Feel Good Friday (AKA Sometimes It Pays To Stay Home On a Friday Night)

We had big plans tonight, HUGE PLANS. Some friends of ours are moving back to town soon from Vegas following a job promotion, and they're in town finalizing things before they make the actual move. Everybody is meeting up downtown (Denver, of course); they even rented out an area of the Wynkoop Brewery so people are able to mingle and play pool and drink and socialize. These friends of ours, they roll much bigger than we do.

Me rolling big is taking over a table at Red Robin and ordering an extra side of ranch dressing to go with mah steak fries. And if you think that I am joking about this you are sadly, sadly mistaken.

Soo anyway. Following two disastrous nights of no sleep AND the dental calamity from this past week, I decided it would be in my best to skip tonight's festivities and sit my butt at home. Lame, Chloe, laaaaame. But this is what getting old and sickly does to you, darlings. You suddenly find yourself wrinkling your nose and saying, "Downtown? All the way downtown? And that bar is so noisy! And it's going to be crowded for the 4th of July! Parking is going to be a nightmare! Ugggh, I have a headache. You go, honey, and give them my best wishes."

Husband kissed me on the forehead and went hopping out the door. He is much more patient and understanding than I am. Had the roles been reversed I would have dragged him out the door and with me a la Weekend at Bernie's Style, but not him. Oh no. Whatever, it's fine, he loves me, kiss kiss kiss, be home in a little while, good-bye. And since his bedtime is 9:01pm every night (he literally panics if he's out somewhere and it's, ACK, 9:02! AND HE'S NOT IN BED!) I know he'll be back home soon. Who cares how we roll, as long as we roll the same way. Right? Right. Having Lupus and feeling tired all the time sucks the big one, but having a Husband who likes to act as if he's 33 going on 83 certainly helps things.

And don't get me wrong here- I would have definitely made a bit more of an attempt if they weren't moving back here...but since they'll be permanently situated here within a month's time, I'll have 234837024873 more opportunities to see them. And frankly, let's be honest- I occasionally covet some "alone time" at home. Right? I can watch whatever I want to watch on TV (BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW FRIDAY NIGHT PROGRAMMING IS AWESOME) (SARCASM), I can do my facemasks and my hairmasks and my pedicures and I can talk to Kitty and Petunia in an obnoxiously high, squeaky, shrill voice all night long without grating on Husband's nerves.

Oh yeah. It's awesome.

So Husband left and I jumped online to quickly check my email (Stevie sent me a rather panicky one that says she is NOT HAVING A GOOD TIME IN CHINA, which is what happens when you lose your purse/someone steals your purse the second day you're there, apparently) and I noticed that my mom was on the instant messenger. As I have mentioned previously, this is our preferred method of communicating. My mom is pretty nimble on the keyboard, we can send each other pictures and links, and again- there's that whole being able to wander away mid-conversation thing. With no one really noticing. Yay.

So my mom was online. My gramma is currently visiting my mom and spending the week with her. I decided to instant message my mom to see how that was going.

And this is the awesome conversation that resulted. "West River" is my mom:

West River says (6:27 PM):
gramma wants to type now
Chloe says (6:28 PM):
hi gramma
West River says (6:28 PM):
dear

Okay. At this point I'm wondering why I am being addressed as "dear". My gramma calls me all sorts of things, from sweetheart to darling to Stevie (being a twin is fun) but dear?

Chloe says (6:28 PM):
how are you?
West River says (6:28 PM):
chole
West River says (6:29 PM):
i
am
having
West River says (6:31 PM):
agoodtime

OH! Ohhhh. Okay. Gramma's drunk.

No wait! Wait, wait, wait- maybe she wasn't drunk. Maybe she was typing a letter to me on the instant messenger. I neglected to tell her she spelled my name incorrectly- I figured we had bigger fish to fry, with her not realizing there's now a new invention called the "spacebar". My name throws most of my relatives for a loop anyway, being a jumble of too many consonants and vowels that aren't arranged in the standard order typical of the English language. She sometimes gets it right, and that's all that matters.

Spacebar, gramma. Spacebar. It's the big one. You can't miss it.

Chloe says (6:31 PM):
good!
West River says (6:32 PM):
wehavegonetorobs

Yes I know, darling readers, it too took me a few seconds to untangle that, but Rob's is a Damage & Dent store where my mom lives. At this point in the nearly 5-minute long conversation I considered IM'ing my dad (who was on IM on his laptop) to tell him to help the poor old lady out with the keyboard and/or to check her coffee mug for rum & coke. But, darling readers, my dad is the one who interjects random smiley faces into his words and sentences and types just about as fast, so I decided to just wait it out and see what else my gramma had to (sloooowly) say.

And really, it was pretty awesome that she was doing it at all, I decided, considering she's 76 and doesn't own a computer. "Email" is a completely foreign word to her. She still sends me nicely penned letters in her pretty cursive about once a month, which I do enjoy immensely. There are some things you can't get out of email and IM'ing, you know? Like my gramma's awesome stickers sealing an envelope shut.

I love those stickers.

Chloe says (6:32 PM):
did you find anything good at robs??
West River says (6:33 PM):
ialways
West River says (6:34 PM):
findsomethingthere
Chloe says (6:34 PM):
hahaha
what else have you been doing?
going out to eat?
West River says (6:35 PM):
wewent
torapid

At this point I decided I was hungry and needed to make dinner, so I wandered away. As you can tell from the timestamps next to our names, the conversation wasn't exactly moving quickly and I decided that she likely wouldn't notice that I was missing for a good 10, 15, 45 minutes.

West River says (6:36 PM):
todav
igot
a
West River says (6:37 PM):
differt
caritsand
West River says (6:39 PM):
one

Yeah. I have no idea what she's saying here, but I'm pretty sure it's something in Russian. Except she doesn't speak Russian. She only speaks Midwestern Old Lady That Always Smells Like Vaseline Intensive Care Hand Lotion. What is she trying to say here? Something about a new carit? Car? Sand???

West River says (6:39 PM):
gramma has given up
she is going to go eat hotdogs
bye!!!!

Chloe said (6:41 PM):
LMAO!!

And just like that, right as I was trying to decipher the TOP SECRET MISSION RUSSIAN SPY CODE my gramma was obviously trying to send to me via MSN Messenger, my mom kicked my her off with a succinct flourish of exclamation points and a flawless use of the spacebar. Gramma had to stop typing her one word every two minutes to go eat some hotdogs. La fin, finito, THE END.

They had to get a move on, you know- the only movie playing in town tonight (it's a very small town that my mom lives in) started sharply at 7, and they didn't want to be late to see The Hangover. Since it's the only movie theater in town, and since it only plays one movie a night on Fridays and Saturdays, you might not even get a seat if you dilly-dally. My parents and my gramma had bigger plans for the evening than even me. So it goes. So it goes.

(Why my 'rents were taking my 76-Year Old Quacker Factory Wearing Always Smells Like Vaseline Intensive Care Hand Lotion Gramma to see The Hangover was a bit baffling, but we'll let that slide for now.)

So there you have it, darling readers. Tonight has been a big night indeed. Tonight was my gramma's first attempt (and also likely my gramma's last attempt) at using an Instant Messenger. I do feel bad that I didn't go out with Husband and our friends tonight, but come on- I wouldn't have wanted to miss this one for the world, no way.

My grammy doesn't fuck around with the hugs.