The Adventures of Lola and Beer Mom

Last night I went on an adventure to get some new turtles for the garden.  I drug along my friend Beer Mom. By drug along I begged and stalked her so she would come with me.   I could call her Hot Legs or Garage, but Beer Mom just sounds more fun.   I call her Beer Mom because she offered me one at her pool once last summer when she us over to swim.   I didn’t know her very well then and I wanted her to like me.  Our kids are in the same school and they play together a lot. Her daughter and son are friends with MiniMe and The Destroyer. I’m going to keep running into her and I’d rather get to know and hopefully like her than not. It’s kind of like a blind friend date, you don’t know how crazy she is going to be and/or how crazy she is going to think you are.  I saw she was  enjoying a cold adult beverage on a hot day on a weekend and I thought…yep, she’s cool.  We’ve been getting to know each other ever since.  Her son is a lot like my son, so we were destined to be friends, if only because we can each handle both of them for multiple hours on end while the girls entertain themselves.  We often trade-off the sets of kids on the weekends so they will entertain each other. I had her family in mind to add to our yearly Chateau trip over Memorial Day weekend, so I invited her my Birthday Party.  I haven’t written about that wonderful night yet, but it was an adventure.  I seem to have a lot of adventures.  Adventures make for great laughs.  Last  night was no exception.

Last night I drug Beer Mom to the Preview Party for Orchard in Bloom.  This all started back at the Flower and patio show when  she and I went with the girls.  I bought some wrought iron haystack planters for the front of my house from Gregg’s Antiques.  Gregg’s is in Cincy and he sold out of the fleur de lis hose reel holder I wanted.  He told me he would be at Orchard In Bloom and if I called  the week before he would put whatever I needed on the truck for me.  So of course I asked him about turtles and he said that he in fact, did have some and that he would bring them.  I really like turtles because a- I just do and b- I am a Delta Zeta.  I have a turtle tattoo. I am pretty specific about my turtle collecting though and so far I have mostly lucked out in that very few people buy them for me and the ones that do know what they are doing.   I recently started acquiring turtles for the garden.  They can’t be trashy or super cheesy, and I try to only get one of each kind to naturally limit myself.  They have some very cute rock and iron turtles but I just got one from another vendor at Flower and Patio and I denied myself.  See, I can talk myself out of stuff.   I also collect turtle window catchers so if you ever see one of those snap a pic and shoot it to me with where and how much.  I could use a few more of those and they are hard to find!  So anyway, back to Orchard in Bloom. It’s this weekend starting this morning at 9 am through Sunday. It’s a garden and shopping  charity fund raiser. It at Holiday Park and tied to The Orchard School.   I really enjoy Orchard In Bloom but I haven’t been since I did a Master Gardener shift one year, mostly for the free entry. However, this is my Anniversary Weekend and we have several other things on the books.  There isn’t time for a family trip so Mommy can buy turtles from her favorite metal guy. I am online trying to figure out my weekend when I go to the website and what is this?  The Orchard in Bloom Preview Party. Thursday night from 6-8:30, alcohol, food, bands, shopping. $45 a person.   It’s like Tuesday when I start trying to put it together. I  love parties like this, I have to go get turtles anyway, why not just do this on Thursday night and kill too birds with one stone.  Babu would rather pound his balls with a tack hammer than go and we have an Anniversary date this weekend so he isn’t the least bit obligated to take one for the team.  Plus we’d have to get a sitter on a week night and that would be two sitters in 3 days.  I must find a friend to go.  I start with Facebook,  then I start texting, then I start begging.  I beg Beer Mom to go and it will be my treat as my turtle carrier.  She was my planter carrier so I probably owe her anyway.  She agrees and I am thrilled. So in order to prepare for this event I plan and prepare:

• I call the school and verify I can buy preparty tickets at the door
• I look on the website and it says park at the  church and a shuttle will start running at 5;45
• There is a package pick-up site so we don’t have to carry our purchases back to the car
• Beer Mom and I discuss wardrobe, it is coldish and we decide on jeans. I know this event will have plenty of  dressed up ladies, but it is a garden party with shopping in tents. My kids don’t go to this school so I’ll just wear my Lola chucks thanks.  I’m dressy but casual on top.
• I have the van so we can bring things home. I will not go off on the tangent about my rain barrel pick up adventure in the morning because Babu left me a van with .10-.25 gallon of gas.
• I will pick her up at 5;30.

Here is how the night really went:

I pick her up roughly 5:45. Traffic isn’t bad and we go to the church and see signs. We park and get out, go over to a tent where people are getting on a bus. The people are kind of dressed up.  We blow it off. We go stand in a tent and more people start to come up. They are all very nicely dressed, even the younger ladies.  Lots of dresses, heels, evening bags.  Now I am starting to freak out.  Beer Mom looks nicer than me but I’m starting to regret the jeans and chucks.  As the bus is pulling up again an older lady asks if there is an event at Orchard tonight.   As it turns out the St. Margaret’s Guild Decorator Show House event was also last night and all of these people are going there.  I am so relieved.   There happens to be a big sign that points this out on the other side of the tent. We don’t notice this until after we a- ask the cop b-stand in another tent a few yards away and direct all the beautiful people in beautiful clothes and cars to the other tent fro like 10 minutes c- get back in the van and drive all around the church, then drive into the parking lot the correct direction and see the sign. Finally we decide to get in the van, and head to the park. We get there and people are parking on the streets and walking, a big school bus is running from the SCHOOL, as a shuttle. We try to park in the park, then to get out of the park, including almost driving into the show itself and turning around in the grass. We drive into the neighborhood, walk about a half mile or more to the package pick up entrance and excited by the fact that we finally made it. As we are walking into the back entrance, a nicely dressed older lady is parking under a tree, and walking right into the event after talking to the cop. She directs us to the ticket booth and I take out my card to pay.  She doesn’t take cards back here and she starts to tell me we will have to walk all the way around to the front.  I must have sounded really tired in my questions about exactly how to get there, because the nice older lady offered to walk us through to the front.  SCORE! Things are turning around.  She is carrying some kind of files and she is walking us through people are all taking notice.  Somehow we got help from the HBIC, Sweet.  Turns out her ribbon said Main Sponsor on it.  The other great news about walking through from the back to the front is locating  the turtle booth!  Plenty of people have jeans on and we are by far not the least dressed. Next year I will posh it up a bit, but that might still include chucks or coach wellies.  So we make it, finally to the main entrance.  It’s now at least an hour into the event.  When she hands me the slip to sign she tells me it is only $24.  I’m shocked because I am expecting it to be $90  and I start to ask questions to make sure we are paying to back inside where we just came from. And that we don’t need anything special to go in.  Nope. So off we go.  Not sure why we got $90 of event for $24 but I’ll take it!

We proceed to have a fabulous night.  The wine is free and the food is 3 tents of tapas from local restaurants.  We get all our goodies from Gregg’s,  Beer Mom finds a window frame for $10, we make friends at the port-o-potties, we have yummy amazing things.  It was a bit cold and if I go next year I want to get there at 6  when it starts.  Then we make the long almost dark walk back to the van and convince the police man that we need to be able to drive in for package pick up and guess what?  There is NO ONE at package pick up!  We drive back to the back entrance and guess who saves our tooshies again? HBIC!  She is heading out and tells us we can just park there and go in and get our things. She is laughing with us again and calling us girls.  Beer Mom runs to get her window, I have the metal guy load the back of the van with me and then we head home.  The turtles have not found their new spots yet.