Martini, Anyone?

I love the week before Christmas. The excitement, the Christmas carols, the cookie eating, the Christmas movies and shows, visiting with friends and family - I love all of it. I always want to slow the week down and savor every moment of it, don't you?

Tonight was a Christmas gathering with my oldest, dearest friends - my high school girlies. We met at a local tavern at 6pm. M and I walked in almost 15 minutes late. We were a little surprised that the other two, S and B, weren't there yet. They're usually pretty punctual and are texting us to find out where we are. But not tonight.

We looked all over the tavern and couldn't find them. Oh well, let's get a table and order a drink, we thought. Tra-la-la. We're here first for once.

Then M looked at the messages on her phone and realized we weren't meeting until 6:30pm. Ha! We were actually early.  So we ordered some drinks and some wings and settled in to wait for the other two. Once they arrived a few minutes later, it was non-stop laughter. My cheeks still hurt. We ate wings and caught up with each other's week and chatted while we ate. 

We had brought each other's Christmas gifts to exchange so we decided to do that before dinner was served. We took turns opening gifts and went around a couple times since we had multiple gifts to open. The martinis and sangrias were drank and the jokes started flying and laughter ensued. 

M opened up a box that S gave her and tucked inside were two little bottles of Prosecco. She took the first one out and showed us the pretty blue bottle of Lunetta. Then she took the second one out and it looked like clear crystal. Such a pretty bottle. After we ooh'd and aah'd over the bottles, she put the blue one back into the box and started to put the second bottle in. I'm not sure what happened but I saw the bottle fall off the table. I was sure it was going to smash on the floor but M moved so fast, she caught it before it hit the floor. 

B, who was taking a sip of her martini at the time, thought she could help M catch the bottle so she literally THREW her drink in the air as she lunged for the bottle.

Martini went everywhere. On the table, on the potato skins, on the shrimp, on the nachos - it was sticky and sweet on everything. What a mess.

We laughed. A lot. And then S got up to get some extra napkins and we started cleaning up. We wiped up all the drink from the table and the plates. We dabbed at the sour cream and cleaned that up. We asked the waitress for a wet towel so we could get rid of the stickiness and we used wipes to clean our hands.

We finally settled down and went back to eating. Martini soaked potato skins are not that good. Nor is martini infused sour cream. Or martini drenched nachos. 

Oh brother.

We kept talking and laughing. At each other. At ourselves. You name it and we'll laugh at it. We tease each other a lot and we never take anything too seriously when we get like this, which happens to be every time we get together. So we're finishing up dinner and having a good time and all of sudden M hit her glass of water, her FULL glass of ice water, and it spilled all over her lap. 

Her face was priceless. Utter shock. Like a deer in headlights. We all burst into laughter. Loud, raucousing laughter and we couldn't stop. M got up and went into the bathroom to dry herself off. I went to get napkins and we started cleaning up for the second time.

Unbelievable. You can dress us up but you can't take us out. 

__________

As we were leaving the tavern, we walked by two women who were sitting a few tables away from us. One of them said, "Boy, we wish we were sitting with you guys! You were having so much fun!"

Yes. 

Yes, we were.

Merry Christmas, sweet friends.