My Love Letter

The Gaggle.


That is the moniker that Joe has given to my group of girlfriends. Honestly, it could be worse. I am sure. And I know there is part of him that just cringes every time I go off for a get together with the girls, because save a pillow fight in our underwear (which for the record, NEVER happens boys) he knows that most of my time will be spent taking his name in vain, along with all the other significants , somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,874,243 times in a 4-5 hour span.

But the Gaggle is something I have come to love more than I can really explain. Keep in mind, I was a military brat growing up (no comment on the brat portion of that experience) and therefore had friends come and go on about a 4 year cycle. That is not to say that there are not a handful of people from my childhood that I still email occasionally and follow on Facebook, but they are the rare, rare exception. And even into high school, I tended to be more of one of the guys than the girls. Again, with a small exception – and those girls I *wish* lived in Des Moines and were part of the more regular gaggle. Nope, it wasn’t until college and post that I started to get why girlfriends are so important. This was something my mother knew very well. Her girlfriends were and ARE still a very real part of our lives.

It starts with the dynamic of the gaggle. We are all fairly similar in age – plus or minus like 5 years. We cross the spectrum of married, single, dating, living together, kids, no-kids, careers, stay-at-home, liberal, conservative, all body types, vegetarian, total meat eaters, long hair, short hair – I think its fair to say that you get the idea. Not sure what it is that ties us together, but its something. That we see bits of ourselves in each other, that we see what we want to be in each other, that we can be honest about what is really going on in our lives, cry, laugh, snort, or just hug it out bitch– all in the name of girlfriends. Because we don’t judge. Or least we try not to judge. Because as honest as we are, we can still be snarky, judgmental, bratty and sometimes just not nice. But hey, we are women, not saints. Far from it.

Prime example was last night – we managed to get a date on the calendar that at least 3 people could confirm. That’s the down side of the gaggle, scheduling is a bitch. If we get together every 2 months, we are doing great. So last night, here I was getting emotional about PUTTING MY KIDS TO BED. I am sure the wine didn’t help, but come on…

In all fairness, our bedtime ritual is pretty cute. I get a few minutes of downtime with each of the kids, one on one. And Finn always does this thing when I tuck him in, he takes his chubby little hands, puts them on either one of my cheeks and says “Hi Mama, Good night Mama” and then kisses me goodnight. And my heart pretty much melts each time.

Point being, I got a little blubbery about bedtime and they just smiled, handed me a Kleenex and probably poured me another glass of wine. After that, we headed to the living room for a dance party. See, that’s how we roll. Emotional highs and lows and a dance party. On a school night. We so crazy.

I guess what this really is, is a love letter to my gaggle. They have seen me at my worst, my most questionable and my highs. And they are always there in any of those situations with a Kleenex, a laugh and lets not kid ourselves, probably a glass of wine. And I hearts them lots for that.

Now Listening: Rolling in the Deep by Adele

The Rules

I know everyone wants to work someplace “cool”. My experience has led me to believe that there is a disproportionate amount of not-cool places to work, which means that most of us will end up in a job at a place that may have shades of cool, but probably isn’t you know, Google or Pixar.


I work at one of those places – the disproportionately not cool ones. Not for trying, I made it through 4 rounds of phone interviews at Google at one point way back when. Ah, to think…..

Must. Stop. Digressing.

But, I enjoy my work (most days) and the people I work with. In a company of a little over 500 people, there are enough people that I still don’t know to keep things fresh. But regardless of the company, the people, the place, the work… there are a few rules that I have in the office that I feel shouldn’t be broken. I consider them understood, unspoken rules. It would seem that maybe, I am alone in my belief of the rules, so I offer them to you to judge.

1. In a bathroom full of 8 stalls, there is no reason to take the stall right next to someone if there are others available.

2. You should never, and I mean NEVER, conduct a phone call while in a stall.

3. Ongoing group conversations are awkward with bathroom doors dividing you – wait till you all get done to continue discussing your recipe for Jello-fluff or whatever casserole you LOVED at the last Pampered Chef party you went to.

4. I am fully aware of the nature of the events that take place in a bathroom, I don’t need a dialogue providing MORE detail about what you are doing.

Now, allow me to explain why I feel its necessary to share the rules. We have a Wellness Committee at work. As a health care company, wellness should be part of what we do. One of the ways said committee has decided to communicate to us masses is through a program called, and I am NOT joking, Toilet Talk. Trust me, I couldn’t make that one up. And I am really good at stretching the truth a little bit. So this Toilet Talk program consists of monthly updates placed on the insides of the toilet stalls. The theory, I’m guessing, goes something like this: everyone will use the toilet at some point, and guessing they won’t have much else to do, so make them read about being healthy!! Pretty much a guaranteed audience. So the current installation of TT is concerning dehydration. Specifically, it talks about the color of your pee to gauge your hydration levels. Important information, I will grant you. However, the TMI levels on this one… pretty high. This coming from a woman who has no problem discuss her sex life, weight and anything else that you can read about in ELLE or Glamour

But I was going into the bathroom the other day with a gaggle of women from another department. So, automatically rule #1 was out the window. And they were fully engaged in some conversation that kept going once they all chose their respective stalls – total violation of #3. After a minute or two, the worst thing.. a combination of #3 & #4. One woman says to the group “ok, check your color”. Commence cackling and a chorus of people describing theirs.

Unnecessary. Totally. At so many levels.

All that needed to happen at that point was for one of them to call another on their cell and discuss it that way. I mean really, is nothing sacred any more?? And sure, you can argue that my even blogging about it is just as gross, but really --- I am not your kid, your spouse, your doctor. Therefore I have NO interest at all in what just happened. Save it for your annual physical.

So I implore of you, no matter where you work – even in Ally McBeal’s (and totally just dated myself) co-ed bathroom, the rules matter.

Ok, I feel much better having gotten that off my chest. Off to try and figure out why, when you have pictures scheduled for your family you get a call that your daughter now has a goose-egg on her forehead. Oh, and your son is still healing from the Wolverine-like scratches he got on his face earlier in the week. Daycare or Cellblock E, you make the call.



Now Listening: My Passion Pit Pandora station

The mother road....

I’m not sure what would be easier, killing a bear or stealing a cowboy’s spurs.

-Joe McConville, roughly 11:30 PM, June 27th, 2011 as we are driving into the Gusto parking lot from Colorado.

And that is how we ended our trip. So now that I have your attention, let me set the stage for the last few days of my life. Us Iowans are always coming up with new things to do in the winter. And trust me, you have to get creative. You can’t ski, snowboard or any of the usual winter playtime activities. And you have to do something less a raging case of cabin fever kicks in ….

Our answer: bacon.

I will grant you its, not a conventional choice. But allow me to explain. And most of this will be my version of the story that is captured here: http://www.blueribbonbaconfestival.com/ A while back a few crazy Iowa boys decided that they wanted to get together and honor/celebrate all things bacon. And they did. And then they did it another year, and it got a little bigger. And so on, until this year when it grew to an event of about 1800 people at the end of February and the hottest ticket in town. Sorta saying something as its pretty damn cold in Iowa in the winter. And this year, it just so happened that Gusto threw their hat in the bacon ring and decided to be a food vendor at Bacon Fest – that’s what us kids in the know call it. And, we rocked it. Two different types of bacon inspired za’ – and we couldn’t keep samples on the table fast enough. Hell, I am guessing Liz still doesn’t have feeling in her hand from slicing all those pies.

I should caveat, that while it is a celebration of bacon, complete with lectures, corporate sponsors and an attempt at educating people on bacon and its many, many nuances, it is at its core, a chance for a bunch of grown ups to eat a TON of bacon and drink a lot of beer on a cold winter Saturday. Pre-festival cholesterol checks should be mandatory. And all the vendors go crazy, our offerings …. The Elvis and the BLT pizza. The Elvis – peanut butter, applewood smoked bacon, sliced bananas, provolone cheese and then gets a little honey drizzle when it comes out of the oven. The BLT – lemon aioli, smoked bacon topped with fresh lettuce and tomato. So people get creative. Bottom line, had a hell of a good time this year at the local fest and called it a day. A sodium-beer-filled day, but a day.

Until about St Patrick’s day, when Joe says to me, they are taking Bacon Fest on the road and want us to go with them. Us = Gusto. Sounds awesome, I say, and then I follow it up with “the wives get to go” when I found out that Keystone was the proposed destination. Say what you want, but there are very few perks to being a restaurateur’s wife. At least in start-up stage. I fully expect to be making millions from pizza at some point and able to quit my job and live a lifestyle that I can grow accustomed to. But that is the future. Today’s perks include eating a lot of pizza whenever I want, but that is about where it ends. So trips like this…. automatic in my mind. And the husbands were very smart in not disagreeing. Plus, we were going to have to “work”.

So they set about trying to figure out how we take that which is amazing here in Des Moines and ensuring that it is equally amazing at 2 miles high. Solution; mobile kitchen. It only made sense. Some phone calls, Internet searches and one failed trip to somewhere east of here Iowa, and they settled on a custom trailer with all the bells and whistles that would be ready in “3 weeks”.

My definition of 3 weeks is something like this:

• 21 days

• 504 hours

• 30,240 minutes

You get the idea. By all rights, the trailer should have been done sometime in early June. Please note the use of the word “should”. Much like everything with this business, it wasn’t done on time. Not even close. So while we were optimistically running under the impression that it would all work out on time, we went about planning the trip.

Let me ‘splain something. I am a planner. Its what I do for a living. And while there is a time and place to toss the agenda and just run with it –something I am totally capable of, regardless of what anyone tells you – planning a trip for 6 grown ups and a 20-ft mobile kitchen is not the time to just wing it. And I know there was some planning going on (thanks, Josh) but from my point of view, the details were a little sketchy. Which. Drove.Me.Nuts. So I went about controlling what I could. Arrangements with Grandma & Grandpa to watch the kids, the list of to-dos in advance of our departure, laundry – more laundry than I really care to think about. Like, the Everest of laundry – these sort of mundane, very house-wifey things that I could do.

So the night before we are supposed to leave the following facts where what I knew:

• The trailer still wasn’t done.

• I didn’t know which car we were taking out (advance party was taking a separate car)

• What time I was leaving

• Where we were staying.

Let me re-iterate my previous point, I am a planner. So my stress levels were over the top. Some of that was taken care of with a few calls to get the departure time and car situation resolved. Not to mention I still needed to run to the grocery store to get food for the house so Grandma and Grandpa would have something to feed my hellions. I text Joe around 10 PM, what time you gonna be home. The reply, honestly, probably 4 AM.

Awesome, methinks.

New plan, going to bed, set alarm for ass-crack of dawn and I will do a run to Wal-Mart to get food in the early am. At some point Joe did in fact come home. He stripped down in the guest room and says, I am taking a shower, I reek of bacon. From across the room, I couldn’t disagree. Few minutes later, he gets into bed and says two things to me:

I don’t think I want to go to Bacon Fest anymore.

I just cooked my body weight in bacon.

And then promptly fell fast asleep. I think this was around 3 AM. I am not sure, as I didn’t look at the clock and turned over and went back to bed myself.

So we FINALLY got on the road on Thursday morning with printed out directions (with an address!!!) to the condo and a bag full of cash. Felt pretty pimp, let me tell you. I don’t normally run with 100 dollar bills on my person, so it was a small taste of the good life. The drive out was as good as a drive through western Nebraska can be. Flat. With more flat, and sloping into flat.

At some point during the drive, we received confirmation from the guys that in fact, the trailer had been picked up and they had hit the road. At like, 3 PM. We left at 10 AM. Yeah, do the math, arrival time equals suckage for those boys. So the big, bad elephant in the room was conquered. We had a trailer and it was on its way.

So while they were getting their trip started, we were wrapping ours up. Got into Keystone and headed to our condo, which we **thought** was going to be a 3 bedroom condo for 6 people. Turns out the one that we had directions to slept 6 (and I think that was an aggressive estimate) but was a one bedroom with one bathroom. Let me repeat, 2 married couples and two 6ft plus guys in tow, and we had 1) queen size bed, 1) full size futon and 1) fold out couch.

We looked at each other and tried really hard to fake it “well, its cozy”. Uh yeah, and so is the pseudo-Mork from Ork pods that you ride up the St. Louis Arch in, but I don’t recommend 6 full grown adults in there. A few phone calls, one email later, and viola’ we had plan B. The ACTUAL 3 bedroom condo that we were expecting. And this is when the fun really started. So here we are, 3 incredibly fun peeps in Keystone without any of our collective 5 kids…. Its drink time folks. And we found them. We found them in spades thanks to the director of the festival who we found in one of the like, 4 bars in town, tending bar to a chorus of “shots, shots, shots, shots” – so yeah. We did some shots.

 Note to self, I am not 21 anymore. Hell, I am not 30 anymore. Momma is getting too old for that nonsense. But a few round of shots and beers later, it was time to go home. Keep in mind, boys still on the road. We were supposed to wait up for them. Please see previous note on the alcohol consumption. So good old dear Tim says, I will stay up. Ding, Ding…sold to the highest bidder. Off to bed I went. You could possibly offer up; off  to pass out I went, but details. And I was quite happy sleeping it off, until I was woken up at some point by Joe walking into the room and saying “I’m not very happy with you right now”. Huh, what? Turns out that when they got into town, they called Tim to let them into the condo. Small detail, he grabbed the wrong key when he went to let them in and locked all 4 of them out. At 3 AM. And normally, I keep my phone by the bed, but not that night. So when I came to the following morning, I had the following:

18 missed calls from Joe

3 text messages from Joe – sample: “Answrr the god damn phone” (typo deliberate)

And 3 voice mails that just don’t bear repeating.

Ooops. So we were off to a good start.

So how does one bounce back from a late night/early morning of lack of access?? With a oven on your brand-spankin’ new trailer that doesn’t work.

D’oh.

Yeah, we (that is the royal we) had hauled that mother 750 miles, through mountains in all hours of the night to its final resting spot (moved 3 times) in the courtyard of the River Run Resort (say that 3x fast) in Keystone and the MF’er didn’t work. Thus commenced a flurry of theories, phone calls, shrugged shoulders and a general sense of WTF? I won’t bore you with all the details, but we worked it out – a few Target runs, 12 dozen phone calls, Tony having a heart attack, stroke and aneurysm all at the same time,  some raging hangovers and one very generous local restaurant later, we had a big ass gas grill. And it worked. Thanks god. Not sure what we would have done.

OOOOHHH BACON!!

Our offerings for this foray into all this porcine, The Elvis and the 6º of Kevin Bacon. And they were dee-lish. The Kevin Bacon was just that… Bacon. In 6 different ways. With onions and cheese.

Although I am not sure all of our fellow foodies got the entire intent of the festival. One other pizza joint there was offering slices of Pepperoni and Bacon. Really?!?! You think long and hard on that one Gordon Ramsey? It obviously it wasn’t Gordon Ramsey, but had he been there, I believe he would have unleashed a well-accented, profanity laced tirade about their lack of creativity and how his 6 year old could come up with something more inventive than bacon and pepperoni.

I had one guest ask me if we had any vegetarian pizza. Listen here my Colorado hippie, you clearly smoked too much weed if you sincerely thought that at a BACON FESTIVAL we would offer a vegetarian offering. May I suggest you hit the Oxygen Bar across the street to clear your cannabis-addled brain and start over. No, we didn’t have a vegetarian option. But we had a heck of a good time. And we won the first place award in the savory category, so we now have a title to defend.

I will say that some of our party struggled a little with the altitude. Yes, the air is thinner, the sun shinier, and if you are out of shape, you are going to notice. It was gorgeous though. The last night found us with a few cocktails and my husband discussing with our waitress the locations of bears in the neighborhood as he wanted to wrestle one. And erect a statue of him beating down said bear in the main courtyard of the resort. He even tried calling for the bear as we walked from bar to bar. It was a sight. And luckily for all of us, and most of the EMT professionals in the area, we did NOT find said bear.

And then, before it was even really started, it was done. And we were packing up to go home. Minus one small detour through parts of Eastern Colorado and its effervescent feed lots, it was an uneventful trip. And then there were those darn spurs. Somewhere in the aforementioned smelly Eastern part of Colorado we stopped at a Mickey D’s for lunch. As we are sitting there eating, I hear this odd, jangling sound behind us. In had walked a gang of cowboys… all rocking spurs. Not sure if those were what separated them from the other cowboy gangs in town, but they were hard to miss. Joe looked longingly at said spurs, but wisely chose to not find himself hog-tied in the parking lot and not jump them for said footwear. But I mean come on, it wasn’t a saloon, high-noon or anything else sufficiently cowboy cliché. It was McDonalds’ for petes sake. I mean, I spent a few years in Kansas and can honestly say I never saw anyone rocking spurs. But hey, that‘s just me.

So that kids, in a nutshell, is our great trip West. I think its fair to say that we learned a lot. When in the mountains, always bring chap stick and always run the humidifier. Oh, and make sure your oven works before you drive 700 miles for a food festival.

Now Listening: The Blueprint by Jay-z