Here’s fair warning: A Girls Night Out is imminent. You might consider attending GTWoman’s Ultimate Girls Night Out, but mostly we recommend that you attend any GNO you can get your hands on and watch the magic unfold.
While there’s plenty of magic that can happen at a GNO, we mostly applaud the magic that happens outside the official agenda, the kind you can’t get unless you commit to something different than your usual Friday night.
Case in point:
The Commitment: Kids, work, family, men. All fair game for your Friday night attention. But there’s something entirely decadent about marking a big fat circle on your calendar and declaring out loud that you will be leaving the house, leaving your man, leaving work on a certain night… that just happens to be the same night your girlfriends are making the same noises about.
When a slight hesitation travels through the house, you’ll sense your family’s surprise that Momma is making a solo plan. When this happens, you will feel a shock of your own. It’s then that you realize how long it’s been since you’ve taken a night to yourself. They’ve forgotten you do such things, that you own heels, that you wear things in those holes in your ears.
Your response: You send out roughly 100 emails imploring your friends to break out with you. And you spend the next hour looking over your shoulder at your family, announcing each alliance you make: “Wendy can make it!” “Kelly is coming too!”
While you may appear party-like and carefree during this phase, inside you are saying, So There.
The Exit: This same feeling comes into play when you make your exit from the house.
The children are hunting for a missing Lego arm, your husband is digging through the fridge for something (anything) to feed the kids and you, you are getting ready, painting your nails, curling your hair and, in general, not helping them. There’s a small tornado building in the kitchen.
Feels delicious, doesn’t it? See, this is more of the magic that you don’t get at the event itself. This is thrown in free with the price of the ticket.
The Caravan: No way are you allowed to drive to a Girls Night Out by yourself. The ride to and from includes more of the free magic. (Being picked up by a friend makes sure you can, if the mood so finds you, indulge in a little grape-induced magic as well.)
But it’s in the car (minivan, more likely) that you begin the bonding that makes a GNO worth it, at any cost. You will see straightaway that the other mom’s van is a total pit, just like yours. You will be seated, graciously, on a towel and offered an apology for the stickers marring your view out the back window.
It feels wrong to be sitting where the children belong. But it will give you all the feeling of sneaking out on a covert mission. It used to be in your dad’s Pontiac. Now, it’s the kids’ minivan. And you will do all the things they would appreciate you NOT doing in their vehicle. Starting with, as tradition holds, laying a little rubber in each friend’s driveway as you leave.
The Parking Lot: This is the after-party of all girls nights out. You’ve left the place of excitement, done some foolish things, laughed at and with each other and probably the table next to you, possibly embarrassed yourself, and now, in the parking lot, comes the rehash.
This is often a careful categorization of who did what, why, with whom and how much documentation was achieved. No doubt, some of the best GNO magic comes by way of Facebook photos.
So, ladies, here’s hoping you come on out for a Girls Night Out and share a little magic with us!