My e-mail pals and I met in Atlanta for our fifth convention–three days of extreme craziness, laziness, and general silliness: four card-carrying AARP members having a Girls’ Weekend.
One flew in from south Florida, her suitcase full of oranges so that we could have fresh-squeezed juice every morning. The rest of us brought enough snacks, beer, and wine to feed a hockey team. The meeting place (a Midtown condo) was still stocked with Diet Cokes from our fall gathering, so the essentials were in place as soon as we arrived.
The official dress code of this group is bralessness, sweats, socks, and sensible shoes. That works well, since our suitcases are full of yarn, knitting patterns, and books to trade. The status of the group is PMS– Post Menopausal Sixties –and makes for some raucous adventures, followed by naps.
The meeting date was chosen before I became a curling convert, and because the rarely used condo doesn’t have cable, that meant no CNBC, the channel which carried the Olympics curling finals. When I first began watching it, I did so simply for the artistry of the stone gliding over the ice and those fascinating Teflon soled shoes, but Dearly Beloved became hooked, too. We’d watched every match together, choosing them over competing events on the main Olympics channel.
I needed to find a sports bar. . . FAST!
The posse of friends, having never seen a curling match but always covering each other’s backs, volunteered to go with me.
“Can I take my knitting?” one of them asked.
Why not? With a group of babes like us, we might need the knitting needles as weapons because we’d no doubt be seriously hit upon.
A stranger, unlucky enough to share the elevator with us, was rendered speechless when asked to recommend a sports bar or someplace to watch the Olympics. He was probably trying to recall the name of any nearby Assisted living facilities. We asked the building concierge the same question.
“You want noise or quiet?”
“Well, it depends.”
She reeled off several bars for the noise part, then pulled out a TV remote and nodded toward a door behind her.
“You want ‘quiet,’ go in there.”
We checked out ‘quiet” and found it to be a large, private, comfortable lounge with cushy sofas and a plasma TV the size of a refrigerator. We dropped our knitting bags on the sofas (yes, we were really taking them…!) and raced back upstairs for snacks, wine, beer, and money to order in a large pizza. By the end of the match, Sweden’s Women had the gold, curling had three more converts, and the room had lost its ‘quiet’ designation.
We watched the men’s finals on Saturday night the same way and by the end of that one, the group had Googled curling terms and rules, decided which team had the hottest guy, and knew most of the words to the Canadian national anthem.
Sunday morning we left carrying knitting bags overflowing with new stashes from the three yarn shops we’d visited, and our hips overflowing from all those snacks.
When I arrived home yesterday, Dearly Beloved offered to prepare dinner last night, saying he knew I must be tired because “going out every night can wear you out.”
I had to laugh. With PMS-ers, a night on the town ain’t what it used to be.
We never made it out of the building a single evening.
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