It began normally enough.
I'd made Friday night plans to linger at a long dinner with two friends -- Melissa and Brook -- here in Lake County the night before we ventured into downtown Chicago for the Social Rev Up Brands and Bloggers Summit at the Hard Rock Hotel. I envisioned relaxation, as Melissa and I had just engaged in five days of backyard summer camp with 11 kids seven and younger all week.
But because I no longer had any clothes that fit and were appropriate for anywhere other than the gym we found ourselves at the mall, the mecca of Friday nights in suburbia for teenagers and desperate-for-clothes moms everywhere.
That's where the actual madness of the weekend began -- specifically in a dressing room: I got trapped in a carnivorous dress.
No, really -- the thing wouldn't let me out, and I had to be extracted from it by Brook, who firmly and appropriately directed my panicked self to reach my arms into the air, take a deep breath and stand up straight while she yanked it over it my shoulders.
Needless to say, I settled on a beautiful white flowy dress that held not even a remote chance of trying to devour me.
But it did require us to run through the mall like mad women at five minutes before closing time in order to make it to Victoria's Secret before the gates slammed shut so I could fix an imminent underwear emergency: apparently it's frowned upon for one to wear pink and black flower printed under garments beneath white linen dresses.
While we were breathlessly explaining to the sales associate #underwearER12 as she was shutting the gates, another employee ran up to the front of the store yelling "they stole our underwear!"
My heart began racing thinking that she had misunderstood what we were saying about an underwear emergency, thinking we'd actually five-finger discounted some thongs, but then the security guards made a dash for a group of teenagers who'd just exited the store.
As my pulse began to slow from both the excitement of being almost completely consumed by a woman-eating dress and then the thought of being sprung from jail by my husband after wrongly being accused of shoplifting underwear, Melissa marched us back to the dressing rooms, white-linen-dress-appropriate underwear in hand.
Luckily, the shoplifting excitement didn't deter Melissa from our mission and she generously gave me a strapless-bra-wearing demonstration atop of her clothing in the middle of the dressing room; with her direction and guidance, the underwear emergency was doused.
Somehow, in spite of the adrenaline rush keeping all of us awake, we all made it out the door by 7:10 a.m. the next morning and were swinging through the Starbucks drive through by 7:12 a.m.
But by then we were in the thick of #CoffeeEmergency12, as Melissa's husband had run out of java and was expected to keep the children all day and night and work a midnight shift from home.
So we did what any loving wife and friends of wife would do during such an emergency while trying to remain on time.
We did a drive-by caffeination mission, quite literally heaving a few-pound bag of coffee out the window of our moving car and into the front lawn, completely shocking Melissa's unsuspecting neighbor who was quietly watering his flowers when the coffee bag thunked into the grass.
We did arrive appropriately clothed and caffeinated at the conference despite our potential setbacks, thankfully.
Which is good because we wouldn't have wanted to miss any of the content or the panels or educating me in '80s pop culture by watching St. Elmo's Fire until the wee hours of the morning or the chance to take a thousand different Prince tribute pictures in our hotel room mirrors before leaving the Artist's floor to find coffee and food and then head home bright and early Sunday morning.
And I certainly wouldn't have wanted to miss trading in my standard mom outfit of yoga pants and a tank top to play dress up and don feather earrings and run around with my girlfriends like giggly teenagers for an entire 24 hours.
Because sometimes a mom needs to laugh hysterically at something other than preschooler knock-knock jokes, poop talk and the insanity of living with a bunch of light-saber wielding, plank-walking manic boys that often prompts the *other* kind of hysterical laughter.
You know?
XOXO,
Me
*As you know, I normally don't write Dear Diary esque posts, but I thought it necessary since I spent the weekend drawing out my inner school girl. ;-)
