drinking games ain't what they used to be

I was indulging my guilty habit the other night...watching Teen Mom. And Scott, who suffers through this with much more grace and patience than I get through World Poker Tour re-runs, innocently asks me if Farrah's mom is an alcoholic or if she's addicted to prescription medications or something. So I obligingly Google the question and...bam! up pops "Teen Mom Drinking Game." Noooooo....really?! Does such a thing exist?! Yes, yes it does.

Two comments. Maybe three.

One. You could totally get hammered if you followed these rules during an evening, but only if you add in the ones suggested in the comments. Just the ones about when Tyler (who I love!) has his hat tilted and wears clothes too big would have me passed out on the living room floor about 52 minutes into an episode. I think I will add one to drink every time Farrah whines about being broke and then promptly goes on a trip, to the spa or has plastic surgery.

Two. It's kind of sad that teens, or whoever, made up a drinking game about the teen moms. But I think we all get the underlying tragedy of this game so let's just focus on the funny, ironic part shall we?

Three. Back in my day (insert old-people joke here), we knew how to do drinking games for TV shows! I will never forget the first time we got a bunch of girls together and tried to do the Friends drinking game. It was not pretty. Especially because we were drinking some kind of sugary sex on the beach crap and kamikazes on the rocks (kind of cute and sad, right? who does drinking games with THAT?!). So we start playing, rules printed out and set conveniently on the coffee table. Why? Oh yeah, there are FOUR levels of drinking: sips, gulps, chugs and drink everything in sight. And the attention to detail is just, well...you really have to try it to appreciate it. You'd miss 3 things while you were trying to find out if you were supposed to be drinking for 1 thing and then have to catch up while someone else made refills and you kept their "tab" open for missed drinks. Crazy. It was like 30-minutes of power drinking where we were just praying for commercials. Maybe that's why we only did it that one time. Here's a little sample:

Take a sip if...

• Rachel demonstrates her lack of understanding of the real world
• Monica anal-retentively cleans or straightens up (2 sips if it's not even her stuff)
• Phoebe says a "Phoebism"
• Ross gazes longingly at Rachel (2 sips if she notices)
• Joey doesn't understand something that should be perfectly obvious (2 sips if you didn't get it either)
• Chandler makes a deadpan smartass response to a stupid comment (2 sips if you predicted it ahead of time)
• any main character makes a sweeping generalization about the opposite sex
• anyone mentions or sees Ugly Naked Guy (2 sips if you're ugly, naked, or a guy)
• any of the main characters drinks any coffee product
• the exterior of Central Perk is shown
• the interior of Chandler's and Joey's apartment is shown
• any of the main characters' parents show up
• any of the main characters are shown at work (Rachel only counts if she is wearing her apron or holding a pot of coffee)
• any of the main characters hug (2 sips for a hug involving more than two main characters, or an exaggerated hug between any of the guys)
• any of the main characters asks "What's wrong?" (2 sips if followed by "Nothing, it's just that...")

So, bring it, kids! If you're going to do a drinking game, maybe do one about fake people whose lives aren't so tragic that it kind of makes you want to drink anyway, and do it good. Gotta go. We have a bunch of Friends re-runs on Tivo and kamikaze fixins in the bar...

dirty girls

Dirty Girls.

 Have you ever hear of the Dirty Dash, a 6 mile mountainous trek that promises the following:

Have you ever said to yourself, “Marathons are too easy, and Triathlons are for sissies?”
We haven’t either…those races are really hard. Think about it…the first person to run a marathon actually died.  HE DIED!...and he probably didn’t even have fun along the way!

Well, welcome to a new kind of race: THE DIRTY DASH.  This race that puts all other races to shame.  The Dirty Dash is a mud run obstacle course where a military boot camp meets your inner five-year-old’s fantasy and subsequently converts boy to man and then man to swine. 

You’ll need endurance to trudge up mountains of sludge, courage to overcome uncompromising obstacles, a complete lack of shame to wallow in pits of mud and a smile to show through at the end!

Dirt? Mud? Sludge? Sign us up! Cuz that what's we do.

Obstacle #1...balance beam, over a mud pit. Seriously.

Greased up with dish soap before the big slide. Sweet!!!

Army wall!

Natalie after rocking the big slide!

Apparently hands like to make mud prints on butts.
There's no other explanation.

Shut up. We walked some.

No. These are not Jell-O shots. Everyone was
hoping but they were just the straight stuff.

Before we got "dirty." Literally NO idea what we were getting into.

Pig Tattoos? Perfect. Almost better than a medal.

We were the first wave of the day so we had a little less mud and guts. The reason we know this is that Natalie ran the Dirty Dash again the next weekend with her company team from Adobe, which includes my brother Marc. Dressed as Angry Birds. (video, anyone? You really should watch this!) And they were dirty dirty. Like REALLY dirty. We kind of had to try to get dirty. Which we did.

Mile One. With all the hills, it felt like more. So clean.

Climbing the walls, all military like.

The tire run! I felt like a pro football player!

Climbing hay bales! Some guys were literally jumping them.

Here piggy, piggy!

The rope climb was awesome!

Heading into the swamp. Seriously a half-mile slog through
thigh-high water filled with critters, ivy kind of stuff, and
really stinky mud. Like the kind you don't want your lady bits touching.

The last jump into the mud pit! Photo by 8 year old strangers.

Much needed. Best 4 bucks we ever spent!

The showers weren't quite as warm and relaxing as we'd
imagined. That's a power washer for heaven sake.
But not freezing was well worth it!

happy birthday?

Tagg's baby-mama's birthday was this week. We've called her every year on her birthday and on Christmas and it's always been really sweet and wonderful. So this year we called and Tagg jumped in as soon as she answered and belted out his rendition of Happy Birthday. And it was weird.

We could tell she was a little choked up. Who wasn't?! (other than Tagg who was just quite pleased with his singing skills). So we tried to chat about life and birthdays and stuff and it still seemed really awkward. It felt like she was in a place where she couldn't talk or didn't want to talk and then we started feeling bad. So we hung up the phone, and spent the next hours slash days feeling more bad. And then even more bad...

Did we just completely 100% RUIN her 18th birthday with her friends or her boyfriend by having the baby she gave up for adoption call her for a b-day serenade? My God. How absolutely stupid are we?! That might have been the most tragic, horrible thing ever when we thought it was so super-sweet. Or would it have been worse if we'd called every year for the last couple and then didn't call at all? On a big b-day. Mind-numbing arguments can be made both ways. Trust me. We've been having them.

Definitely one of those moments where you wish there was some kind of handbook for this open adoption stuff. I hope she knows and believes that the call meant that we love her and are always thinking about her, every day but especially on the big days.  The call means that we are so happy that she is doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing on this important birthday - thinking about homecoming and what colleges she's applying to and volleyball and her boyfriend and hanging out with her girlfriends and just being 18. And the call means that the baby she gifted to us is doing and being all of the things she wanted for him, and that he will always be grateful to have her in his life. Hopefully that was the gift. And it wasn't an emotional white elephant.

So happy birthday, beautiful girl!