The last time I wrote a blog entry – Monday the 8th – I had a few spare minutes before a long-time friend of my family came by to visit. Her name is Elise, I’ve known her since I was about two years old. She and my Mother used to go out all the time back when we lived in Northern Virginia for the first time. Elise has always been one of those women who will always, always look young. She’s only 4’11”, has really curly brown hair, and is just plain cute. She’s almost the same age as my mother, and yet everyone automatically assumes that she’s my Mother’s daughter.

Elise was coming to visit on Monday to compare hair. My Mother had told her about my adventures having my hair cut by Elie, and Elise wanted to know what this amazing new curl-o-riffic hair cut looked like. She stopped by the house around 1:10pm, about five minutes after I finished up the short blog and signed off. We talked about the trials of having naturally curly hair; the frizz, the tangles, the unruly nature of it all. But just as she was about to leave, it came up that neither of us had eaten lunch yet. She asked what I was planning to do with the rest of my afternoon, and I said that since I had the whole day to myself, I was thinking about treating myself to some lunch. I decided I deserved it, after that not so pleasant morning being stuck with a bunch of needles by the acupuncturist. She exclaimed, “I haven’t had lunch either! Let’s go together!”

So out the door we went to Sweetwater – I was on a mission to get some post-bad-day root beer, and Elise was game to try it. The meal was fantastic – to die for – and everything was perfect. We had a great conversation, all while I kept having private flashbacks of the days when I was still a toddler, ordering my own lunch for the first time, while Elise and my Mom giggled at my tenacity. Elise’s daughter, Holly, would have been sitting in her high chair, as she was a bit younger than I. But me, I was a big girl, I could sit on my booster seat and tell the waiter exactly what I wanted, and how I wanted it prepared. It’s interesting to be 19 now, sitting down at a nice restaurant with Elise again, and contemplating the massive changes that have come about in the past 16 years. For one thing, I don’t need that booster seat anymore. 🙂

After we ate, Elise had to run off to go pick up Holly from high school – I feel old, I remember when she was still really teeny – and I had to go back home to… do whatever. I had chores to do, sure, so I’d keep myself occupied with that. The next pressing appointment of my day was at 7:30 that evening – a church activity for the young single adults (myself included.) A volleyball game was scheduled to be that night’s activity, so I wasn’t too keen. But I decided to go anyway, participate in the social part of the night, and then go off by myself to take care of redecorating a few bulletin boards in the church. Well, I got bored of being lonely, and the redecorating didn’t go as I had planned. I was miffed at the purple fabric I was messing about with, so I ditched it in favor of talking to cute boys. Seriously, wouldn’t you? Well, if you’re a girl you would. Or whatever. You know what I mean!

Talking to cute boys was both fun and entertaining, in more ways than I expected. I ended up talking to a guy, a nice new Texan, and a young man who’s a waiter at Olive Garden. I knew I’d seen him somewhere before! Who would have guessed he’s a Mormon? (Okay, I would, since when I was at Olive Garden last he came up to my Dad and thanked him for teaching a religion class a few months back. That made it pretty obvious he’s one of the lot.) The waiter guy came up to me as I was talking to The Texan and told me that he had seen me walk into Sweetwater Tavern earlier that day. (No, he wasn’t stalking me – Olive Garden is right next to Sweetwater.) We started mutually obsessing over the root beer, the ozzie rolls, and the oh so fantastic chocolate waffles. That’s when The Texan pipes up, “We should go! This place sounds great!”

So we did. At 10:15 at night, The Texan and I headed out to my car on a mission to obtain root beer. That’s when the other guy walked up to the car and said, “So where we goin?” He joined the party and off we went. There was only one hitch in the plan – the restaurant closed at 10:00pm. Whoops. But never fear, the bar was still open! How funny is that? Three Mormons, fresh from a church activity, head to a bar. Sounds like to the opening of some bad religious joke. Don’t worry, I won’t go there.

The three of us went up to the bar and set to work deciding what we wanted. The Texan and I got root beer, but for some unknown reason the other guy abstained and opted instead for a Shirley Temple. Ultimately – since the kitchen was mostly closed and wouldn’t serve us entrees – we decided to split some Tex Mex Eggrolls and a Chocolate Waffle three ways. That was peachy with me; I was still rather full from lunch.

That’s when the other bartender came over. Guess who it was. That’s right! Bartender Dave! He did a double take when he realized who I was, then he said, “Wow, you look different flanked by two men!” He winked at me and went off to get us some root beers. The Texan, the other guy, and I had a nice time talking, eating, drinking, and generally laughing at the sheer strangeness of the evening. They promptly informed me that I would need to come to church armed on Sunday, because surely the other women would kill me for going out with two men at once. Personally, I think this is a highly efficient way of getting to know the men – two at once really speeds things up in the dating world. Of course, that’s only if that night can be considered a date. Seriously, I’m really daft about this sort of thing. Is that hanging out? Is that a date? Argh, brain meltdown! I can’t handle this, romantic crap needs to be painfully obvious before I’ll pick up on it, otherwise I always just think, “Oh, isn’t that man being nice?” And that’s that. None of that girly, “Is he flirting with me, or isn’t he? Oh, I wish he would, he’s dreamy.” Nope, none of that, just, “That was nice of him. Hey, look, I’ve got root beer!”

I don’t really think that night counted as a date. In my own skewed train of thought, I figure that’s more of One Of The Guys nights. Thank goodness I kept the belching in check. 🙂

Belching or no belching, Monday night was seriously a lot of fun, hanging around at the bar, drinking ourselves silly on root beer, and watching the end of a college basketball game. Finally around 11:00pm, I hugged The Texan and Rick good night and went home to explain to my Mother where I’d been and why the church activity kept me out so late. 😀

The next day I slept until I woke up, which happened to be around noon. Man I love being my own boss. Now if only I could get paid for this, then I’d be in heaven. But anyway, back to the marathon. Still in my pajamas, I hopped online and saw that Stephen was online as well. I sent him an IM saying, “Howdy!” and we got to talking. Eventually we decided we were both hungry, and that’s when he said, “I’ve got a hankering for Sweetwater. ;)” That was all I needed to get me to hop in the car (thankfully, I wasn’t in my pajamas – I had enough patience to get dressed at least), drive twenty minutes to a Sweetwater closer to Stephen’s office, and chug down my third straight batch of root beer. It was great seeing Stephen again – he got his hair cut recently and, I have to say, the transformation was absolutely astounding. Steve, you should always keep your hair like that. You looked great, seriously.

I ate another lovely cheeseburger at Sweetwater, made myself sick on ozzies, and drank a few more root beers. Then, Stephen splurged and got a chocolate waffle for us to share. All of that meant I certainly wasn’t hungry for dinner for a very, very long time.

The best part about the outing, though, was when Stephen and I decided that we needed to form The American Root Beer Farmers Association. I could create a website, write reviews of various brews, promote my favorite root beers, and maybe even get free root beer for life. If there’s something as trivial as the American Dairy Farmers Association, surely I could start one for root beer too! Let the triviality begin!

I drove home from Centreville, beaming from the dedication and training I had exuded in preparation for what was soon becoming the First Annual Root Beer Farmers Association Root Beer Marathon. I was a champion, I knew it! 🙂

That afternoon I cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the bathrooms, even swiffered the floor, and all with a smile on my face. Seriously, with root beer, anything in life is possible, even making me enjoy cleaning. Imagine what I could accomplish if I could drink root beer while driving a Z4… I’d melt from the sheer happiness!

But I digress. After cleaning, I had thirty minutes to kill before I was scheduled to drive back up to the church building in order to meet The Texan and that new friend of mine who took me to see Hidalgo. I need to come up with a nickname for him, or just ask him if I can use his name on my blog. Anyway, I met up with them at the church in order to lead them back to my house where we were planning on hanging around, watching movies, and generally having a good time. The church was just a convenient meeting place, since we all knew where that was, and it happens to be only three minutes from my house.

So, we watched ‘Psycho’, then ‘Eight Legged Freaks’, then an episode of ‘Malcolm in the Middle’, all the while I was being way too nice and giving the guys back massages. I realize this now, of course, that I was being too nice, but I didn’t notice this at the time. Why? Because I used to give my brothers back massages, especially Tim, so I don’t think anything of it. I was just one of the guys, minus a few bits, having some fun and laughing at stupid gigantic spiders attacking a small town in Arizona. Oh well, at least it made the guys happy.

Around 9:00pm, though, I got kind of hungry. While I was reheating my leftovers from that afternoon’s lunch with Steve, there was a knock at the door. The missionaries showed up! Hurrah, more guys! They came by to drop something off for my Mom, but we ended up planning a trip to Sweetwater for the following day. Yes! I was accomplishing my mission in true style! Five straight meals, nothing but Sweetwater! And it was entirely by happenstance! Life was good.

I ate my reheated cheeseburger in expectant bliss, knowing that the following day my brother and I would meet up with four missionaries for the grand finale in the first annual root beer marathon. After the other guys left around midnight, I went to sleep to dream pretty root beer dreams.

This morning, at the crack of 11:30, I woke up and got ready for the day. Steve (my brother, not the other Stephen) and I drove over to Sweetwater and met up with the four missionaries. Let me tell you, even though lunch was fabulous today, I think I