When I turned 21, my mother invited me to attend one of her infamous beach trips with her girlfriends. Up to this point, I had been to the beach with family, senior trip and a spring break. I had mixed expectations. What I got was the introduction to the fantastic southern belle experience! THE GIRLS’ TRIP! Now, I want to say before I go any further I love my children. They bring me joy and I am so proud of the ladies they are becoming. But nothing beats a grown girls trip to the beach!!! NOTHING!!!
So allow me to introduce you to “The Ladies”:
I believe you have met Grace before. She’s my gun-totting friend to Florence in “You Can Smoke in the Mall in Florence.” She decided to not bring her gun to the beach. I would think this would be more appropriate…but she left us unarmed.
Grace’s sister Bird. She is another divorcee and I am grateful for my small doses of difficulty next to her’s. She is also a terrible work-a-holic to the point that we are concerned. (Don’t worry, she is aware of our concerns.)
Martha is a legal drug dealer with a firm, level headed and when the timing is right hilarious personality. You want honesty, go to Martha. You need someone to throw a party, go to Martha. You need to know if your medication will interact your birth control….buy condoms and then ask Martha.
Hill is the pretty one. You know every group has one. She is taller than us, tanner than us, skinnier than us, has more Tory Burch than us…I am so glad she has moved closer. Mother of two sweet girls and a stay at home at that. Her life scares the shit out me. I’ll take my work any day over staying at home.
And now for the comic relief…I give you Memphis. Have you ever been out in public and a friend who embarrasses you? Well you have no idea what the real deal is like. Honest, to the point, and horny as hell. I try to keep this blog at PG-13 so I can’t go any further…but this one time, on a snow day, when I was still married, classes were canceled (some of us may or may not have been in college), our work closed; we bought a case of beer, ordered pizza, played in the snow and had a very interesting discussion over a porn.
And grandest of all; my first bestie-Jenny. Even though she married the second she moved her tassel to the other side at high school graduation and moved away we have remained close. She was able to organize her life at home and join us. So glad she was there!
This trip was about 2 years in the making. In between low finances, changing jobs, sick parents, sick kids, having babies and losing babies we got it together. A few tried to sabotage but we know now how to overcome. Strep throat and a car wreck won’t keep us down!
As soon as most of us dropped our kids off at school we were on our way. I had Hill with me and the other’s were in Memphis’ car but with Grace driving. See…Memphis has trouble staying awake. Safety first. Martha was already there on an extended vacay with her cutie boyfriend.
As we left I reminded everyone “We need a hashtag!” and they rolled their eyes. We found our hashtag before we finished unloading the cars. We pulled into the complex parking lot. I ran to get carts for the unloading. As I was making my way back to the cars, also approaching was the complexes’ security guard.He looked at us. Watched Grace, who had a Twizzlers hanging out of her mouth stack another case of beer on the cart…#areyallgonnabeaproblem And there you have it. The trip’s hashtag was born. Of course, I had to explain again why we needed a hashtag. If you want to know…just take yourself to Facebook or Twitter now and try it.
I used the hashtags to keep up with our adventures. If you have been exploring as instructed above…you will see we were a problem at every turn.
The stories of #areyallgonnabeaproblem
“Apparently I had on a jogging suit when God made me.” You know what will get on a girl’s nerves every time? Bragging about your lack of ‘maintenance’ issues. I will say I got lucky in the shaving my legs department but that’s about it. Good grief. Why do you think skirts on bathing suits are making a come back? And razors are damn expensive. One of the ladies made the statement, “well I guess God had me in a bikini when he made me” We secretly hate her now.
After dinner on the first night, we discovered a close by Tiki bar with Karokee. Remember the post about theme songs? Well I didn’t disappoint. When we first approached the DJ we made sure he knew we would be taking over the mic for a while. “My name is Memphis, and you will be seeing a lot of me.” The DJ was very cute and funny. older but good at flirting so why not. And he wasn’t bad to listen to. He basically sang whatever we wanted…this was my favorite. Dixie Land Delight. Then…oh me…”we”walked in. Well “us” but in 20 years from now. Super fun ladies. Even paid the DJ $50 to stay for another half an hour. I guess in 20 years, I’ll have money to blow…I hope. Then they started dancing…”Someone cut my artery slowly with a butter knife if I ever dance like that woman!” I wonder now…do I already dance like her.
My focus of course was taking in as much of these ladies as possible…but I was people watching and by that I mean, guy watching. Day #2 gave us the “bachelor party”. At first there was a core of 4-5, then slowly and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y the others made it down. You could tell a good night was had the night before. One of them, bless his heart struggled for 15 to 20 minutes to get his chair up. Finally, one of the others helped him. When his chair stood solid, we erupted into applause. Then….when he sat down…he fell down anyway.
This is also the day we decided not to play around and we brought the bloody mary jug with us! “She” had her own seat. Only a few of us made it out to the bar…the only bar to go to…Florabama. You park in Florida and the bar is in Alabama except we took an Uber. Florabama has survived numerous hurricanes. To make it home without a shameful story, you have survived as well. We had shameful opportunities at every turn. One sweet fella from Harrisburg Mississippi suffering from alopecia liked to “wiggle wiggle wiggle” all over us. Our politeness and ability to entertain him got us free pity drinks from his friends. About the time my bushwackers and fireball kicked in Bird announced it was time to leave…I hung my head and ordered an Uber.
Day 3, we moved a little slower. Memphis and I still made it outside for our work out on the balcony. I have to say the struggle was real. We decided the pickling of our livers had begun and if we were going…go big or go home. We gathered all our beach required items and the cooler. JOB OPENING: ONE BUTLER TYPE GUY. REQUIREMENT-CUTE AND QUIET. NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO LOAD A COOLER, HAUL THE COOLER AND LEAVE FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE DAY UNTIL WE NEED TO GO BACK TO THE CONDO THEN RETURN TO RESUME DUTIES. Dang-that stuff was heavy. We finally hauled this mess to the elevator when Martha asks, “hey, can I have a sip of your beer? I need to take my prenatal vitamin.” I just stared at her…”just in case…I’m old (she’s 34) I need all the folic acid I can get.
The last day on the beach we were tired and you could tell. Nerves were shot and the vulnerability was hanging out there. Our talk under the tent got a little deeper. Martha’s dad has cancer, Bird’s ex is just a wreck not to mention her insane work ethic. Grace is remodeling a house. Jenny-kids in college. I am afraid, very afraid. Memphis’s family is adjusting to her Dad being taken care of by hospice and the usual sex, drugs, religion and politics. Whenever we really needed to talk, we would go to the water. All I kept talking about is how I missed him every single day- and it’s wrong- and it’s killing me.
The last day was also a Saturday and one of the best things that can happen in the South has happened…college football. I attempted to convince the others to come off the beach at 2 PM to go and watch LSU play Auburn, but they ignored me. We did make it back to Florabama…well 3 of us for the last night. And when you are in south Alabama and when in Rome…Hotty Toddy and Roll Tide. Bushwackers and beer on board we thought we were going to sneak away unashamed and then Mr. Groom to Be, just put a bow on my Florabama night. It was all wrong, all inappropriate and full of undignified, unladylike phrases. I have prayed to the breast goddesses my whole post puberty life to have my ….acknowledged. But when he said….I can’t even type it…I thought “my kettle bell swings are going to pay off because I am about to knock your” ……and then we ordered another Uber.
All were up first thing, quick breakfast, packed and loaded the car. I had to apologize to Memphis for eating her leftover pizza when we got back…I was hungry. And we were on our way. I feel we accomplished a feat many groups of women can’t handle. We spent 84+ hours together and in my opinion would do it again in a heart beat. I learned a lot. I can be still, I can listen to music, the wind, the waves and my friends all at the same time. I almost finished a book and by God, we still look damn good even in our bathing suits. When we all got home we hugged our babies tight, unpacked and got ready for our everyday lives again, but my goodness we had fun and I bet we will do it again. And everyone will always wonder: #areyallgonnabeaproblem ?
Sex and the Motherhood 