Ribbons and Ponies

This weekend marked the 3rd annual Rebel Bunco Get Away From It All Weekend (the 3rd in four years...we had a dry spell there for a while). The story of why we're the "Rebel Bunco" is a long one and not relevant to the post, but I'll give the short Bubble Girl version anyway. See, we're the "cool Bunco kids" and we'd had it up to Here with the snooty, uptight Other Bunco kids who were trying to make us actually play Bunco (pshaw!), complaining that Bunco was getting too big and that certain "undesirables" were contaminating their Bunco pool....so we said "C-ya! Wouldn’t wanna B ya!" and went our own way, never looking back. There is little basis in reality in that recollection and TRACEY JACKSON may want to interject here what REALLY happened, but we all remember how bad my memory is, right? so I'm going to go with that version and call it good.

We rented a house in Lago Vista (what happens in Lago Vista, stays in Lago Vista), loaded up our assigned meals (have I mentioned TRACEY was a meeting/event coordinator in a former life?), cajoled our weary husbands into coming home early on Friday so we could make our escape, picked up friends who'd rudely abandoned us for their family in sunny California (but who we’ve now reluctantly forgiven), and made our way through Friday afternoon traffic to the peace and tranquility of a 4,000 sq ft lakehouse.

I was feeling a bit run-down from 2 weeks of ragweed poisoning, but around 11:30 pm I somehow found a
second wind and managed to hang in there watching the ping-pong, pool and foosball, swiping spoons, playing LRC, and being simultaneously disgusted and thrilled by the conversation with the latest group 'til 3 am. Seeing how I wasn't on my best game, I didn't partake of the spirits except as a formality, but that didn't stop everyone else. Unwilling to violate The Rebel Bunco Code I shall not divulge the actual numbers, but can say that the alcohol which had been intended to last the entire weekend was gone by 1 am, thanks to PE’s generous pouring technique, “Say when, Say when, Say when”, which is to say she poured until you’d said “when” approximately 28 times.

Saturday involved much relaxing, unwinding, hair-brushing and ribboning, toe nail polishing, truth-or-daring, and pony-naming. All the things we girls do when we’re together. There was an education of sorts that my sense of decorum and the fact that family members read this blog will not allow me to go into, but I now know things that I wish I didn’t. Things that will haunt me whenever I hear certain words or phrases. Things that make me wish I could do that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind thing and erase them forever (except when I keep hearing them and then I'm constantly reminded because it's fate and that kind of thing will just never work). But I can’t and now I must live with them. The only comfort I take is knowing that these friends must also live day to day knowing them too.

Saturday night was more subdued for most of the group, who were still buzzing from Friday night, but after a 3 hour nap and the purchase of vodka some of us enjoyed our Fizzy Izze’s ‘til 3 am, playing our games and talking our smack.

Sunday came too quickly and friends fell off one or two at a time to rejoin their normal lives. Beds were stripped, fridge’s emptied, friends delivered to the airport. I drove those last few miles homeward thinking how lucky I am to have so many wonderful friends, who have such wonderful families to let them go and submit themselves to a weekend of excess. And as I drove toward home, with the plan to get there while Bubble Boy had Big E and Little A at the park, so I could unload and decompress for a while before they came home, I turned off and went to the park instead…happy to be back in my normal life.