two curly-headed tumbleweeds blew into town

Because I don't want you to think that I spend all of my time here pining for Gregory and banging my head against the wall while waiting for Gregory's green card, today I'm going to tell you about a night out on the town I had here with my buddy Lil' John. (Btw, Lil' John is not a blog name, it's what I actually call him. He's not John, he's Lil' John, and he will be forever, even when he's like, eighty.)

Lil' John and I have been friends since we were teenagers, I'm a few years older than him (probably why I call him Lil' John) and his brother was my first boyfriend. After I ditched the brother, I practically adopted Lil' John. He was a fixture at my house for years but when our early twenties came, we drifted. Fast forward to a few days after I arrived back in the U.S., and we were on the phone formulating a plan...

Lil' John would come down from Austin one weekend, and we would hit up our little hometown for a night out. While I was content with dinner and a drink and then crashing back at my mother's, Lil' John wasn't having it. He insisted that we stay at the Inn in town so we could ditch our cars and wreak havoc. (FYI: I'm not Lil' John's 'type' if you catch my drift, so Gregory doesn't have a problem with me shacking up with him in a hotel room.)

From the very second Lil' John arrived at my house to pick me up, until the next morning, we laughed. We laughed until our cheeks hurt, and it felt like our guts would bust. I wish I could go into every tiny detail of laughter, but that's impossible of course, so I'll give the evening highlight reel.

The first stop on our night out was the Inn to check in and have a drink at the bar there. A lady sitting a couple of stools down from us looked at Lil' John's long ringlets and asked (somewhat bitchily I must add), "how long does it take you to curl your hair?"
Lil' John's response; "six hours." Cue laughter.

Our next stop was the local wine bar. This place serves glasses of wine from vending machines! Isn't that the greatest thing ever?! You stick a card in it, press a button, and it pours you a glass of wine. It's basically my new mecca. It's also where I discovered one of my favorite new wines, and get this, it's from Mexico! Who knew?!

Deciding that it was best to fill our bellies with something other than wine we went out for dinner; a lovely two hour affair where we sat on a table overlooking the small river that runs through town and chatted. We were just the same as we had always been, except much, much older of course.

After dinner we strolled across the street headed to a local event called, Hot Rod Night (people bring their flashy retro cars, a band plays, and we all hang out drinking beer... it's 100% pure Americana), but on the way, some loud music distracted so we followed it and discovered a rocking little beer garden tucked away behind a restaurant.

We hung out there for a bit harassing the bartender (who is now a buddy of Gregory's and mine) and shouting requests at the band (PLAY FREE BIRD!) before finally making our way down to the hot rods.

Hot Rod night was in full swing! The road was closed off so people could show off their rides and the band was hopping. But there was one thing missing... nobody was dancing. Well that's where we came in. Lil' John starred as Kevin Bacon, our town was that one from Footloose, and by golly, THE WHOLE TOWN WOULD DANCE!

Lil' John hit the dance floor (the dance road anyway) right in the middle of everyone, and started shaking his groove thing while the crowd looked on wondering who the crazy spazz was. I couldn't leave him out there flailing about on his own so I had to join him. And then eventually, one by one, the dancing bug spread and loads of people got up to bop around, including the "how long does it take to curl your hair" lady.

It was quite the evening. I could go on and on, but I'll just say that it was definitely one for the books and we made loads of friends and left quite a few impressions, some unbeknown to us because the next morning as we went for coffee, an older lady smiled at us and said "you two are up awfully early for people who were up so late." We smiled back, nodded our heads, said "yes m'am" (because we're Texas like that) and carried on our way. To this day, we have no idea who that lady was.