So I slapped a grin across my face to match the horizontal stripes of my dress and headed out.
Tucked between the scenic hills of Bristol, I gazed from the car window, keeping a keen eye out for the stereotypical single-story firehall. I sighed longingly at the beautiful alpine lodges nestled into each knoll and finally pointed. "I want Kelly's reception to be there," I declared, shocked as we simultaneously turned onto a vertical dirt road heading straight towards it. Like a ray of blinding sunshine, Kelly came shooting out of the lodge, wearing the beautiful wedding dress that she had made herself. Of course she did. I have mentioned before that I despise Kelly, right?
We toured the house, the pool, the hot tub, the trailer housing restroom facilities that made my bathroom at home resemble a porta-potty at a Grateful Dead concert, admired the three different-flavored cakes, snagged some snacks..."What are these seeds on top of the guacamole," I asked around a large mouthful. "Are they pine nuts," I said, trying to look culinarily-astute. "They're roasted pumpkin seeds," said the same woman who would later have to tell me to unwrap the corn husk from around my tamale. I was WAY out of my league here.
The free margarita bar made everything better...until the guy with the instamatic camera took my picture and I realized I'd mistakenly put on a circus tent. No amount of smiling was going to fix this. "Here, stand in front of my hips," I slurred, moving my pretty and petite friend Rachel in front of me for every picture that followed. "You're just like Barney," I told her as we smiled for the next shot. "Wait...did I just hear you compare my wife to Barney from How I Met Your Mother?" Rachel's husband, Paul asked suddenly. I immediately apologized but...no worries...Paul's a fan and recognized it for the heartfelt compliment it was.
An hour later, we were still dissecting our favorite episodes when either my friend Geri or I crossed the magical margarita line from cheerfully oblivious to venomously argumentative. "That never happened...you imagined it," Geri hissed at my assertion that Barney had been working undercover at GNB the entire time, intent on bringing that evil empire to its knees. "Barney was the David to the bank's Goliath," I pointed out, sure of my facts and certain that Barney was the hero of my favorite show. I don't want to brag but I recently scored a 27/35 on a "Who Said It: How I Met Your Mother Quiz." Lawyered!
Okay...maybe it was me that crossed the magical margarita line because I also argued with the most pleasant man on the planet. "What do you mean that an amaretto sour is on the bottom rung of the ladder of liquor," I screeched. "I'll have you know, sir, that I was once accused of being an alcoholic and guess what the drink in my hand WAS at that time? Yeah! An amaretto sour!" Lawyered! In the face of my conclusive argument, Paul shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, re-filled my margarita glass and then further fueled the flame by calling an amaretto sour a "gateway drink."
"Let's dance, " Rachel said, grabbing me before I could start REALLY creating a scene. Kelly, who had crossed the margarita line a bit before me had already been busy ripping up the dance floor. The song, at present, was "Shout" which has always been problematic for me but as I had had four sessions of yoga under my horizontally-striped belt, I thought I might be able to "get a little bit softer now..." Nope. Writer, Walt Hickey, contemporary to Ernest Hemingway and Judy Blume, presents a compelling essay that addresses the challenges of this song. It is accompanied by a helpful graph. According to Walt's calculations, I need to take my height in feet, divide it by three and then descend that many inches during each of the seventeen repetitions of "a little bit softer now" to successfully complete the move. Great. Two things that I excel at: Rhythm and math.Kelly was particularly proud of her chalkboard schedule of events. Her 7 o'clock speech (that was three pages long and delivered from the top deck as we gathered beneath her, hoping that she'd toss down cake, Marie-Antoinette-style) was presented at 8 o'clock. Husband Jon's speech was much more concise and it turns out that, while cake isn't thrown down, beer IS thrown up (into the air...to Jon). The unruly crowd then rushed the cakes. "They're beautiful," Geri commented as we waited. "What's THAT suppose to mean," I snapped, knowing that that was a crack about the shower cake for Kelly that I'd made her order. "Nothing," Geri replied, before murmuring to her husband, "Who gets a picture of a nickel painted on a shower cake?"
It was time to go. We hugged the bride and headed to the car. "Did you know that I told twenty-five bear jokes during Summer School," I asked Gregg as he drove Geri and I back. "How many margaritas did she have," Gregg whispered to his wife as I proceeded to tell him EVERY bear joke I could remember. Geri tried to distract me with her own joke. "A guy dressed as a pirate and was asked, "Where are your buccaneers?" He said, "Under my buckenhat."" I laughed myself into a lethargic lull. And an hour later...I was home.
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