Stage Mom

With Martin in another country and me home all alone, I have developed some nasty new habits…the worst of them being an unhealthy addiction to bad reality TV including the Bachelorette, Toddlers and Tiaras and Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D List. But hey, as my married friends put it, I should enjoy these guilty pleasures now because as soon as Martin gets here, reality tv is gone.

So a few weeks ago I decided to take my obsession to the next level…I took my dating skills learned from the Bachelorette and channeled my Toddlers and Tiaras stage mom and encourage my friend Jenny to audition for the upcoming season of the Bachelor. And just my luck, there was an open casting call in San Francisco in just two weeks.

I quickly blocked our office calendars for an “important meeting” the day of the auditions and we started brainstorming ways to make Jenny stand out and get on the show. The day quickly arrived, and we wrapped up work early to get there on time, with hopes of forever changing Jenny’s life.

The casting call was at a local hotel and we arrived expecting a line around the block, American Idol style. What we got was slightly less impressive…we had to follow the signs (not the screaming girls) to a large conference room on the lower level and found only a handful of girls waiting their turn for fame and love (although the crowds did grow substantially after 6pm when normal people get off work) and a few token guys, either there for moral support to their gal pals, for auditions themselves or for the girl to guy ratio.

As soon as Jenny signed in and got her application, the stage mom in me couldn’t resist: I helped Jenny fill out the application (providing thoughtful and unique adjectives to describe herself), I made friends with the other contestants (while subtlety scoping out the competition, and thankfully it wasn’t that steep…most of the girls seemed either not cute enough, too old or too over-done…and that is my toned down, less caddy opinion…trust me, I could say a lot worse), I hung in the back while Jenny had her photos taken making sure she smiled big and stood up straight and I offered words of encouragement just before she went into the room to be interviewed and videotaped. I even took her out to drinks afterwards to celebrate her soon to be success.

And like all good show moms (no thanks to the role models on Toddlers and Tiaras), I stopped myself from completing the process myself for fun– this was Jenny’s day after all and her time to shine….apparently reality TV can teach you a thing or two.

On a side note – Jenny finds out next week if she moves on to the next round…fingers crossed we are heading to LA!

Always a BridesMaid…

And never a Bride (at least for now…I am still working on that one). Surprisingly, I take great pride in being a bridesmaid from picking out and wearing the sometimes dreadful bridesmaid dress, helping the bride both plan for and enjoy the big day and, my favorite, planning the bachelorette party. After so many years and so many parties, my girls and I have this art down to a science including party games, food, alcohol, handling the expenses, etc. The machine is so well oiled that the only decision to make after the bride-to-be says “Yes” is deciding on the theme. With Joanna’s bachelorette party last weekend, any number of themes would have worked…

Anj and I were the last to arrive on Thursday evening and after a quick glass of wine at the Seattle airport bar, we were whisked away by Joanna’s sister Anita to the small town of Enumclaw WA for a night in Joanna’s new house and a drink at the local biker bar – the only non-residential building in the 500 person town. Possible Theme #1 – Roadhouse – the bar was complete with fire-pit out front, Harleys lined up in the parking lot, and plenty of leather clad burly bikers.

The following morning we woke up early and prepared for the drive out to Leavenworth WA, the Bavaria of Washington. Possible Theme #2 – Loving the Leiderhosen – the town was straight out of Germany with stylized buildings, German restaurants and yodelers …or at least that is what the city website said and showed…we still had to get there.

So we all piled into the family SUV – Joanna, Anita, Anj, Erin, Neff and me – with Keneta following in her car, and we were off….first stop, Shangri-la to check out the campsite and wedding location (and yes those are the same place) where we were able to visual the wedding and pee in some bushes. Possible Theme #3 – Troop Beverly Hills - our outdoor skills were exemplary, including an additional pee stop along the side of the mountain highway (due to too many beers at lunch) and our love of nature… And when I say “love of nature” I mean fear of bugs…I spotted a large potato bug inside the car after our second pee break resulting in an emergency stop along side of the freeway and a fire drill evacuation of the car to get the bug out.

We finally arrive in Leavenworth, the Bavarian town on a river we had been promised and the new bachelor/bachelorette party capital of WA. No joke, there were at least 10 other bridal parties all celebrating their upcoming nuptials in the little town of 5,000 on that weekend alone. Possible Theme #4 – Bride Wars – while it was fun in theory to hang out with what appeared to be a bachelorette party convention, 10+ brides all thinking that it was their special weekend, and their’s alone proved otherwise… Joanna almost got into a fight with another bride and thanks to our many years of experience, all of the other parties just didn’t measure up resulting in dirty looks and possible death threats.

At the end we went with “Rip Roaring Rapids” as our theme… we were going “rafting” after all and Joanna’s past dating life was, how do you say, less than a lazy river. And while the theme we chose seemed appropriate at the beginning of the trip, we hit a minor snag along the way…the river we had planned to float was too high and our only option was Class 3 rafting…given that you can’t drink while navigating class 3 rapids we opted for just the beach along the river…Thankfully Joanna had her own bridal inner tube to float on.

I guess in the end, the theme isn’t that crucial…other than when picking out the embarrassing outfit for the bride!

A Quickie on the Fourth

A quickie, but a goody…Martin recently flew over to CA for 3 nights to celebrate his future “in-law holiday” of the Fourth of July. Unfortunately we subsequently found out that he did not win the green card lottery, however it did not stop him from properly celebrating the three day weekend.

I picked Martin up at the airport on Friday afternoon and we drove straight up to the Lake with only a quick stop at McDonald’s for a pre-dinner snack, or what I like to call, a romantic dinner date.

The weekend was the trifecta of great: great times with Martin, great times with the family and great times at the Lake with warm weather, good food and plenty of tequila. The only thing not great about the weekend was the abnormal abundance of mosquitoes…it was as if a cloud of the blood sucking insects had descended upon Lake Pillsbury. Thankfully for me, but not so lucky for Martin, when given a choice, mosquitoes apparently prefer Martin’s diet of coffee and cake to mine of beer and salsa.

Like all things in life, when Martin was around, I was in want of nothing…including insect repellant.