I HAD FRIENDS IN FROM OUT OF TOWN FOR MEMORIAL DAY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS HANGOVER.

This will probably a very hard blog to write.
So much of our relationship is based on subtle tones and innuendoes, sly comments that mean nothing to others or broad sweeping declarations meant solely for the shock and awe value (that and utter embarrassment.) That is how we love and most don't understand that.

That being said, to truly love us, you have to experience us, let me try to share the experience.

A brief, totally unfair summation of us.
Obviously this is all from my perspective and I tend to be biased towards me.
I am going to need some guest bloggers (Marje, Renee, Shelley, Joanne)


Renee: I call her my femi-natzi friend. This is an old moniker from back in her college days when her bite was far worse than her bark. She has mellowed a bit since, but the name will stick. The one thing I must say about Renee is that she is equal in all things. She is very much into equality. Not JUST the male female thing but in all things. Ex: Marje wanted to go to a cowboy bar during her visit. Renee said ‘Fine’ but if we go to a cowboy bar, we have to go to a hip hop club (sometimes I wonder if Renee doesn’t just like hip-hop because it is not the norm for a girl to like…but I digress) She is always willing to give something a try, but only if you do something she likes too. So that, is in fact, very fair.
She is also my highest of all high maintenance friends (I love you Renee…but damn)
To be fair, none of these requests or quirks are really that odd but….
-She will only drink dark beer (I think her taste buds are shot from years of smoking and therefore dark beer is the only thing that she can taste)
-Has to have a fan on at night
She wanted me to turn the air conditioning on at night, when the temperature in Colorado gets down to 50 when the sun goes down. I said no and gave her a fan. 
-Diet Sprite. Cans of it were everywhere.
-V8-Juice to take vitamins with. The Sprite simply wouldn’t do
-Coffee (she makes it with 100 times more coffee than required) You think I’m kidding.
I’m not a coffee drinker but I had a coffee maker. I didn’t have filters so she was using paper towels. (resourceful no?) When I ran out of ‘coffee filters’ (paper towels) she opted for the Kleenex. Again…you think I’m kidding.
-Creamer for her sludge (I mean coffee)
The creamer request was no big shakes I use cream in my tea (pretentious I know) so I already had that. That first morning Renee was hunting through my pantry and cupboards for the cream I thought she had lost her mind.
‘Where is your creamer?’ she asked.
‘Where creamer belongs…in the refrigerator’ I said in disbelief.
She stopped, clearly confused.
Why are you looking for creamer in the pantry? I asked
Oh, I should have been clearer….non-dairy creamer. Why would I ask you to buy me fat free cheese and fat free mayo only to have full cream…duh!
She was right about that. I didn’t quite think that one through.
-Fat free cheese and mayo
I told her we probably wouldn’t be eating too many sandwiches in between the beers, but she said ‘just in case….please?!’
-Terrible smoking habit. This is the woman who went up Pikes Peak 14,000 feet in the air and smoked two cigarettes once she got to the top.
-Can’t dry smoke (has to have a drink in her hand when she smokes) this causes big problems when bars wont let you take drinks out side. But don’t worry, she always finds a way to smoke. Renee is the only person I know to be on a treadmill and while smoking. She will deny this story, but it is true true true!



Shelley: My lawyer artist friend. Probably my most professionally misplaced friend. Growing up she was the editor of the school news paper (Marje and I were photographers though Marje was a year above us) guitar-playing-anti cheerleader-idealist-hippie-least-like-a-lawyer friend I had. She does probate and estate planning so maybe she doesn’t quite fit into the lawyer mold either. A true misfit.
Shelley loves nothing better than a glass of chardonnay and a Neil Young album; quite different from dark beer and hip hop and bud light and country music.
Compared to the rest of us Shelley appears to have this unassuming personality. She tends to go along with the crowd and fusses (out loud) as little as possible. You may think she is the cute little blonde sitting quietly thinking about nothing, but she is following every little word waiting to deliver the killing blow. She will go along with your stupid idea but inside she will seethe with images of your head boiling in a caldron she is stirring. She may apologize as your head sits on the floor spilling its life’s blood on your own feet but she isn’t sorry. Now she is not overtly evil, but if you start it….she will finish it. She, like me, will laugh when a person falls down. I love that about her. She is the person I sit next to when I have nothing nice to say.


Marj (short for Marjorie…duh) Marj is probably my least experienced friend. That is to say I don’t spend much time with her…I don’t get to experience much of Marj. Marj most defiantly is an experience. Marje is ready at a split second to tell you exactly what she is thinking and how you are making her feel. She will share your painfully private experience with the hemorrhoid cream as if she were indolently chatting about going to the market. She will volunteer your thoughts about a mutual friends bad fashion sense, right to the mutual friends face. Don’t get me wrong, she will share painful secrets of her own as well. Marj also is fair in that respect. Marj doesn’t really care what the hell you think of her, as long as you know what she thinks of you. Marj is separated with two amazingly beautiful children. (how that happened I’ll never know) She has a boyfriend who is crazy insane in love with her. When I say crazy insane….I mean it. We have dubbed him the stalker. (to be fair I won’t say his name) Marj and her stalker got into a bit of a tiff on the phone while she was here. She ended the conversation with ‘well maybe we shouldn’t see each other any more’ hung up and turned her phone off. Morning came and we were blissfully making fun of Renee and her ‘coffee’ when my phone rang. I saw that it was an Omaha number and assumed it was Marj’s husband with an emergency (as who would be so inconsiderate as to interrupt a girls weekend unless it was an emergency) Marj told us it was her stalker, took the phone and went into the other room to converse. When Marj came back, we gave her the ‘well….what?’ look.
‘OH he said he had bought a $600 ticket to come to the Springs. It leaves at noon….are there any more coffee filters I can’t drink Renee’s coffee?’
There was a moment or 6 of silent disbelief. Renee, Shelley and I exchanged nervous glances. Incredulous looks of the is-she-serious variety continued as Marj went about her usual morning routine. I check out the clock on the unused microwave; it was 11am Omaha time.
Shelley broke the silence. ‘You told him not to come…right Marj. Tell us you told him not to come!’
‘No, I told him I was tired and couldn’t talk to him until I had my coffee.’
More stunned silence from us.
‘You know it is 11am Omaha time Marj??!!’ I said.
She didn’t seem at all concerned.
No one really knew what to do next as Marj’s story seemed just a little far fetched but just bizarre enough to be true. I mean who would drop everything in their life at the moment, cough up $600 hop a flight to a city you know nothing about to search for a girlfriend you have no idea where to find. I mean…if I didn’t know better…I’d say it was kind of sweet and romantic.
I got a little desperate at this point.
‘Tell him there is no more room at the Inn’ I was making frantic hand gestures to the effect of ‘NONONONONONO’
Renee: ‘Call him Marj’
Shelley: ‘Call him Marj’
Meghan: ‘Call him Marj’
Again, if I didn’t know better I’d swear that she wanted him to come.
She called. Apparently he was sitting at the airport ready to go if he didn’t hear from her.
She calmed him down and convinced him not to come. She told him we all thought he was crazy…his reply….
‘I am crazy…crazy in love with you.’
Once again….If I didn’t know better I’d think that was cute…I DO know better.
Phew….we dodged that bullet.

Introductions finished, now time for the ‘highlights’ of the weekend.

The girls got into the springs around 3:30 am or so. Marj was a (eh hem) BIT cranky from driving the whole way. She wouldn’t let anyone else drive her car. I barely got the hello hugs in before Marj started off on her rant about Shelley sleeping the whole way.
As I hugged Shelley she said under her breath
’10 hours of nothing but country music and cigarette smoke Meghan….10 HOURS!’
Not long after, Shelley opted for the less comfortable air bed in the spare room….by herself.

Saturday afternoon brought the Cog railroad up Pikes Peak. Matt decided to try his luck and come along. (poor bastard) Marj, who was anything but well rested begrudgingly came along.
Marj was a royal be-otch the entire 1.5 hours up the damn mountain. Still complaining about Shelley sleeping the entire trip and how she got no damn sleep because it was too hot in my house (every window was open and it was 50 degrees that night) and my cat kept attacking her (jumping on the bed) and the fairy lights I had in the bay window kept her up. That she had to drink her coffee with little bits of grounds in it because I didn’t have proper coffee filters and that Shelley and I went off to yoga class that morning and Renee went to go walk in the beautiful dog park and left her alone in my house with a boy she didn’t know, (Matt) but she couldn’t possibly go out with Renee to the dog park because she would have to shower to be in public and Renee wanted to go right then. Once Shelley and I left and Matt didn’t come down stairs at all and Renee was practically out the door, a sulky Marj followed after her, sat on a bench and talked to her stalker for the duration of Renee’s work out. Now she had to sit on a train for 3 hours…and no one had better puke.
Because Marj is deathly afraid of heights, Renee bought her (and the rest of us girls) a tiny little nippy bottle on a key chain (flask to you)
It was about this time we suggested she take a nip
Once we got to the top of Pikes Peak (some 14,000 feet up) sure enough, right on que, some lady does the technicolor yawn and the whole train reeks of vomit. Marj was hardly amused but I think the lack of oxygen calmed her nerves a bit and she just looked for souvenirs for her kids.
It was also at this point that Renee, needed to quell her jones and had not one but two cigarettes. I was damn surprised that she didn’t pass out. But in true Renee fashion, she proved herself stronger than any lack of O2.

That evening we went to the Golden Bee.
I had never been there in all my years of living here; had to experience it just once.
The main thing about it is that the bar itself was brought over from England (quite lovely) They have a guy there playing the piano and singing popular songs. They even have the words printed out for you in case you find your drunk self wanting to sing along but are ignorant of the lyrics to Moondance. Look to the right and watch the Bee Videos.
Also, the funky little embroidered bees they fling at you throughout the night. They have a sticky back so the waitress never has to touch you to get them on you….she merely flicks her little wrist and twack…you have been bee’ed. Let me tell you she is a dead eye with those things. Most of the time you are not even aware you have one until your friends laugh at the spot it landed.
I am still finding discarded bees all around my house. They drove Marj crazy. I love them.

Sunday afternoon was spent drunk shopping then it was a night out.
Marj really really wanted to go to a cowboy bar. Luckily for her Colorado Springs has just such a beast…surprisingly enough called Cowboys.
My friend Joanne decided to join us. I didn’t spend much time at Cowboys as I was exhausted. Believe it or not…I don’t drink much anymore and an afternoon of drinking really hit me hard, so here is where things get foggy for me. I do remember zoning out and deciding I was too tired to continue so I headed for the Jeep to take a wee nap. The night continued without me and here is the story from what I have been told.
When I left, Shelley was politely sharking a seemingly nice man at pool.
Come to find out he was this 21 year-old who wanted nothing more than to see Shelley’s ‘boobies’
He was obsessed with her ‘boobies’. Yes that was the actual word he used, ‘boobies’
‘can I see your boobies’ he said.
When she said no hell no, he moved on to Marj.
Marj, disgusted, felt him up instead. She said he had look on his face as if he didn’t quite like the gratuitous nature of her touch.
‘If you don’t like it then why do you want to do it to other people fuck stain.’ Or something like that is what she said to him.
Marj found me in the car sleeping like a baby. I felt a hell-ov-a-lot better after my disco nap. Renee was in the car kind of being obnoxious for my sleep deprived brain. She said something to the effect of ‘oh, Meghan’s just sitting here….lets go back and dance. I want to dance, lets go back and dance.’
Something snapped in my little pea brain and I said.
‘Go dance Renee’
Renee didn’t move.
‘Go dance Renee…go on get’. I started to push her out of the door. (car was parked)
After that I think I decided that Renee didn’t give a shit about me and I was mad at her for it. I kept telling her to get out of the car. I remember calling her an ingrate and crying because I was SO not appreciated. (ha)
We got back to my house and I went straight up to bed. Didn’t say good night to anyone just went to bed. The next morning I remembered being angry at Renee but I knew it was stupid so I didn’t say anything about it. Poor Renee had to ask if we were ok. I said of course, if I was really mad at you for no good reason like that…then I would expect you to be mad right back at me for being so ignorant. Marj and Shelley breathed a personal sigh of relief.
I later found out that Renee was also very upset at my meanness and was also drunk crying. Marj said she spooned Renee to make her feel better. Renee said she didn’t remember the spooning and was just a bit disturbed to learn of it

Later when we were recounting the night for Matt, Shelley said he had to stifle a laugh when I was yelling at Renee because what I REALLY said was
“You ingrate….I bought you fat free cheese’
Matt and I laughed for a solid 10 minutes. I had forgotten I said that.
Matt Shelley and I decided I should mail Renee a slice of her cheese once a week once she left.

Later still when I was being filled in on the boobie boy…Renee said she felt so bad about the car incident because maybe she really DID do something wrong she didn’t know she did. She knew she was in trouble when I said ‘You ingrate, I bought you fat free cheese’
Matt, Shelley and I looked at each other and laughed even harder than Renee and Marj.

The best part about all this is that we all know what we said about each other. Never a though mean or in praise is hidden amongst us. We know our friends foibles and are not afraid to air them in public. I guess that which does not make us die of embarrassment makes us stronger. Now that I think about it, Renee seems to get the brunt of it (but that is only cause you are so weird sweetie  ) The morning they left I was sure to take out the fat free cheese and mayo so Renee would not forget to take them with her (ha)

Monday was spent at the quirky local street fair buying more souvenirs. We met up with a couple friend of our Dawn and Jon. Jon found out that Renee was a bit of a feminist and tried to no avail to rile her up. Spouting stories about how he is going to make his fiancé have 10 babies but sell eight of them for profit. He also couldn’t imagine how they gave us people (women) the right to vote. Renee took it all in stride (good for her) then Jon went to work on Shelley trying to convince her that since she is a lawyer she should pick up the tab. Jon struck out again.

That was our last night together. They left the next morning for their home. I miss the hub bub around the house, the flutter of getting ready to go out together, sharing of clothes, the smell of fat free cheese, the endless coffee grounds on my counter, the ever lingering smell of smoke. Ahhhhh its like old times.