Where My Girls At?

The majority of my friends are moms, and by “moms” I mean beautiful, educated, talented women who spend their days sorting darks from lights, shuttling kids to doctor’s appointments and soccer practice, volunteering at the local food bank, and reading the latest YA novel while waiting in the carpool line.  And some of them do all that while holding down paying jobs.  Pretty effing remarkable.

In high school, “Girls Night Out” meant sneaking around putting forks in the yards of boys we liked (or hated), dinner at Olive Garden and a Brad Pitt movie, or driving across town to a different school’s football game to get a glimpse at the boys we met at a party the weekend before.  In college, it meant dressing in our best boobs/butt/legs-enhancing get-ups and heading to a bar/concert/hipster restaurant downtown, followed by pajamas and cookie dough and a Brad Pitt movie on the couch while one of the girls in the group made out with one of the boys we met at the bar/concert/hipster restaurant in the back bedroom.

In all honesty, I didn’t see the point.  I mean, some of it was fun, I guess, but I always felt out of place--always with a boyfriend (so no drunken hook-ups) and almost always the sober driver (the SADD and MADD people really got to me) and always tired from going to school full-time and working almost full-time (sleepy, sleepy, sleepy).  Now that I think about it--it was ME that was lame, not girls night out.

So, anyway, I had never really embraced the concept of girls night out, and then when I married a man who is gone all the time, I didn’t really want to spend time away from him when he was actually home, so in my adult life, most of my girls nights out consisted of my friends (whose husbands were all also out of town) coming to my house in their jammies and drinking wine while my kids slept upstairs.  Until the last six months.

Recently, I found myself surrounded by a group of like-minded women who have taught me to really appreciate letting the hubsters keep the kids at home while we MILF up the city of Charleston.  (P. S. My dad and I had an argument about the definition of MILF, and he says I’m too young to be a MILF, but I disagree.  If you have kids and you’re hot, you’re a MILF, no matter how old the kids are.)

I wrote a little bit about this HERE with a picture of our first try at Girls Night Out (which landed us at the hospital until 10:30 on a Friday night).  I’m happy to report that Leigh gave birth a few weeks later to a gorgeous baby girl with ten fingers and ten toes and all that sugar and spice and such, so the hospital visit was just a minor hiccup.

Take note of the paint on my face.  I think it makes me more artistic.

So, a couple of Fridays ago, we combined our GNO with an organized function because it just made sense.  Our squadron spouses have monthly socials that range in theme from movie night to bowling to self-defense training.  My friend, Stephanie, and I volunteered to “host” this month’s social, and we picked the trending activity of drinking while painting.  We booked a party at THE LOOKING GLASS ART STUDIO in Summerville, threw together some snackage and got our drink on.

Don't be fooled by these shots.  They're red-headed sluts, which is basically like shooting Kool-aid.

Some members of the party had to leave to pay babysitters/nurse babies, so our party dwindled a bit, but six rowdy members stayed around for post-painting drinks at a loud, smoky bar (uh...flashbacks to GNO that I DIDN’T like in college), but the company was pretty fantastic, so we had a pretty fantastic night.  Some of the night’s topics of conversation included:

1. The relative merits of various seasons of Real Housewives and why there should be a Charleston version
2. Painful post-baby sex
3. Why we hate the Air Force
4. Oral sex (why does this always come up? [pun intended])
5. The Salukis of Southern Illinois
6. Naked hot-tubbing
7. Grunge rock gods (including loud inappropriate singing on "Under the Bridge")
8. Booking our next spouse social as a plastic surgery party (maybe we can get a group discount?)

Throughout the night we attracted some pretty special people:

We had a little Situation.  And he was super excited about it.

This guy was bound and determined to go home with one of us even after one of us said, "Yeah, if you're into chicks with infants, you're at the right table."  He actually said, "That ain't nuthin'.  I got five kids."  Special.

Oh, and then there was this.  Transvestite in pantyhose.  Except it was actually a woman.  Shudder.

If nothing else, girls night out is the best reminder of why I'm glad I'm an old married woman because I never have to get hoochied up in my pantyhose and at the end of the night, I get to go home to a guy who would never hit on a married mom...I mean, unless it was me...you know what I mean.