March 28, 2024

Boy, was I tired!

I hosted my annual slumber party over the weekend.

Once a year, I get together with four other women I’ve know since we were five young girls. A few of us have been friends since grade school. The other two came along once we made our way to junior high and high school, but no matter ... we’ve all been friends for more than 40 years.

Gosh, when I think of the things we’ve all been through together. Everything from passing notes under our desks in school to burying our parents. The five of us have shared a lot of life with one another.

In our little “clique” there are two school teachers, a laboratory manager at a hospital, another is an abstractor ... and then there’s me.

We take turns hosting our weekend gatherings. This year, however, it sort of ended up in my lap at the last minute for two reasons — my house is centrally located between everyone’s homes and I have a big mouth, offering to take over housing everyone when our original hostess had a conflict arise a few days before our scheduled weekend.

The girls arrived between the hours of 3:30 and 8:30 p.m. Years ago, we would have just been starting our evenings at 8:30 p.m. but now? For most of us, we normally would have been sound asleep before my last guest arrived. However, we did manage to get in several hours of ‘catch-up’ before we called it a night.

In our youth, slumber parties meant sleeping bags on the floor and giggling into the wee hours of the morning. Nowadays, if any of us were to sleep on the floor, there may be no standing upright in the morning.

Fortunately, I’m able to provide a room and bed for each of the girls. With the snoring and the late-night bathroom habits of a group women in their mid-50s, it just works out best to allow everyone their own space.

Saturday morning, as everyone slowly meandered down the stairs toward the coffee pot, I had to laugh. If you’ve ever been a “tween” girl at an over-nighter, you’ll remember running to the kitchen when you first woke up to remove undergarments that may have been stashed in the freezer belonging to the first ones to fall asleep the night before. That’s not so much an issue nowadays.

Once dressed and ready for the day I took them around my stomping grounds — a tour of Prairie City and a visit to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, where they were all excited to see the buffalo 15 feet from my car.

We worked our way over to the new outlet mall in Altoona, followed by a stop at Bigfoot, Bacon and Brew for drinks and lunch. Eventually, we made our way to Des Moines where I took them to my favorite store, At Home. We also went to the Holiday Boutique at the Iowa Events Center.

After what seemed like hours and hours and hours of shopping, we finally made it back to my house at 9 p.m. Now, on a normal Saturday night, I’d have been sound asleep. But that night? I still had company to feed!

We ate dinner around 10 p.m., got in our pajamas and watched a few “chick flicks” before going to bed around 1:30 a.m.

Sunday morning, after coffee and muffins, everyone said their goodbyes and my house was empty again.

The drive home for everyone is between three and five hours. However, I just had to go as far as my the couch where I spent the same amount of time taking a well-deserved nap.

Contact Dana King at dking@shawmedia.com

Dana King

Dana King

Multitasking duties between the Newton News, PCM Explorer and the Jasper County Tribune.