggestion for a destination in the US, I would love to hear it. 🙂

Wanda Says…Silliness, Shenanigans, and Good Friends.

March 11, 2015 / Wanda / 14 Comments

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. 🙂

Wanda Says…This is how I know I’m getting old.

February 6, 2015February 6, 2015 / Wanda / 21 Comments

I’m getting old and this is how I know it…

1. When I was younger, I remember thinking it was very progressive when the FCC began to allow cursing on TV. I remember thinking, “What’s the big deal if someone uses a curse word on national television? It’s not like most people haven’t heard them before.” And then commercials began to evolve and I thought the adult humor and content infused into the marketing of different products was more humorous than dirty. I remember one event specifically at my grandmother’s house when she tried to shield my great-grandmother from seeing a racy scene on TV, and my great-grandmother responded by saying, “It’s not like I’ve never seen boobs before, Francis.” Fast forward twenty years, and now I’m a parent. Thanks to all the sex and adult references on every station and every network, I’ve mastered the sport of living room gymnastics. All parents know what this is. It’s the sport that’s all the rage in any family living room with small children. It’s the act of diving, jumping, tumbling, rolling, running, or hurdling furniture, small people or pets in order to get to the remote on time to either hit the mute button or change the channel when you realize that what’s happening on the television is not appropriate for your child to hear, see or imitate. (And I’d like to thank every network that showed the new SI Swimsuit cover and all the 50 Shades of Grey trailers for the extra gymnastics practice this week. I really enjoyed trying to field my ten year old daughter’s questions about why that girl was being blindfolded, and why that other girl was practically bearing her private girly parts on the cover of a magazine. Thanks for that). I’ve become that crotchety old person who complains that commercials are filled with unnecessary sexual references and that there isn’t enough quality family television suitable for my kids to watch during prime time, and that just blows.

2. When I see a pack of teenagers walking down my street and they stop to loiter in front of my house, I want to tell them to get off my lawn. I have a nice lawn with nice bushes and flowers, and I don’t want them to litter in my yard or fuck up my grass. Get off my lawn you lazy hooligans! (I can’t believe I care about this).

3. It’s difficult for me to stay up past 10pm, even on a weekend. I force myself to stay up on weekends because it’s ridiculous and I refuse to go to bed at nine o’clock on a Saturday. If my husband and I are out with friends or having a few drinks, I seem to be more energized and can rally to the occasion, but as soon as the action’s over my body goes into complete shut down mode. I need my sleep like my grandmother needs to watch the Wheel of Fortune every night, or as she likes to call it, “The Wheel.”

4. If I have more than three alcoholic drinks in one evening it takes me a week to recover. Seriously. A week. Who’s got time for that shit? I can’t feel like death for a week. So when I do drink wine or other alcoholic beverages, I try and keep it under three drinks and I have to drink a liter of water in between. Otherwise my skin is dehydrated and wrinkly and I get headaches that feel like they last a thousand years. I long for the days in college when I had the energy and stamina to go out five nights a week, stayed out until 2am and was still able to make it to an 8am class. I don’t necessarily want to engage in those activities, I just wish I still had that kind of energy.

These will make your toes feel like they’re being cut off with a butter knife.

5. I now choose function over fashion, every day. Is it comfortable? Stretchy? Will those shoes make my feet hurt if I walk more than ten feet in them? I live in yoga pants and t-shirts. I’m with kids all day and no one gives a shit what I look like. And the last time I made an effort to wear super cute high-heeled boots to a party, I ended up losing a toenail and needing first aid by the end of the night. My poor husband had to practically carry me to the car, and it took me six months to regrow that toenail. When I was 30, I would have toughed it out and claimed, “beauty is pain!” But now, I’m too old for that shit. Give me blue jeans and tennis shoes, any day. (I do get dressed up and fancy for dates with my man, but that’s different than my 6am to 10pm work-as-a-stay-at-home-mom dress code, and I always wear comfortable shoes).

I prefer these.

6. The music I love and came of age on is now only played on the oldies stations. I remember being a kid and being mortified when my parents listened to ‘their music.’ I can recall my dad rocking out to the 50’s and 60’s and thinking he was the oldest man in the world. My mom listened to Neil Diamond, Helen Reddy, James Taylor and Barry Manilow. Now, I love all four of these artists, and I am a Fanilow. The first concert I ever went to was Barry Manilow and I was eight years old. I will never forget those palm trees coming out of the stage when he sang Copacabana. I loved him, and still do. However, when I was a teenager, I remember thinking my parents were so uncool because they didn’t understand MY music. They couldn’t understand how important Aerosmith was to me, or Foreigner. Journey, AC/DC, Steve Miller Band, ZZ Top, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the soundtracks to both Grease 1 and 2, and eventually Madonna and Guns N Roses. And then I went through my New Kids On The Block stage (don’t judge me), and eventually it was all about Grunge. Nirvana, Bush, Alanis Morissette, the Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins. My mother would shake her head at me and tell me to turn that crap down. And now, I find myself listening to the popular music of today and thinking, “How does anyone listen to this shit?!”

7. According to my husband, my hearing is going. When I ask Dan a question, if he answers by saying, “No” all I hear is, “Yeah.” I rarely ask him to repeat himself.

8. New appliances excite me. You know you’re old when you get excited over buying a new dishwasher, power washer, or coffee maker. I got a new Dyson vacuum cleaner for Christmas and I felt like I won the lottery.

9. I get turned on watching my husband do chores. Man flesh does nothing for me. Pictures of hot guys bearing their chests and showcasing a six-pack leaves me feeling…meh. But watching my husband do dishes, laundry, rescue wayward animals, and play at the park with our kids is the equivalent of old people porn. Confident, successful, and happily domesticated men are sexy. Period.

10. When my daughter asks me, “Mom, how old were you when you got your first cell phone?” LOL! She’s mad at me because I won’t let her have a cell phone until she’s 13. She has classmates who have them now and she feels left out. In my opinion, fifth graders don’t need cell phones. So when I told her I was 25 when I had my first cell phone, it was a regular phone, there was no app for that, it was the size of a regular cordless house phone, and I kept it in my glove box and used it only for emergencies because it cost like, fifty dollars per minute, she looked at me like I smoked crack. And she learned about crack in school, so it was a nasty look. Also, I seem to repel technology, and watching my kids run circles around me with new devices, games and programs makes me feel like my grandmother must have felt when I showed her how to use a cassette tape deck on my new boom box when I was in high school.

So, now that we’ve established the undeniable fact that I am turning into a crabby, appliance loving, no sexy shoe wearing, chase the hooligans off my lawn kind of spinster, what makes you feel old?

Wanda Says…On my daughter’s opinion of wine and other nefarious substances.

October 31, 2014October 31, 2014 / Wanda / 11 Comments

This week is Red Ribbon Week at my daughter’s elementary school. You know, the whole ‘Just Say No to Drugs’ campaign. Yesterday was ‘Put Drugs To Sleep Pajama Day.’ Bryn wore her favorite pajamas to school and they had an assembly in the cafeteria. Great. No big deal.

I’m all for educating kids about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, until you (insert name of elementary school here) try and fuck with my wine.

My husband and I are causal drinkers. We enjoy a glass of wine or beer in the evening. We especially love wine. It’s relaxing, it tastes good, and one glass at the end of a rough day is just enough to smooth out the edges of my stay-home-mommy-madness.

Bryn came home from school yesterday and this was the conversation she initiated with me:

Bryn: Mom, we learned about drugs at school again this year, and guess what my teacher said. Did you know that alcohol is the same as drugs? Beer and wine is alcohol, and that’s the same as drugs. My teacher said so. So when you and daddy drink wine, you’re eating drugs. When daddy drinks his Blue Moon Beer, he is eating drugs! (She looks scandalized because now she thinks we’re drug addicts).

Me: No, that’s not true.

Bryn: Yes it is. My teacher said so.

Me: Bryn, alcohol is similar to drugs because if you consume too much of it, it can be harmful. It can impair your senses and make you sick. But if an adult drinks one or two glasses of beer or wine, it’s not the same as taking drugs. Alcohol is not illegal like the drugs you’ve learned about. It’s not the same. It’s important for kids to learn about the dangers of drug use when you’re young so that when you are older you can make good choices and recognize unhealthy behavior, like taking drugs or drinking to much alcohol and acting irresponsibly. Of course kids shouldn’t drink alcohol any more than they should do drugs, but an adult of legal age having a glass of wine is not the same as taking illegal drugs.

Bryn: Yes it is. My teacher said so.

Me: Bryn, it isn’t the same.

Bryn: Yes it is.

(At this point I’m trying not to raise my voice.)

Bryn: I’m telling daddy that he eats drugs when he drinks his wine.

Me: You go ahead and tell daddy that, and let me know how that works out for you.

After dinner, my husband poured himself a glass of wine. I watched as Bryn eyed the wine with a practiced stink eye. And then she said, “Daddy, guess what I learned at school today.”

I think I speak for both my husband and I, as well as many other parents of school age children when I say this…

Dear (Insert name of elementary school here), thank you for teaching my child that her parents, and most of her friends parents, are potential drug addicts. Thank you for trying to deprive parents of the liquid life-support that we need in order for us to get through a school year.

How am I, and all the other parents, supposed to endure the endless hours of homework, common core bullshit, and instrument practice you send home each day?

Do you have any idea how hard it is to sit for 15 minutes every night and listen to my child attempt to play the flute for the fifth grade band? That shit is excruciating, and I can listen and be supportive and give her a thumbs up for her attempts to blow air into that God forsaken metal tube, and tolerate the horrific noise that sounds like dying birds only because of my dear friend, Chardonnay.

Chardonnay understands that I need to stay calm and composed when I am unable to help my daughter with her fifth grade math. Pinot Grigio understands when my daughter has three to four hours of homework every night. Sauvignon Blanc is prepared to help me comfort and calm my child when she is overwhelmed and exhausted over the ridiculous responsibilities and pressures put on elementary school kids.

Additionally, let’s consider the extensive volunteer responsibilities you demand of parents. For example, the only way I am even willing to volunteer at the school Halloween carnival in the food booth line, standing on my feet for two hours asking a thousand people if they want cheese on their hamburger, is because I know I get to go home and enjoy a glass of wine after my shift! You cannot ruin wine for me, so stop trying.

So, (insert name of elementary school here), take a moment to consider the impossible position you just put two hundred parents in tonight, trying to reassure their kids that we don’t do drugs. Better yet, why don’t you just calm down, and have a glass of wine. 🙂