Love Bugs SUCK

A few things I learned on my trip to Florida this weekend with my favorite girls:

- The Atlanta airport requires that you jump through flaming hoops, kill a liger with your bare hands (that’s a cross between a lion and a tiger), and desperately rummage every bookstore, newsstand, and food stand for the opportunity to purchase a Pepsi product, if that unfortunately happens to be your beverage of choice. During our hour-long layover in Atlanta, Bets and I went on a 12 mile trek through the airport in search of Mountain Dew and Diet Pepsi, and when we finally found a place that sold them, they didn’t have any cold bottles of Diet Pepsi. Unable to be deterred, I purchased two Diet Pepsi’s in fountain pop form for myself and Angela, unwilling to let the fact that we would have to trek those tipsy mothers onto the plane with us ever enter my mind.

- I have some very resourceful friends, who laugh in the face of travel-induced boredom. Rather than read about Katie Holmes and Tom Hanks’ bizarre and kind of gross new relationship in any one of the many trashy magazines we purchased for the trip, Angela and Betsy decided to play a few very untraditional games of the sleep-over classic, M.A.S.H. Unfortunately Betsy’s future looks pretty grim. She will one day be stricken with an uncontrollable bladder and some serious B-ACNE, and will have to balance the nurturing and feeding of her pet bald eagle with her quest to live a normal life despite her incontinence issues.

- I am a SERIOUS over-packer. My suit-case was three-times the size of those of the majority of my traveling buddies. It was almost laughable. Well, not almost.

- My friend Kate could definitely be misconstrued as a pier-dwelling Floridian hobo. She really fit the part on Saturday afternoon when, in her hung-over state, she retreated from our sun-drenched spot on the beach to underneath the nearby outdoor restaurant’s deck. Being the good friends that we are, we let her sleep under there, curled up in her towel, until we were ready to leave the glorious sun.

- It’s ok to retreat back to your college years for a few days. Saturday evening, after a crazy night of bachelorette partying in downtown Tampa on Friday, we did what we do best. We lounged. We talked (and talked and talked and talked). We watched The Learning Channel and Discover Channel for hours. We ordered Little Caesar’s pizza and ate until we could eat no more. We watched Sex and the City (and crushed after Aiden). We watched Saturday Night Live. Kate made and served us popcorn. We went to bed, and slept in until un-godly hours, sleeping away our vacation. And it was fabulous.

- You really CAN drink too much water. On Saturday morning I woke up with the worst sore throat imaginable, which was probably attributable to the two cigarettes I smoked in my drunken haze the night before. Anyways, I was in hell. So I spent an ungodly amount of money on about 6 cough-drops in the store of the hotel lobby where we were staying the night, and started to just drink water like it was going out of style. During our night of lounging, I believe I drank about 17 big-gulp-sized cups of water over the course of the evening. I made trips to the bathroom about every 10 minutes. And I rationed the cough drops that Kate had found in her medicine cabinet, so I could make it through the night. I think I got up 4 times in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. It was ridiculous.

- Angela CAN NOT, however, drink too much Diet Pepsi. She admitted to us this weekend that she eats her cereal in the morning with Diet Pepsi instead of Milk. Yummmm…

- I’m just kidding about that last one, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

- Your theme song does not always actually end up being a song that you like. Kate decided that when reminiscing about this weekend, we have to have a theme song, and every time we here this song, we will think about our little mini-vacation together, and the hilarity that of course ensued. Unfortunately, we ended up with two theme songs that we did not consciously choose. These theme songs chose us because of how much over-play they are getting on pop radio, and the fact that we couldn’t get away from them: Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and Akon’s “Lonely”. Both are absolutely HORRIBLE songs, but every time I hear that damn chipmunk singing, or Gwen spelling out B-A-N-A-N-A-S, I will think fondly of my girls, and our time spent in Florida with the palm trees.

- They charge extra for “frozen” margaritas (as opposed to the regular “on-the-rocks” kind). That really pisses me off. While sitting in Tampa’s airport on Sunday waiting for our flight home, we decided to get some Margaritas, to pass the time, and because they are just plain yummy. Well, low and behold, the bill comes, and mine and Liz’s frozen strawberry margaritas were $7.95, and Angela and Betsy’s were only $5.95. That is seriously rage-worthy! I never knew that before! Did you know that? How come no one told me?

- And finally, this weekend I learned that I am the luckiest girl in the world, because I have four of the best friends a girl could ask for. The amount of laughter this weekend was astounding. These girls are the kind of friends who will tell you that you have a zit on your back that needs some cover-up, and will then proceed to cover it for you. They are the kind of friends who will tell you that they prefer the other outfit you had on, even when they know that that’s not what you want to hear, and that you probably won’t even listen to them. I can’t imagine what I did in my life to deserve them, but I got them, and for that I am very thankful.