BETTER WHEN WE'RE TOGETHER

Once upon a time, I had quite the prolific social life.  

Once Upon a Time.

Rewind the years and you may or may not have seen me unofficially onstage helping myself to Skunkhour's Bongo drums.  You also may have seen me dressed like a complete piece of crumpet, handing out trophies to a V8 Racecar driver, Charlie someone or other at one of the Gold Coast Indy events.  Look even harder and you would  have seen me snogging a random guy at a Hunters and Collectors concert at the Old Pacific Hotel.  And, if you attended a Big Day Out concert circa 1994, you definitely would have seen me up the front, almost being crushed to death in the  Soundgarden moshpit. 

 
Now, well, now I have a different social diary to maintain.  And it appears I am just the gatekeeper.

 
It would seem that the baton got passed at a particular point in my life, and my own social life became somewhat of a slack second. This was fine of course, I was too far up my own arse discussing training pants and boy germs to notice.  But now that the dust is starting to settle, I am beginning  to realise I am missing out on some fairly momentous events.  

Everywhere I turn, people are talking about seeing Florence and the Machine,Big Day Out, The Blues Festival; you name it, it’s all been happening.  Imagine if John Farnham had retired and done a final concert!  Imagine if I missed that! 

This weekend we have had a full on weekend.  It involved Jack’s 4th Birthday celebrations where he started the party like this:

Midway was still going hard and looking like this

 
And ending up like this:

It's just not a good party if you don't end up nude in the middle of your loungeroom

 
Completely knackered and naked.  Today he had a 5yo girl(friends) bowling party that went for 3 freaking hours.  The longest three hours of my life.  Yes, the baton certainly has changed hands.
 

The last completely massive night we had out involved Jack Johnson, a squirrel and a bathtub.  Not nearly as kinky as it sounds, let me explain.

Maddie and Sam were safely tucked away at Grandmas.   It was the Easter long weekend and my best friend and her husband had miraculously secured us a double hotel room at the Marriott at 70% off. Yes, so far, it just felt far too full of win to be true.  It was a Friday and we made our way to Bonnie & Jeremy’s house to pick them up and get on the road.  Problem number one.  Man down. Well, man missing.  Jeremy turned up 2 hours inexplicably,  late.   Once we had him sorted, we got going.  Nothing stopping us now.

We managed to check in, throw our bags down and flag down a cab to take us to the Botanic Gardens.  Keeping in mind, this was now around 7:30pm.  We hadn’t eaten and my husband and Jeremy had been drinking since roughly 3pm.    We got to the gates and Bonnie didn’t have her ID with her.  Now I’m sorry, there is no miracle of aging going that could hide the fact that were indeed, over the age of 18.  It didn’t matter, those security guys weren’t having a bar of us and our geriatric mole hairs.  Problem Number 2.  Smuggle in the 28 year old.

So in an effort to a) curb our insane hunger and b) smuggle our clearly overage friend into the 18 plus area, we spent a lot of time NOT seeing the bands we were meant to see.

We did get down to see Jack Johnson.  About 30 minutes before he finished.  By this time, Phil & Jeremy were righteously smashed.  I wasn’t far behind and Bonnie was moderately hammered having only been able to drink for a quarter of the time.  Before we knew it, people were hotfooting it out the gates.  This is where the Squirrel comes in.  Problem number 3 – Phil gets deserted due to squirrel sighting.

Phil decided he needed to use the amenities.  Or the back of a large tree, either or.  So we said we’d wait right there for him.  But then Bonnie spotted a squirrel, even though as far as I know, we don’t have squirrels in Australia.   So we decided we needed to do a little squirrel hunting.

I am unsure here, how long it was between us three and Phil reuniting at the gates of the Brisbane Botanic gardens, but it was enough for him to be pissed, and more than a little dubious of our squirrel story.  

We pushed on, towards home.  Unfortunately towards home included walking past a lot of bars.  One such establishment sold posh beer and salt and pepper squid.   More beer was consumed, a glass was smashed (not by me, oh no) and someone skidded through a vomit patch on the dance floor as part of a very classy exit out of the establishment.  Again, I doubt this would have been me.

Then we got home.  This is where the bathtub becomes part of the story.  See it was about here that Phil was starting to feel a little off and so, as a precautionary measure, spent the night (at his own request) sleeping in the bathtub.  You know, just in case.  I don’t think his back has ever been the same since.

Three out of four of us made it to the all inclusive buffet breakfast the next morning. Phil wasn’t one of them.  
The fluorescent green bile he vomited up for the next two days was a constant reminder of Jack Johnson and inexplicably, Squirrels.

So that was probably our last event.  Our last major organised, let’s go hard or go home event.  

What did you do when you had kids?  Stop going out?  Meet in the middle or make them work around you.  
 
Or, if you don’t have kids, what’s the biggest event you’ve been to of late.  Go on, make me completely jealous.

So this is a repost as my trusty Toshiba has finally shat itself. Hope to be up and running in my new digs soon(ish). Luckily on the 7th day he/she created interest free finance.