Cinco de Weekend

Gosh, what a fantastic weekend. I had Friday off, so I ran a bunch of errands before meeting up with Butter, one of the Happy Hour girls, for pedicures. She and I had a great time hanging out one-on-one. If things go well, she might be moving in with me when her lease is up in July. After our pedis, we went to my house for a snack before meeting up with E and her boyfriend B. The rest of the Happy Hour crew couldn't make it this week.

The bar where we were was dead, so at 9:30, we all came to the realization that we were all hungry. B mentioned IHOP and off we went. We porked out on pancakes, bacon, sausage, stuffed french toast*, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns and omlettes. Man, was it good.

*OMG, have you ever had this stuff? It is heavenly.

As we were eating, B&E filled us in on the plans for the next day: B and his roommate were having a small Cinco de Mayo party. Planned activities included: a pinata, badminton, darts, horseshoes and dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We were all looking forward to it. E was especially excited, because it meant I would finally be meeting B's roommate. She had been trying to fix us up for weeks. Suddenly, B chimed in and told me that I need to be informed about his roommate's ear.

"Oh yeah? Why?" I asked.
"Well, his right ear is fake. If you bump into it or something, it might fall off," he explained.
"Um, what?" I said.
E started telling B to shut up and knock it off. But he continued on:
"Yeah, he lost it in a freak accident, and now it's a prosthetic that just snaps on and off, kind of like Michael Jackson's nose," he continued.
"Ok, why am I not buying this?" I said, eyebrow raised.
"Don't listen to him, Virginia. He is making it up. His roommate doesn't have a fake ear," E explained.

Apparently, B is somewhat of an instigator/practical joker. I guess that as he had been telling me about his roommate's supposed fake ear, he had been telling his roommate that I had multiple personalities. "Yeah, so when you meet him tomorrow, can you just sort of twitch and then turn into a totally crazy girl named 'Sarah'?" he asked.

"I don't think so, B," I said, chuckling. (Looking back on it now, it would have been fun to play along...)

Then Butter spied an uneaten stack of pancakes. "Are you going to eat those?" she asked B. He said he wasn't. We expected her to just scoot the pancakes towards her, douse them in syrup and go to town. Instead, she grabbed a spoon and said, "Don't you just love butter?" And we all affirmed that yes, we were indeed butter fans. Well, the next thing we know, she scoops up the large hunk of butter and proceeds to eat it. Of course, this totally grossed out the rest of us. We sat, horrified, as she explained to us that as a child, she would sneak into the fridge, grab a stick of butter, and gnaw her way through it. This funny yet disgusting habit is why we now refer to her as Butter.

After gorging out on greasy breakfast food, we all went home early. The next day, I met up with KT for lunch, went for a run (about 3 miles this time, go me!!!) and then got ready to go to the party. I had to follow Butter there since B and his roommate live in a part of town I'm unfamiliar with and I knew that at some point, I would have to go home and let my dogs out.

When I got there, I finally met B's roommate. I'm going to call him Rob Thomas, since that's kinda who he looks like. He a little younger than I am(25), but he's very mature. He's owned his house longer than I've owned mine, and has already fixed up all the interior! It was the cleanest and best-decorated guy's house I've ever been in, actually. He and I hung out in the kitchen, ate some chips and got to know each other a little bit. He struck me as a very well-mannered, sweet and easy to be around kind of guy. We were starting to hit it off. This was going very well.

Not wanting to be anti-social, we rejoined the group. There were only 8 of us, but we had so much fun playing darts, horseshoes and badminton. By 7:30, we were ready to go grab some dinner. As I grabbed my purse, I noticed I had a missed phone call on my cell.

When I saw who it was, my jaw dropped.

Oh....my....God.....why in the hell would this person be calling me??? After everything that happened. After all this time. WHY?

It was Repo's girlfriend's best friend. The same one who was involved when all the drama happend a couple of months ago. My mind was racing: What happened that would cause her to call me after all this time?? I couldn't think of a reason. I toook E and Butter aside and told them what was up. "She probably called you by accident," Butter said. Still, out of curiosity, I called her back -- no answer. I left a message.

Just when we sat down at the restaurant, she called me back. It was really loud inside, so I left and went outside to talk to her. (This probably looked really sketchy to Rob Thomas....I will have to explain this to him when the time is right...)

It turns out that she had called me by accident. But we took the opportunity to catch up. Since she's going to be around this summer, she said we should get together for lunch sometime. I was taken aback. "Really?" I asked, surprised. I had always liked her, and was glad to hear that she didn't hate my guts. "No, why would I hate your guts?" she asked.

"Well....after all that happened....I guess I just hope I didn't cause any problems between you and [Repo's girlfriend]," I said.

"Oh, no. [Repo's girlfriend] would not even care at all if we went to lunch," she explained.

"Really? I would think she must hate my guts, and probably thinks I tried to sabotage her relationship. I just hope she realizes that was not my intent at all and that I got absolutely nothing out of it," I explained.

"Trust me. She realizes that. She has always been grateful to you for telling her what was going on, and she always believed everything you said. She knows you didn't get anything out of it," she continued.

"Huh? You mean all this time, she believed me? I thought no one believed me, and Repo made up a bunch of stuff about me and that she must hate me," I said.

"Oh yeah, she totally believed every word you said. I don't know what Repo said to her, because he and I never talked about the situation, but yeah, she believes you. And so do I. When it happened, I told her that she's my friend and I will always support her, even if she took him back. And she decided to give him another shot. But she's definitely holding back in the relationship because of it," she went on.

"Wow. I had no idea," I replied.

Just before getting off the phone with her, she told me she's not sure, but Repo might still be reading my blog. She advised me to keep that in mind. I told her I would be very surprised if he was still reading this thing. And even if he is, I don't care. I am just happy to finally get some validation and know that I'm not hated or not believed. That has been bugging me! So the phone call definitely made me feel a lot better.

Ok, so back to my weekend. The 8 of us had a wonderful Mexican dinner, with lots of beer and enchiladas and laughing. By this point, there was definitely some chemistry between me and Rob. He bought my dinner, which really surprised me. I thanked him, and then we all drove back to Rob & B's house.

It was starting to get late, and I'd been away from my dogs for about 6 hours. They needed to go out. So I had to leave and take care of them. Since I would have gotten lost on the way back (their neighborhood is a total maze), Rob offered to go with me. Woot!

I was a little concerned that my car was dirty and that my house was kinda dirty (it had been raining that day, so it smelled like wet dogs, and my sink was full of dirty dishes), but there wasn't much I could do about it now. Luckily, he didn't seem to mind. He helped me walk the dogs when we got there.

We had the best conversations in the car. Since I live on the opposite side of town, we ended up having lots of time to talk. We discovered a shared taste in music and politics, which never happens to me. Plus, he likes dogs. So by this point, I was pretty much sold.

By the time we got back, our ranks had dwindled (too much beer at dinner) to 5. We played horseshoes for a while and then re-lived our college days with a beer bong until about 2am. The guys were hysterical, making bets on the horseshoes and trying to convince each other that it was NOT their turn to bong the next beer. Eventually, Rob and I ended up watching tv after everyone else went to bed.

That's when he kissed me.