I never thought about love when I thought about home

I feel the same way as Heather--that this is impossible to distill into words. This trip was magic and it reminded me of that magic the first time we met for Thanksgiving before this blog even existed. Moment by moment I felt in love with all six of us, that days started and ended with a glowy haze of champagne buzz. And we weren’t even drinking champagne. I was there five perfect days and there are so many of those moments I want to scribe down forever that I could write pages and pages. And this seems the place to write it since... this is our space. But I don’t want to ruin the magic, and also I have a million things to do before leaving for my next trip.

There is this wrinkle in the universe, or the time space continuum or a fluke of karma that allows me to hang out with Kat and Seth on a nearly regularly basis. Hanging out with Kat and Seth is amazing, mostly because they consider bars to be travel destinations. (Well, Seth likes to know that there are historical “fountains” to be seen between bars. But bars are the still the destination.) So while Jennie and Joe were rehearsal dinnering, we were crawling up the Dayton bar scene. There was the Irish pub where I had my first fried pickles (delicious!), the bar where the lady tried to steal my phone and/or kiss me, my favorite place where Heather took a beer break and had some ice cream before discovering Purple Haze. We ran out of that place when a metal band turned off our jukebox (and thereby stealing AT LEAST two jukebox songs from us) and then played there loud music. Instead of calling it a night even though we were all far gone, we ended at a tiki bar. Tiki bars are another thing that Kat and Seth excel at so they ordered up a giant flaming bowl of booze. The bartender judged us, but he was the one tending at the tiki bar.

There are other bullet points: getting to really know Joe thanks to 40 minutes of marry/do/die. I mean, when you hear a man say he wants to “totally bang Sarah Walker” the day before his wedding, you know a man. (There was also a time at the after party at Jennie’s parents when Joe loudly proclaimed that we were his favorites. Our eyes widened as we gestured to the ENTIRE wedding party surrounding us, to which he amended “these guys are alright, but you guys are my FAVORITES.”) There were drive through liquor stores where we’d buy beer and ice for emergencies and for tailgating before the reception. Heather repeatedly stealing my phone so she could drunkenly check the Twitter and then curse at it. Us telling the same stories to each other that we’ve been telling for years and cracking ourselves up. It feels impossible to explain, to say nice things about the nice time we had without devolving into inside jokes (the prohibition was a 13-year-span) or a list of boring drunken shenanigans. Well, boring to you. Not to us. We had John Barleycorn’s aluminum siding.

All six of us piled in the rental car together early Sunday morning after merry-making at the wedding, the reception, and the after party in Jennie’s dad’s basement with leftover reception food and more drinking. We were dutifully charged with getting them home before they took off for their honeymoon the next day. By the time this week ends, we’ll all be together again. That promise was the only thing that convinced Jennie to go to bed on her wedding night instead of inviting us in at 4 in the morning to play Rock Band until the honeymoon flight left at 10 am. And so we’ll cross countries again to be together because you guys, being together is the best. And not just because Seth can lead us all in a really good round of National karaoke.