So when a not so emotional friend has a breakdown over dirty dishes, the troops are called in - I happened to be one of the troops. Ultimate friendship is being able to clean someone elses home when they themselves are distraugt at the attempt of it alone. This my dears could be the basic outline of a lifetime movie. Only in the end the evil roomate would have to have some sort of fatal illness.
So I depart the metro area, headed toward quieter scenic byways and to places that have what do you call them, oh - yes, townies. To see them walking on the sidewalk is almost a joy, funny head pieces, mis-matched striped pants with some teen agnst sweatshirt. People in mis matched pajamas outside doing every day things.
My first stop was Rochester. A city away from the cities. An evening with Ava - making taco dinner, craving brownies and icecream while watching what can only be described as the cheesiest movie ever - Aquamarine. SO many puns even my head hurt and I groaned at the horrible attempt to connect everyday item/phrases into some marine reference. Ava has several examples of the ones we caught listed on her blog perpetually single.
After an evening of cheesy movie, and making some cinonmon butter coffee cake concotion and watching tv - it was time for bed.
A miracle happened. I slept in past 10:30 - it was at least 10:34 by the kitchen clock. A miracle because - well let's face facts. I'm an early bird and it often carries over into the weekend.
Next stop, LaCrosse, Wisconsin to help our dear distressed friend Alice clean her apartment that has been overrun with filth, and fruit flies as well as a bunch of other shit. We picked Alice up, first stopping for nourishment at the local McDonalds and then heading to the store to pick up rubber gloves and a few other cleaning tools.
When we arrived at Miss Alice's apartment that she shares with Digby - the messiest gay man to ever have walked the face of the earth. The first thing we noticed was the smell. It was bad, something like the combination of: swamp lands, cat box, and fermenting tea from 3 months ago complete with tea bag decomposition. It was bad, all of the smells were faint and haunting instead of say intense and pungent like a skunk or vomit. So no face masks were required and after a little while we grew accustomed to the smellieness.
At first glance it looked more messy than dirty -- which is a good thing, but soon it was unvieled - pizza plates, water bottles with unknown substances, miscalaneous papers from god knows when. Lots of shit, not fecal matter mind you, but life shit - papers, books, movies, napkins, coupons, shredded powerball and other various lotto tickets.
Ava and I tackled the living room and kitchen, while Alice worked on the bathroom.
Drinking wine in juice glasses and listening to a wide and ecceltic array of music we were able to get the place in tip top shape.
Then we went to dinner, came back watched a cheesy movie and I conked out. And this blog post is the product of the non-miracle that occured. I woke up at 6:30. grrr.
So this weekend was Gwendolyn's fantastic birthday bash weekend. It has been a nice weekend -- however not the usual for what I expect for a weekend in LaCrosse.
Let's start with the usual -- Usually we end up drinking, a lot, or more than my poor liver likes. (so in my terms that means more than 2 beers in a 24 hour period.) This also involves going from bar to bar sampling the fine establishments in downtown LaCrosse. Seriously -- there are bars everywhere -- and alcohol in LaCrosse is kept at competitive prices to suit the needs of many college students and 20/30 somethings who live here. Ok so one must be prepared -- somewhat sensible shoes are must, and 20 dollars is normally enough to get you good and drunk off your ass -- but for a birthday weekend, fancy drinks or shots might be required so maybe 40 tops and that should be enough to have a cab ride home. SO very economical for the weekend binge... how delightful. After consuming large amounts of alcohol, I'm normally up at 5:30 with horrible post-beer poo poos and a headache. This was not the case today.
Our Saturday birthday extravaganza was off to bad start when I spent hours -- wasted on listening to NPR. Now, mind you I like my radio with a certain kind of element, most will call this ridiculous -- but I like songs. I was mildly entertained for awhile -- but then craved TV, or real radio - not just podcast after podcast after podcast. No joke -- 9-5 of talk radio is enough to make me well, eager for alcohol. After we all got dressed for the day - we headed to Buzzard Billies - had a delightful meal -- followed by ice cream which I was to overstuffed to partake in. And now at 7:30 in the morning I have a sweet tooth and ice cream sounds delicious.
After dinner I inquired as to what we were going to do -- well we were going to go to someones house and watch tv and veg out for a little bit, maybe play games and start drinking. Woo hoo -- ok a plan. I love plans. After we have flipped -- or Jamie has flipped rather, we are all in tv la la land and are entranced by the happenings on Degrassi and Queen Bees- The Soup and some all in a week show -- we're laughing and playing games. Pretty soon the clock was way later than it should have been and we are going to McDonald's, quarter to midnight-- to get a snack, I'm not wasted and it's almost midnight, this is not how I envisioned this -- I'm sure Gwendolyn has not pictured this either- --but we are at McDonald's getting snacks -- I'm not hungry at all really -- but I know if I don't get anything -- I will suffer a horrible case of McDonald's envy and so alas I get the old stand by - the number 1. It is fantastic. I love it.
We return to the house with the air conditioning and tv and no NPR Podcasts anywhere to be seen. We eat. Now we are in the current moment. I'm wide awake. I've been up for almost two hours with painful stomach clenching gas that is both loud and smellier than Jamie's fridge, and a headache. It's like I'm hungover from McDonalds. I had a great time -- it was very mellow -- but I was a little pumped to be reckless and intoxicated. Yep, maybe I'm too old for that Shenanigans.
