Monday, October 25, 2010

What I learned this weekend...

The Hubs and I went out Friday night for our anniversary dinner.  It's 2 anniversaries in one...3 years actually married and 17 years since the day we 1st started dating.

In honor of our love and years of togetherness...we got some really big killer steaks and then wandered around the town we grew up in for a while.
Then Saturday night we had our annual Halloween party.  Awesome time!

This is what I learned Friday night at the bars:
*  I'm not young anymore
*  Drunk people are REALLY loud
*  Paying $9 for a drink is stupid, at my house that same drink only costs me $1.50
*  My ex's are total tools.
*  The bars were full of sluts when I was young...some things never change.
*  Some of my ex friends are total tools.
*  Some women really are happy just slinging drinks their entire life.
*  I like music loud...but not there is no number of drinks that makes me suddenly like bad music loud.
*  Drunk people are really irritating
*  If you're that drunk chick hanging off people, with half open eyes, screaming and slurring  no matter how hot you were when you were when the night started...you're not anymore, now you're just disgusting.
*  The dead bars are the best.  Less idiots.
*  Mating rituals of bar regulars resemble mating rituals of the Frigatebird (see link below)
                some weird dancing, flexing of muscles, strutting, and loud noises.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5VMAlpaSQM
*  Getting older and more mature is a blessing not a curse...thank God I'm not a bar fly anymore!

Saturday night was a whole different animal.  Our annual party used to be mostly a family affair.  While it's still a fairly small gathering of local friends and family members...the last few years the kids have invited friends from school.  There are some super classy people out here that I absolutely love love love...and then there are some people that give new meaning to the term white trash.

I met one such defining personality this weekend.
When you're child chooses a friend in school, you hope to God that they make a good choice.  One of my kids has the sweetest sweetest sweetest girl as a best friend.  I adore the child, and her mother.  The little girl is well behaved, well mannered, extremely polite...and the mother is very respectful and kind.  Both are welcome here anytime.  The little girl was not with her mom this weekend, she was with her dad...who I'm pretty sure showed up at our house drunk and possibly on something.  I had never met this man in my life but he introduced himself with a hand shake while wobbling back and forth and speaking in slurred fashion that brought back memories of other awesome trash we have dealt with in the past.  We explained that parents were welcome to stay (especially if they don't know us...I know it's important to be comfortable with leaving your child at someone's home) or they could leave and come back later to get their kid.

This is about the time his girlfriend/wife...honestly I'm not even sure which she is...got out of the car and walked up.  Ya ever meet someone and the 1st time you look at them you can tell they're just not the kind of person you normally associate with?  Yeah.  It was one of those moments.  Then she opened her mouth.  She had grown up in the same area I had and when she started throwing out names I realized that while we had been friends with some of the same people, I had quit talking to most of those people when they served their 4th or 5th jail sentence...in most cases while still in high school.

As the night progressed it was interesting to watch the dynamic between the handful of people we did not normally hang out with, and my friends.  I cringed a few times at the thought that my actual FRIENDS might think I was friends with this couple too.  It was that bad.  She yapped on and on about needing a job and at one point, she literally NO JOKE offered to "do anything" (with a wink) if one of our male friends, who happens to run his own company, would give her a job.  Needless to say, once they had gone, those of us remaining had something to talk about.

Another couple came to the party, and not 2 minutes into being here, the adult male was receiving very upset phone calls from his ex wife who was not happy that he was over at our house (yeah...her and I don't get along so well...although she has no problem sending her kid over here to play with our kids every day so we can essentially babysit him).  Again, a situation where I barely knew the dad but the kids are friends.  His girlfriend was cool.  Nice, intelligent, good conversation, dressed very well and a hell of a lot prettier than his ex wife.  The kid's dad seemed very nice...but with a ton of people here and lots of other parents from this town...they sat on my couch and watched 2 Harry Potter movies and chatted only with people who came and sat down in that room.  Not exactly what I do at parties for fun, but to each his own.  I chalked it up to it being a small town and him being uncomfortable with his recent divorce situation and how dramatic it had been for a while.  As always, his kid was a delight to have over.

So here is what I learned on Saturday night:
*  It's ok to qualify to your good friends that someone attending the party by default is not really your friend
*  Just because one parent of a child is a decent person, does not make the other the same
*  There are people out there willing to do ANYTHING to get a job right now (though I think she would do anything to my friend just for kicks, job offer on the table or not)
*  My twin makes the best apple pie shots ever
*  My friends are very neat people, our house barely even needed to be swept after the party!  Thanks guys!
*  Sometimes you're better off NOT saying "Yeah I knew/know them"...if you have nothing in common, perhaps they won't stay
*  My couch is very comfy and Harry Potter rocks

I suppose it's comforting to know there are some things you can always count on remaining true:

*Drunks will be drunks and while the years may go by, drunks are always the same
*The things you thought were awesome as a young adult, mean less and less as your priorities mature
*Sluts will be sluts and there's not a damn thing you can do about it except laugh at them and thank your lucky stars that you're not in their platform see through plastic shoes
*You can reach out to people but that doesn't mean they'll reach back and that's so not your problem
*Your good friends know the difference between slumming friends and people you really don't know
*You can dress trash up in a fancy suit or designer jeans but a garbage bag is still a garbage bag even with glitter on it.

and last but not least:

*We may grow older, get hang overs easier...we may gain weight, start wearing mom jeans...we might pay mortgages instead of buying rounds at the bar...that girl that worked with you and was so young is still so young and you're still way older than her...but look around at your life.  I don't know about you, but if someone said I could go back 10 years and live it all over again, I'd say "Hell no!".  It really does get better with age.

4 comments:

Annie said...

That's an aweful lot to learn in one weekend! Glad your party was mostly,a success and sorry I didn't make it. Being the grown-up isn't much fun sometimes,either.

The Bipolar Diva said...

I have a feeling this post will come to mind this weekend. We're going out with our adult kids and some friends to a bar. I'll be thinking of you and watching.

Anonymous said...

You can start wearing mommy jeans AND fat suits ;-) hahah you know what im talkin about

~Flinky~

Abby said...

Bipolar...I hope to hear some stories next week.

Flinky...I <3 you and fat suits!