Moogie's Epiphany (or, "The Care and Feeding of Bachelorettes")

This time last week, I was herding and feeding a gaggle of Bachelorettes -- 14 on Friday evening.  We had a nice, big house in the outskirts of Hot Springs that Elder Daughter found online.  It had a charming garden and yard, and the weather was perfect for sitting and visiting.  And pulling telephone April Fools pranks on the significant others left behind, but that's another story.  Let's just say that the left-behinders were perfectly willing -- after some mighty-fine displays of acting, thank you very much -- to believe that their bachelorettes had been incarcerated in Garland County.  I'm not quite sure about the significance of that willingness.  Perhaps I don't want to know.

Saturday was our Girls' Outing to Oaklawn Park, Arkansas' thoroughbred horse track.  Once again the weather was perfect, albeit a bit on the warm side until the sun dipped a bit so that the outdoor grandstands were shaded.  Younger Daughter bride-to-be was not very happy at being "coerced" into wearing the "I'm the Bride" veil and tiara in public.  At least she wasn't very happy about it until strangers started buying drinks for her, and then it was pretty cool.  She wound up giving the tiara to a cute little girl who had been stealing shy glimpses of that tiara all afternoon.  Younger Daughter can be a really soft touch.

(The little girl was about 5, and was there with her grandmother; there were toddlers and strollers everywhere.  I'm still not sure I like that they changed the rules and now let little ones into the track.  Plus, it used to be kind of a rite of passage when you turned 16 and could go to the track.  Of course, you still couldn't bet until you turned 18, but you could get in!)

Fortunately for the Designated Driver (that would be Moogie), we decided to order pizza and stay in Saturday night, too.  Finding a pizza place that delivered to the location of the charming house and garden proved to be a bit of a challenge, but we had pizza by 9:30, and had devoured all but 2 slices of 3 large pizzas by 9:45 or so.  Then we played some goofy board games and turned in by midnight.  Most of us weren't as young as we used to be, apparently, at heart or otherwise.

I kind of dreaded the early pack-and-depart on Sunday morning, but we had to get the Texan Bachelorette to the airport in Little Rock by 10:30, so up we rose.  And I begrudgingly prepared to do it all myself, because, of course, I had known several of these young women since they were sloppy, self-centered teenage girls and I knew how they operated.

And that's when it happened.

The 6 remaining Bachelorettes pitched in like a shark frenzy, and we had everything packed, cleaned up, and trash-sacked in a flash. 

They have really grown up.  They pitched in to help me like they would do for their friends.  And so, I discovered that it's a wondrous thing indeed to have the friendship of one's own adult daughters.

Such a delightful epiphany.  A great way to end a lovely weekend.  Here are a few pics.

Bachelorette Parties are not complete without a "little" chocolate.

It's good for the Designated Driver to be able to cash a small ticket on a horse that bore her maiden name in the only race she bet.  There's "Clayton's Luck" heading down the stretch -- I bet him across the board and he placed!

It's good when the Bride-to-Be can cash a nice ticket -- and when her friend can cash a $10-to-Win ticket on a horse that went off at 30-1 odds!  $323.00 is a goodly chunk of change for a starving social worker.

It's good when the pedicure that the Designated Driver treated herself to after changing a tire lasts nicely and looks good next to ice cream.  And beer.

It's good to be with such a delightful group of cute, smart young women on a beautiful Saturday in the Spring.

And, it's good to have daughters. 

Very good.