1am, Mother's Day 2011: at the grocery store

We had a plan, dammit. Arrive around 9, grab a drink, buy some raffle tickets, bid in the silent auction, hang for a bit, and get home before the clock struck 12.

The best laid plans, indeed.

My decision to forgo the anti-depressants and soldier through what has been, admittedly, an emotional month, has left me sleeping a great deal of the time. It's not like I don't like to sleep anyway - it's one of my very favorite activities - but the combination of patchy employment and shitty weather has led me to spend an inordinate amount of time under my down comforter surfing the web. There are worse things, I suppose. But tonight, because I had A Plan, I climbed out of bed at 8pm - where I had been sound asleep for several hours - and started trying to find something appropriate to wear.

You wouldn't guess it, but living on an island in the South Pacific at 2,000 feet elevation, and heading to an evening event at sea level on the other side of the island, calls for some serious layers and guesswork. I could barely hear the radio through the din of the rain hammering away on our metal roof, and the wind roaring past outside, Sheets of water coursed down the windows while I put on one outfit after another, rejecting each one for different reasons:

Too long
Too short
Too slutty
Too casual
Not warm enough
Not sexy enough
Not comfortable enough
Not tight enough
Muffin top
Thunder thighs
Stretch marks
Wrong underwear
Too much underwear
Spanx required
An unfortunate choice
What the hell is that
It sure doesn't fit like it used to
You look like a middle aged whore

It took a while. And it was hard to imagine that in less than an hour I would be in a completely different climate - 20 degrees warmer, clear and calm, drier and quieter than my little neighborhood perched on the side of Haleakala. I finally left the house in an outfit that would keep me warm on the drive, but that involved enough layers to let me show sufficient skin - should I be so inclined. And it would have met with my mother's approval, so I knew it was safe to wear out on the town without my husband.

Because despite a text informing me (a bit conveniently, if I do say so myself) that his band had decided to look for a male lead singer, instead of the female one he had been so excited about, he was still on my list.

I picked up my girl Jerz and we hit the road, chatting and smoking and laughing. She was patiently breaking down the difference between straight, bisexual, and gay-all-day, while I bemoaned my broken gaydar that used to be so accurate, and the way that kids these days make it so damn confusing. We got to the bar, the host asked if I would MC, Jerz and I bought a bottle of wine, and all of our plans went flying right out the fucking window.

The end of the night found me smoking a Parliament in the parking lot with my dress around my waist fishing pieces of icing and crumbs of cake out of my bellybutton, where they had fallen while I had tried to enjoy the latest craze: cupcake-on-a-stick.

For the record, cupcake-on-a-stick has a serious design flaw. Which resulted in 45% of my cake going right down the front of my dress.

Once I had removed all of the debris from my navel, Jerz took the keys - because it was clear that I was distracted and she would have to drive. We headed over to Foodland to get a few things we needed before heading home: a sandwich and a box of tampons. I stood at the register shivering in the air conditioning, weaving ever-so-slightly and trying to calculate how long I had to stay awake before I would be reunited with my beloved down comforter.

It was 1am.

Mother's Day was off to an auspicious beginning, indeed.

I clmbed into bed just before 2am, and woke up a few short hours later. Sam had no idea that I had diverted from my original timeline for the evening, and was perplexed by my condition. The kids wanted to make me breakfast, I wanted a gatorade. We compromised and I got tea and bacon.

And so begins another year of parenthood in paradise. I make it look so fucking easy.