T Minus 1 or A Toast to Ma Gurlz

There is nothing like doing absolutely everything at the last possible minute before you leave the country for an extended period of time, I say. Really though, why go about getting all your ducks in a row in a timely, efficient, relaxed manner when you can flap around like headless poultry and generally make an even bigger hot mess of your affairs in the preceding 24 hours before your departure? I've never been a fan of preparedness. I think it is entirely overrated and boring. (Insert subtext: I really admire organized and prepared people, and wish I were more like them, but as I am decidedly not I must belittle them to make myself feel better.)

But truly, I'm such a colossal schmoe. I have not packed. I still have a ton of stuff to do, bills to pay, granite surfaces to clean, laundry to wash, garbage to take out. I didn't train as much as I should have (barely a lick if the truth be told), and I ate like a horse with a Guiness Book of Records sized tape worm these last few days. Why is my picture perpetually in the DSM for Mental Disorders under "pathological procrastination?" (My ex would argue it is in there under some other disorders as well, but that's for another blog).

But household drama aside. I am ready. Oh am I ready. Bring on the red wine and olive oil and seafood and spiritual renewal. But before I go, there is one thing I definitely do not want to leave without doing.

Tonight my two best gurlz, Angela and Rachel, and I are going to dinner for a farewell inebriation celebration before I disappear into "a Spanish backwater" as Rachel calls it. I am going to miss them. They are some of the rocks that helped sustain me over the past year and a half, and part of me wishes I could pack them in one of the many handy zipper pockets on my ridiculously expensive backpack and take them along, although I doubt they would find that particularly comfortable.

Rachel (who is light years younger than me age-wise and light years older than me maturity-wise) straight up is Grace Kelly in Rear Window. She can order you dinner at home from '21' while you convalesce from your broken leg, entertain with waaaayyy more panache than Martha Stewart, help solve a murder and do it all wearing 2 inch pumps and exactly the right vintage dress. Angela is the St. Bernard of friends. She once went with me while I had a cosmetic procedure (which I am sure she thought was just plain inexplicably unnecessary on my part - my vanity did get the better of me that time, what can I say), and she drove me home when I was a percocet infused hot mess hallucinating that there was a fruit basket in the front seat with us (I actually picked up a non-existent blood orange and marvelled at it's sphericalness). Oh sure I get made fun of for it, but with lots of love.

Together these two unsung heros have been making the world a better place by taking my classless ass under their wings and with their careful tutelage and guidance I am slowly being weened from my preference for cutesy, fruity vodka cocktails and am being exposed the many possibilities contained in a bottle of gin. It's like Two Auntie Mames meet Cro-Magnon woman. Of the three of us, I am the one that supplies the fart jokes.

Sadly, I will be without their company and humor on this trip, and I am sure you can derive from my descriptions above just how useful both of them would be on this trek in the wilds of northern Spain. In the event of a sudden downpour, Rachel would build an impromptu shelter from matches and dental floss and have us sipping Spanish wine from the countryside vineyard we just passed and noshing on fresh olives from an obliging grove while we wait for the storm to pass. In the event of a sprained ankle or gastro-intestinal emergency, Angela would carry me, piggy-back style, to the nearest medico or excusado as the need may be and wait with me to make sure all was well (during the percocet incident I had to pee but I forgot how. Angela was there to help with the water faucet. That, people, is a friend).

But I know their little grasshopper will not be entirely without them on this trip. I am sure I will encounter many WWRD and WWAD moments as I trek my way across the vast landscape of Iberia and my own mind and heart. And they will be in there too when it gets tough, beckoning me onward and homeward with a gleaming gin gimlet and a warm fire waiting.

Here's to you, ladies.