CRABFEED: the trainwreck!

This is the recap of the Crab Feed Melodrama (it was sort of a non-singing white trash Ring Cycle) that I wrote for my friend Dave Estell... I thought everyone might get a kick out of reading it... of course now it is all even MORE ironic because they're all a COUPLE now... I can't believe I spent $35 at Amazon.com on a hardback book about Studebakers!
SATURDAY
6:30am:  My alarm goes off. I cuss and grumble about what a LONGASS day it is going to be.
7:15am: I leave for work
8:00am - 12:00pm: I work like a fiend so that we get out in time for me to take a nap.
1:00pm: I have lunch with John.
1:30pm: I lay down for a nap.
2:30pm: I get up and throw myself in the shower.
3:25pm: Kevin calls to give me directions and I tell him Jolie will be there any minute.
3:30pm: Jolie calls to say her jeans aren't dry yet and she'll be a couple minutes late.
4:05pm: Jolie finally arrives, I shove her ass into the car and we head out.
5:40pm: We arrive at Kevin's trailer, she gets the tour and I take pictures.
6:00pm: We all pile into Kevin's big ole truck along with 4 bottles of wine (twobuck chuck to be specific).
6:30pm: We arrive at the church, find our seats and start meeting the "family" and drinking the wine.
7:00pm: Michelle and Chris and the rest of the gang show up. I get to sit next to Michelle!
7:00-9:00pm: Kevin and Jolie DRINK and talk and get to know each other which Michelle and I spend the evening cracking each other up.
8:45: Jolie wins TWO raffle prizes, a bag of Valentine's Day decorations and a BIG bottle of cheap whiskey. I stop drinking and switch over to Coke since I have to drive home later.
9:30pm: They clear away the first few rows of tables, turn down the lights, turn on the disco ball, turn up the music and people start dancing. Badly.
10:00pm: Michelle tries to make me start a conga line with her. It is not a great success. Kevin and Jolie finally dance together and look pretty cute. I take more pictures.
10:30pm: Michelle asks me if I want to come with them to get the beef (they'd gone in on half a cow's worth of meat with some of the other family) and I readily agree. We wave goodbye to Kevin and Jolie, who are still dancing, and head out.
10:45pm: We pick up the beef. Half a cow is a LOT of beef. There is even a tail.
11:00pm We get to Chris and Michelle's house where I meet their three kids (who were all really cool) and 2 of their 3 cats. We sit around chatting and wondering where Kevin and Jolie are.
11:30pm: Michelle's brother and wife finally leave.
11:45pm: Kevin and Jolie finally show up. The prize whiskey has been opened.
MIDNIGHT: I want to go home but Jolie and Kevin are really having fun together so I agree that Chris can go ahead and light "a fire you can see from space" in the backyard firepit and we can all hang out for a while.
12:00am -1:00am Michelle and Chris and their son and I stand outside getting smoke in our eyes and talking while Jolie (who is still drinking and who has started calling Kevin "Sweetie" and "Hon" and talking in faux Italian) and Kevin hang out inside talking to the girls. Michelle worries that the girls are going to shred Jolie later. They keep sneaking out to give us the highlights.
1:00am: I want to go home. Kevin comes outside and tells me that HE wants me to want to go home, that Jolie has started making noises about wanting to spend the NIGHT with him and that I am to insist I want to go home and insist she comes with me… as soon as they get back from Del Taco.
1:20am. They return from Del Taco. I do my big, "I want to go to sleep and I want to wake up in my own BED and now that I am working six days a week I only get ONE day off and I want to spend it with my husband and I want to go NOW!!!" scene. Jolie drags me with her to the bathroom and says, "What if I were to stay at Kevin's?" and I tell her I think it is a bad idea, "What if you wake up in the morning and go what the FUCK am I doing in this trailer?" I run back to the kitchen and tell Kevin and everyone that Jolie wants to stay in the trailer. Everyone is rather horrified.
1:20am: We finally get Jolie out of the house after literally PRYING the wineglass from her hand.
1:20- 1:40am Jolie makes some drunk jokes about wanting to stay in Kevin's trailer and I remind her that mother always said that nice girls never spend the night in the trailer on the first date. She says she isn't going to stay for SEX and Kevin bursts out, "Well then what's the POINT?" Jolie then passes out and Kevin and I make tense conversation just in case she can hear us.
1:45am: We arrive back at Kevin's trailer and his cell phone rings and it is John asking where the hell I am. I tell him I am literally heading home now.
1:46am: Jolie refuses to get out of Kevin's truck.
1:48am: Jolie continues to refuse to get out of Kevin's truck and insists that if she has to drive home with me she will throw up in my car.
1:49am: I think the only way to get her to get out of the truck might be to slap her. I am not totally against the idea.
1:50am:  I realize I have been awake for pretty much TWENTY hours straight. Kevin and I have a "you take her no YOU take her" argument in his trailer. I say, "I like you but not enough to have her puke in my car!" He asks don't I want to stay TOO and I rather emphatically repeat my, "I want to go home and wake up in my own fucking bed and spend my ONE day off at HOME" mantra. He caves in. We manage to get her into the trailer, I shove on of the pairs of pajamas I'd brought just in case into her limp arms and then I mug him of his cell phone (Since now I have to drive home ALONE at 2am) and head out.
2:00am - 3:30am: I drive home, ALONE, listening to people talk about the Columbia explosion and try to keep my eyes from crossing while feeling guilty for leaving poor Kevin stuck with the drunk belligerent girl. I hope she's not throwing up all over him.
3:35am. I arrive home, peel off my clothes, pull on my jammies and mutter to sleeping John, "guess who isn't with me?" and he mutters, "Jolie… she called about ten minutes ago asking for you."
3:36am: I unplug the phone.
4:00am: I finally FINALLY get warm and fall asleep.
9:30am: My body, not knowing any better, wakes me up. I leave John sleeping and call Evelyn to tell her the whole story in minute detail. I use several not very nice words. We decide the whole thing MIGHT have been salvageable IF I could have just gotten her into my car.
10:30am: I wake John up and gibber the story at HIM while lying in bed. He refuses to take the pillow off his head. I make tea and we drink it while trying to decide what I can get for Kevin as a way to make up for it and we try to figure out how to finish the sentence, "Nothing says I'm sorry I stuck you with my drunken belligerent friend like…"
11:00am: We finally get out of bed. I am keep one eye on Jolie's car in front of my house dying of curiosity to know how the story ended.
11:30: while I am waiting I decide that a fancy hardback book on Studebakers might get me back into Kevin's good graces. I order it on amazon with express shipping and an apology note.
NOON: they finally show up, Jolie apologizes profusely for everything and gives me her raffle prize Valentine's goody bag (not a bad start) we tease her about just how drunk and belligerent she WAY and Kevin says (while she's in the bathroom) that he'll probably ask her out again anyway. I don't get it but am relieved he didn't have as bad a night as I thought he was having.

I will never understand men.
I am so glad I'm not still single.
I am so fucking tired.

The end.

She Bangs! She Bangs!

OR
  What we have here is a failure to communicateOR
  You'd think I would have learned my lesson after my pedicure experienceOR
  Well, it DOES make me look younger. That's a good thing, right?

In short, I have my college hair. EXACTLY my college hair. Michelle and I went to Great Clips (yeah I know -- bang trim $5 -- you get what you pay for) to have the woman who cut John's hair and who cuts all of her family's hair trim my bangs (because Jimmy could barely stand to give me ANY bangs at all so I'd gone at them at home with my collaging scissors and while I liked the effect they were crooked and needed a little professional intervention) but she wasn't there and instead of LEAVING like, oh, someone who HADN'T just had a pint of beer, I decided since we were already there to have one of the OTHER people working their cut it and NOT TO BE RACIST but she was Asian and I think we hit a language barrier because after I very specifically explained what I had done and what I NEEDED done she tipped my head forward, did some combing and I KNEW the moment I heard the RAZOR zip across my forehead EXACTLY what she was doing, because I remembered the SENSATION from college, and of course by then it was way WAY too late to do anything but let her finish. And then pay her $5. Which is, for the record, about 1/4 of what I TIP my usual hairdresser.

So, in short, a few weeks ago I drove two hours into the city and paid $100 to have my hair very professionally and trendily highlighted and cut and then I came home and promptly whacked at it myself and then I let some beauty school failure give me BANGS FROM 1990. I would have cried but I had no one to blame but myself and John was smart enough to take the, "Wow, okay, now you look so young people are going to think I am a TOTAL cradle robber" angle and well, it does look better pulled back than the geek-librarian-no-bangs look and since it is supposed to reach the mid 90's this week and stay there til, like, September I'll probably be wearing it pulled back a LOT...

So now I look just like me 12 years ago only rounder and older. I was it was a sad moment having to PLUCK 3 gray hairs out of my bangs lemme tell you.