Memories of Memorial Day

Ahh...I love long weekends. Especially when I take extra days off to make them even longer. I needed more days for several reasons including but not limited to:

1. To plant my flowers
2. To see Pirates of the Carribbean 3
3. Detox

In a shocking twist, I ended up spending most of the weekend drunk. But as usual, I will blame others. Fault lies with the following people:

Friday: Diane and Drew
Saturday: Steph
Sunday: Christy

You guys are really a bad influence on me. In fact I would wager a guess that if you jumped off a bridge, chances are good I would, too. Friday I didn't plan on drinking at all then Diane and Drew were all, "We made homemade sangria!" and I knew if I didn't partake, I would crush their souls. Their whole life's happiness clearly rested on me drinking their homemade concoction. So I drank it. A lot of it. And I passed out fully clothed. And I think I may have woken up and yelled something incoherent at Woody when he left, but I will need someone to confirm that for me. In my defense, I currently know 17 people who are having babies this year*. That is not a Sarah Number where I make a completely absurd exaggeration to further express my point. That is the actual number of people I know having babies. And there was a time out on the patio where we were talking about mucous plugs** and cervixes***, and sipping sangria quickly turned to chugging sangria.

Last week Steph sent those girls who would be in town this weekend an email that in a nutshell said, "I want to be a good Cleveland tourist this weekend. I'm thinking wine, public transportation, etc. This will be awesome." When pressed for details she said, "It's going to rock!" Later on we got a list. It was a list of our options for "Choose Your Own Adventure: Cleveland Day". I'm not kidding. Starting at 1pm, she wrote out three options for every 2 hour timeframe, and we got to pick where we wanted to go. Seriously how jealous of us are you right now knowing that we have Steph and you don't?

Here was the itinerary we chose:
1pm-3pm: Leisurely day on your own - Yes this was one of the options. We picked this because some of us had plans (Sharda, Meg) and some of us were hungover (yours truly).

3pm-5pm: Larchmere Sidewalk Sale - The actual sidewalk sale wasn't that great unless you love antiques, which I don't. I only like old stuff if it belonged to someone in my family or if it comes in the form of Sean Connery. However, Larchmere is a neighborhood in Cleveland that I've never seen, and I enjoyed it very much. One thing that I love so much about this city is that you can go 10 minutes in one direction, and it's so different it's like a whole new world. We enjoyed our time in Larchmere and neighboring Shaker Square where we went into an antiques gallery and saw a million year old woman passed out on a couch and almost called 911 until she sat up suddenly, but we all knew it was time for alcohol. To take us to our next stop we procured a cab. Our driver's name was Edmond. Edmond is, to put it lightly, the man.

5pm-7pm: Happy Hour - Cucumber Margaritas @ Momochos - Momochos is a Mexican restaurant/bar, and I read in some magazine that cucumber margaritas were the in drink this summer. I don't drink margaritas due to an incident that occurred while I was a freshman in college. I know you know what I'm talking about. Everyone has at least one type of liquor they can't drink anymore because of an incident in college. So at Momochos, I drank cranberry and vodkas. Obviously. We ended up knowing the bartender so he was kind to us and by that I mean he loaded us up on liquor. The first cran and vodka he gave me was very pale pink. The next one he told me he made "a little more fun". When we held the glass up next to a glass of water, there was no difference. I'm just saying. When I walked out of that place, I was already having trouble standing up. At that time Steph gave us a pep talk: "Nobody better be a loser tonight and go to bed early just because you're drunk now. We're going all night." Other item of note: I ate guacamole here. I hate guacamole. Our awesome cabbie Edmond came to pick us up. In two hours we had gone from normal, intelligent, mature women to drunk, laughing, hyenas who told Edmond that we were on a fun cruise, Steph was our cruise director and he was our captain.

7pm-9pm: Dinner at Cheddars (new place specializing in Macaroni and Cheese options!) - Seriously. It had 19 different kinds of mac and cheese. Have you ever heard of something more amazing in your life? No you haven't. And it tasted amazing, too. Also I got one of the best martinis I've ever had in my life there. White chocolate raspberry. Um yeah. You wish you were there. We ended dinner early so we went to the bar next door and met a cute boy named Tim from my home town. Also I tried to take a break from drinking by getting a Diet Coke and was teased mercilessly so I finally gave in. I am a weak, weak woman. Edmond our fearless captain, showed up exactly at 9pm-without us having to call-to take us to our next stop. On the way there, he asked Steph to marry him. She said yes.

9pm-10:30pm: D'Vine chocolate and wine dessert - D'Vine is a wine bar downtown. And it is lovely and amazing and serves you wine. We drank a lot of this. Sharda and I split a bottle, but she is a poser, and I ended up drinking 80% of it myself. We also ate something called a chocolate pizza which was completely unnecessary and necessary at the same time. We met nice boys here, too, who were intrigued by our choose your own adventure day.

10:30 on: Warehouse District - dancing on tables - We did not dance on tables, but we did dance. Oh yes we danced. We then decided to find a bar with a patio which led us to a couple other bars and then to the Nauti Mermaid which I like to call the Slutty Ass Mermaid. Steph had once, in a drunken stupor, described this bar as "woody! It's really woody!" After we text messaged Woody that we were at a bar that was woody, we decided maybe it was time for us to go. But not before we went to Panini's so Steph could get a sandwich to eat the next day. Not late night eating. She wanted it for the next day. Even when she's drunk this girl is planning. Awesome. Also you guys should know that Sharda kept claiming sobriety and then she made us all stop on the sidewalk so she could do a pose. In this case "pose" means standing on one leg, bent over with the other leg behind you. No, Sharda, I'm just saying you looked terrific. Thanks for making us look like a respectable bunch. The rest of my night was spent in and out of consciousness on Steph's couch while reruns of The Real World: Las Vegas played on the TV. And just like that, I was 22 again.

Sunday brought the promise of recovery until I remembered it was the night of Christy's 30th birthday party. Damn you, 30. Damn you to hell. Let's just say, my attempts to "take it easy" failed miserably. I know this because besides pulling out my fancy foot slidey dance moves in public (the ones I do alone in my kitchen), we ended up at a convenient store to buy late night food, and I got White Cheddar Cheezits and a Star Crunch. By the way, Happy Birthday, Christy! Welcome to the club! A tip: over-eagerness to show your ID when buying alcohol only results in a look of pity from the cashier and a feeling of patheticalness (this is a real world-I looked it up).

Monday really did bring sobriety as I ate the crap out of food my mom cooked for us and then went to see Pirates 3. I liked it a lot, but, it really wasn't as fun as the first two. But Johnny Depp is a god. Seriously how does anyone keep their wits about them when he's around. Good Lord.

Oh by the way, we saw some great Cleveland sites while we were out on Saturday. Take a look at some of the great things this city has to offer:

That last pic is of someone's purse (not naming names). On the street. With a drink inside. Perfectly legal.

Ugh. My liver hurts.

*Incidentally, my best friend from the time I was 13 is being induced tomorrow morning at 8:30, and I am losing my freaking mind.
**There has got to be a better name for this phenomenon. Seriously I can't think of anything grosser than this. Except maybe "period juice" which is a Lunch Crowd original that we like to throw out during the conversation when new people are there to see if they're cool or not.
***I doubt this is the correct spelling of the word for more than one cervix, but I'm just really not going to take the time to look this up.