august 10 in twenty-eight

Well. When I said that last night's bachelorette party couldn't be THAT bad, I was kidding myself.

It was bad. Really, really bad. Well, not the kind of bad where I wake up not sure what happened, or in a drunk tank, or arrested for anything stupid, but the responsible level of bad.

The highlights: Our limo driver ended up being a preacher (bachelorette party was for a lesbian wedding) and I accidentally texted my former mother-in-law asking for a ride because I was tipsy and alone at a bus stop in the middle of the night.

Yeah.

I got to R's apartment at five. They had been drinking since noon (T, the twin who was having the bachelorette party, woke up drunk from the night before. Maybe I'm just naive because I spent my college years studying hard and didn't even drink until after I graduated, but HOW does a person WAKE UP drunk??). I showed up at 4:30, since C dropped me off.

I walked in and was promptly handed a Strongbow. And cider is much tamer than shots, so I happily accepted. Then the cake was brought out...it was homemade and had a barbie doll on top, on her back, legs spread, missing one shoe. Yeah, that might have been the first clue. The cake tasted like funfetti cake plus something kind of cinamonny. Turns out, it was RumChata. Awesome. Then I was handed a "pudding shot". Just a jello shot with liquor instead of milk. I thought, okay, that can't be that bad, right? So I took the chocolate one, and almost spit it out. It was made with Kahlua, which is the most revolting booze ever thought up. I was on a black Russian kick for a while, then a white Russian kick, until one night I drank too many and now I can't tolerate the taste. So the rest of that pudding shot ended up in the trash pretty quickly after that.

The limo arrived and I was happy to get the show on the road. My plan for the evening was to go in the limo with them to the first two stops, then find a way to leave. The bus (we have terrible public transportation here in my city, so taking the bus isn't common) happens to go all along the main road where we were going to be, and it has a stop down the street from where I live, which is convenient. So I wasn't going to worry about having maybe a tiny bit too much to drink, but I had no intention of getting drunk, either. That's just old news for someone my age.

We got to the first stop, which was Brothers Drake. I love the place; they have mead. Most of us, with the exception of the twins, were sober still. We whipped out Cards Against Humanity; I won. I bought two bottles of mead, which cost me $60, and we ended up drinking half of one before we hit the road again. We only had the limo for four hours and none of us had eaten yet. So we went to Bakersfield for margs and tacos. Love both. I didn't end up paying for my tacos because R paid for all the food, and one of the other girls bought a pitcher of really expensive margs (it was $52 before tax and tip). We spent probably an hour there. Some really old (50's to 60's) creepy dudes kept trying to crash our party. One of them spilled a drink all over one girl's backside. Nice. Oh, and a homeless guy stopped by to chat. He was obviously high, and seemed more interested in eating our chips and salsa than actually enjoying our company.

After that we got back in the limo and ended up in Grandview, which isn't really close to the bus stops. It was our last stop with the limo, so the driver decided to pull the bride-to-be aside and tell her that she was making a poor decision by being a lesbian and deciding to get married. Which was...really awkward.

A few more drinks, some more Cards Against Humanity, and I was getting really tired. Also slightly tipsy. It was 9:30 by the time we left, so we called taxi's. I thought we were going back to the Short North, but somehow we made it back to R's apartment instead. So, I was stranded. There is a bus stop there, but the bus only comes every hour down there and of course I had just missed it.

Perfect. So I texted my mom, my brother, and both of my adult sisters and said I was at a bus stop, if any of them wanted to give me a ride home. Well, I thought I was texting my mom. I think what happened was that I had saved my former MIL in my old phone as "mom" as a nickname, under "Karen". So I accidentally picked her number instead of my own mom's and texted her saying I was stranded after a bachelorette party, if anyone wanted to come pick my sorry ass up and take me home.

So....yeeeeah.

That could not have gone worse. I realized my mistake instantly and texted her back, apologizing and saying that I had meant to text my mother and it was a mistake. She texted back that it was fine, but not in a "oh, don't worry about it, totally cool" kind of way. Very icy. Which is to be expected. So then, in my tipsy state, I figured I should also text my ex husband to tell him what had happened so he could apologize to her for me. I'm not sure why that seemed like a great idea, either. I just made myself look more pathetic.

Josh did come pick me up, which was nice. I gave him $20 for the ride and we had what I can only imagine was an uncomfortable conversation for him the entire ride home. I get REALLY uninhibited when I drink even a little, so I come across as chatty and, probably, wasted. Even if I'm only slightly tipsy. So I was telling him about my current life, and the secrets I'm keeping from our parents (turns out he has a few of his own), and what happened between us eight and a half years ago that he had never heard before. I don't know why I felt the need to share, but I did.

I finally made it home around 10:45.

It was a night I hope to never have to repeat.

Last updated August 12, 2014