How do you summarize five days of vacation with your three best friends? Lots of laughter, interspersed with giggles, sprinkled with baked goods and bottles of champagne, with random adventures in swimming pools, Thai restaurants, at the aquarium or spa, and plenty of miles logged at the breast pump and/or in the car.
I can't believe the four of us have never taken a real, grown-up vacation together before. I don't know how best to capture and summarize our time together, nor do I have the energy for a narrative write-up, so I am choosing to compile bullet points, for the benefit of my own memory and not necessarily for your entertainment purposes.
Never do I laugh more than when I'm with Katie, Rachel and Erika. We bring out the funniest in each other, although our collective IQ drops to about 100 points total. These ladies are my best friends. In a lot of ways, they are more family than they are friends. We've been BFF's in a variety of combinations and permutations since the 1990s.
Katie and Erika played soccer together in 4th grade, became BFF's, and and their families became friends, too. They turned out to be a pretty kick ass club team (Go Pumas!) and played together into high school. I actually knew who they were in elementary school, because one of my many elementary suitors (Jeff Sandmeyer) dumped me for one of them. Ouch. Don't worry, I got my revenge in high school when I convinced Erika to break up with Matt Dunstan and he took me to prom instead. Anyway, they have been friends the longest, and have lived together the most.
Katie and I first became friends in 6th grade. She was wearing a white peasant top on the first day of school, and she was far more grown up looking (read: boobs) than I was. We got into trouble the first time we hung out - something about not checking in with our parents, which was a crime punishable by death at my house. We should have known then the years of (innocent) trouble that lay ahead of us. Katie's always been "the funny one" - she has that life-of-the-party personality that makes people want to be around her. Myself included.
Erika was essentially unknown until she turned from ugly duckling to swan in early high school. Seriously, she was one of those late bloomers who no one really knew, maybe ate lunch with a few soccer girls, and then one day, seemingly overnight, she grew into this gorgeous teenager. She's still gorgeous, only now she's a grown ass woman with a (strange) predilection for running 50 to 100 mile races over mountain passes. We solidified our friendship when we lived in neighboring condo complexes and bonded over love for the same senior (except his love for me was unrequited). Said senior first asked Erika to prom our sophomore year, who I then convinced to dump him, and subsequently he asked me to prom. Not the best behaved Mormon boy, he asked me to "do it from behind" on prom night when I was only 16, because he thought this didn't count as a loss of virginity (for the record: I said NO).
Rachel and I became friends in high school, good friends during our junior year. I jumped on the Jesus bandwagon alongside my devoted pal Katie, joined their youth group, and the three of us became inseparable. We pined after church boys, skipped school to drive over to Gresham or Oregon City to see the boys, watched 90210 during lunch, and got into generally harmless trouble together. Rach started dating Trevor our senior year (and has been with him and only him ever since!) so she went MIA the summer after senior year. Rach and I always saw each other during my trips home during and after college, and she and Trevor once visited Alex and me in Lake Tahoe, but our friendship now is more than I could have hoped for as a kid. It's pretty incredible to be able to say you live near your best friend, that your husbands work together, that you have the same profession, and that you are in the similar stage of (child-bearing) life. Francine even knows and loves Auntie Rachel, and of course Logan, too.
Katie, Erika, and Rach all went to UO, and lived together junior and senior years. That's when Erika and Rach (finally) solidified their friendship . And so two threesomes became one (fabulous) foursome! We have since been the four best friends that anyone could have, we are the four best friends that anyone could have ... At least that's how I remember it.
As for our "Purdy Thirty" vacation, it went a little something like this:
Friday, November 2
- Spent packing and preparing and re-organizing piles and doting on my baby girl, stressing about whether or not I would miss her too much of not enough (but glad to be able to take clonazepam for the first time in well over a year)
Saturday, November 3
- Wake at the ass-crack of dawn (who decided to buy these tickets??!?), Alex and Francie drive me to the Portland airport to meet up with Rach
- Last minute, out of some surge of separation anxiety, I grab the very blanket that is covering the Bean in her carseat and stuff it into my purse for safe-keeping (or maybe, just maybe, to smell later to remind me of my baby girl)
- Waiting at security, Rach and I see the one of the actors from Grimm, and we let him cut us in line (he was running late for his flight, plus, he's famous)
- Only 57 people were on our flight from PDX to San Jose - we got a whole row to ourselves - this trip was already off to a great start
- I pump in the car with an external battery pack Rach lent me - Erika and Katie were christened with their first breast-pump serenade (Rach already knows the sound far too well)
- We head to Cannery Row in Monterey, I spot a place to take Old Time photos and pretty much flip my shit out of excitement
- Erika: "Um, I think I'd like some handcuffs. And maybe a bag of money."
- We check into our hotel (Karl got us a deal because he owns Larkspur), two adjoining rooms with king-sized beds, with two bottle of champagne and one of sparkling cider awaiting us
- We watch the Duck game at the very aptly named bar, the Mucky Duck; I get drunk (very easily) on two cocktails, before deciding that drinking makes football even slower and more boring, and that I miss my baby girl
- That night I try to explain the difference in my body post-partum (read: the difference in my vagina); via Dr. Google, we diagnose me with stage 2 uterine prolapse - "I wish you guys could just finger around in there to confirm if that's what it is."
- I get a full night's sleep, nearly 8 hours of UNINTERRUPTED zzz's
Sunday, November 4
- I went 12 hours without pumping, my boobs are like two canteloupes and hurt like a mother
- I experience my first of many "first world problems" - technical difficulty with Skype, Google Hangout and FaceTime
- We eat a fabulous breakfast in Carmel, where Katie orders "green eggs and ham"
- 17-Mile Drive, Pebble Beach (they tease me for thinking that we could golf here), "hike" in Point Lobos
- Attempt to watch "Magic Mike" for the first time, talk about Katie's wedding planning instead
Monday, November 5
- We get takeout breakfast from the neighboring cafe and eat in bed, gossiping until after noon
- Attempt to watch "Magic Mike" for the second time, but end of chitchatting instead
- We don our suits (yeah 30! bikinis and tankinis rocked all around) and hang out in the pool for the next several hours, drinking more champagne, and being brought VIP gift bags from the hotel manager (the highlight of the trip for Rach)
- While talking wedding planning and baby making, a 60 year old eavesdropper tells Katie to "fucking elope" and tells Erika to "wear a rubber"
- Also, Katie peed in the pool, and proclaimed this is a defensible move
- We got all dolled up and made our way to Clint Eastwood's restaurant, where we enjoyed a gorgeous sunset, more wine/cocktails, and yummy dinner and dessert
Tuesday, November 6
- We eat breakfast at the same delicious neighborhood cafe
- We go to the aquarium, and marvel at the dancing sardines
- Rach got hit on at the tidepools, "Would you like to feel my mussels?"
- Katie liked the seahorse exhibit, "I had no idea males could get pregnant. That's so Portland."
- We ambled along Cannery Row, and Katie, Erika and I got our palms read (I drew the "sorrow" card and lied about having ever lost someone; apparenting I am entrepreneurial, with creative hands and a healthy body, that I'm independent and strong-willed, that I'm romantic and intuitive, that I have an open mind and good communication, and that I like taking risks)
- Which brings us to the much-anticipated spa afternoon - I got the weirdest, most disorganized massage of my life, by a woman who looked like Anna Nicole Smith, and my first facial, which was amaze balls
- We got takeout Thai where we were accosted by a drunk massage therapist who left us with many quotable quotes: "I used to call him my fat fuck," "You're fucking gorgeous," and multiple hugs all around
- Erika joined Pinterest (finally) and named her boards "aw that's so cute" and "mm that looks good"
Wednesday, November 7
- Our last day included breakfast, again, at the local cafe (best bread products ever)
- We hit up the Santa Cruz boardwalk - which was closed for the season and desolate - en route to the San Jose airport, so I could re-live my youth even though I didn't get to ride the carousel and throw rings at the clown
- Rach and I flew home (boy our arms were tired), where we sat next to a gym owner from San Jose who is supposedly going to be on some new Bravo reality TV show; his makeover story (temporaroly) inspired me to get my fat-ass in shape
- Trevor and Logan, and Alex and Francine happily greeted us inside the airport
- I was as excited to come home as I was to hang out on vacay with my girlfriends - that's how you know you have a good life
I love me some Old Timey photos!
Mucky Duck time
Purdy 30 graffiti
Dumping milk down the drain is a drag
Rach at Monterey Bay
Erika, Jo, and Katie at Bixby Bridge near Big Sur
VIP champagne toast - cheers to 30!
Aquarium day
Santa Cruz boardwalk
17 Mile Drive
Dinner in Carmel
Spa Day
I got my fortune read no fewer than 4 times on this trip.
Turns out she was amazing (duh) and Alex easily cared for her with the help of his parents. My pre-pumped breastmilk sustained her, and she picked right back up nursing (I feared a nursing strike) upon my return. I repeatedly professed my love of her to my girlfriends, and made them look at iPhone photos and video ad nauseum.
I'm so glad the vacation was perfect! And would like to add that the B.D. back door overshare is the best overshare of all time on this blog. I died laughing.
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