Girl time = Oxygen.

I couldn't sleep. If I listened I could hear (and feel) my heart beat. It was one of those nights where Joey's body is missing and I can't curl up to him, can't feel his heat, so I toss and turn and have seventy-two thoughts going through my head all at the same time.
Usually after four tortuous hours of this I finally go to dreamland. But not this time. Every time I looked at the clock it was an hour or two later and my mind would not quit. My body was sleeping I think, but my mind wasn't, if that is possible.
Partly it was Joey's absence but mostly it was because I was stressed and excited for the party.
Which went completely and wonderfully fabulous.
I have been planning Jessica's bachelorette party for about a month and let me say right now that thinking ahead-like what you have to do to plan a party-is not my forte (put an accent on that e for me).
But boy did I do it. I bought candles and cake and stuff for dinner and I cleaned my house good, like even the toilets and windows; I picked out just the right music and I cut and pasted and made cute bags. And then the night before I was so stressed about it I didn't go to sleep, like not even for fifteen minutes.
Even the whole day up to it (it was at four) I was going going going. Lighting this, scrubbing that, frosting the cake, rearranging my fridge so that the cake would fit in it and then Finally-taking Ethan to the babysitters and then rushing home and jumping in the shower at three thirty.
I pictured Kelly ringing the doorbell and me answering it in my bra and panties.
But I was dressed when that doorbell rang, everything but my shoes, but it was cold and the slippers were more practical anyway.
But the best part, the best part, was when four hours had passed and I had hardly noticed because all us girls just talked and talked and talked. And talked (you know how it goes).
Just like the old days when I used to hang out with friends. You don't realize what a luxury that is until you go some years without it. And then it feels like fresh air, like when I got hooked up to to the oxygen machine when I thought I was dying giving birth to Ethan. Yes, it is just like that.