the essence

It has been a very busy weekend. I’m not used to being so busy & staying up past my very late bedtime of 10:30. :)

Friday I watched Charisse’s girls for about 8 hours while she & her husband were moving into their new house (which is very close to mine!). The girls were so good & it was nice being able to watch them at my own home. AND, they both napped for about 2.5 hours. That was great. I had taped Frasier (I love that show & its on for an hour at noon every weekday here) so I watched that & drank my coffee.

Friday evening we had our monthly couples get together at Avrils’. This time we did a potluck dinner so I made a really easy pasta dish to take with me since I’d had the girls all day & also didn’t feel like spending a lot of money to make a potluck meal.

We had so much fun there! We played a game & took four couples from different categories of how long the people had been married (less than 5 years, 5-10, 10-15, etc.). Ray & I were volunteered by our group to be the representatives for the less than 5 category. The female volunteers than sat in front of the group while our guys were sent away from the room. We were then asked questions such as “What color is your toothbrush?” (I couldn’t even remember that, much less Ray!) & “Where do you want to retire?” Then the guys were brought in & had to figure out what we answered for each question.

The couple in the 15-20 category got all 5 correct, Ray & I tied with the 20+ couple with four correct & the 5-10 couple had three.

We got home around 11 which, as I mentioned, is past my bed time. :)

Yesterday was Gasparilla here in Tampa. A huge parade & lots of drunk people along Bayshore, one of the prettiest places in Tampa.

Some of Ray’s former clients, James & Jim, threw a Gasparilla party yesterday. They live very close to Bayshore, just about 500 yards from the water so people were able to walk to the parade.

I’ve been once & didn’t think it was worth much so I stayed back at the house while Ray walked with a bunch of other people to the parade. I was not alone in my sentiments of not going to the parade & there were a bunch of people to hang out with at the house.

Drunk gay men dancing to My Humps is hilarious. These guys have a great sound system installed in their house & in order to judge the gregariousness of the people we would play My Humps very loudly & just watch what would happen. I laughed so much yesterday.

It was a super long party too. We were a little late but we were still there for over10 hours. Ray spent about 4 just away for the parade. Lots of good food & met lots of new people. I was so exhausted though. Another late night but lots of fun.