Chocolate?

So I'm back. From home. I went home. To Chicago. A suburb of Chicago, actually. If we're getting technical. Crystal Lake. Crystal Lake, Illinois. My little cousin, Trisha, is getting married at the end of December. So she thoughtfully arranged it so that most of the pre-wedding festivities would take place the weekend of Thanksgiving so that everyone would be available and home and wouldn't have to make extra trips. Very cool.

My thanksgiving day was lovely, the following day was lovely, as was it later that evening when we had a bachelorette thang for Trish. Just the women in the family got together at my mom's house early on and we did something really awesome: we made a plaster cast of Trisha's breasts! What?! you may ask? But that's what we did. :) It's a long story, but basically my mom knows how to make plaster casts of things - she learned in a class or somethin - and Trisha's always wanted to do it to her bust so we did it as the start of a tradition and a bonding thing for her. She's the first of this generation of our family to get married and we're all very eager to make it super special for her. So we cast the bust and painted the bust and did some tequila shots to make it all a little easier (cuz naked boobs are still naked boobs which can sometimes make people uncomfortable). Then a couple of Trisha's friends joined us at the house for more drinking (the breast part was totally over by this point) and we eventually left to go out for a night on the town.

I don't think I've ever gone out to the bars in my home town when returning home for a holiday. So it was basically hilarious. I'm a little too old to have seen many of my high school friends out, most of the people were several years younger than I am, but my cousins (Trisha is one of four girls) saw lots of people they knew. It was pretty insane. People bought us shots, we ran into my uncle (Trisha's dad) who gave us more cash for drinks and sent us on our way, and we rocked it out until the wee hour of 1am. Ha.

I guess last call in Crystal Lake is like 1:30 or something? I dunno. But I'm past my intense partying phase of life so when I heard that we were being picked up at !am I was thrilled. Granted we'd been drinking since 5pm, but still...

I was so. stupid. drunk. when I got home. I made Kevin, who was at home in Brooklyn editing sketch shorts, come online and gchat with me and I KNOW I said some ridiculous shit. I'm lucky he's a forgiving gentleman (who's seen his fair share of nights plenty drunker than I could ever imagine being). So yah. Drunk. But when, if not then, am I going to go all out and have a blast in her honor. (I went home after 3 drinks the night of my own birthday party.) Trisha's three sisters and I are the only women in the wedding party, so it felt like the right move. We had a blast. And it was pretty hilarious being that sloshed in my childhood home late at night, stumbling around in the dark, trying not to wake my grandma...all because my baby cousin, who's a grown woman now, is getting married and we had to celebrate. It was one of those This is That Moment moments.

The next morning was her shower, a couples shower, which I so prefer because a buncha ladies sitting around playing shower games is just gross to me. My high school theater director was there (he's friends with my family) - this man informed a GREAT deal of my life as a performer - and I haven't seen him in almost ten years. So we caught up for a while which was awesome because I have a lot of great theater stuff to brag about.

I flew home to New York that afternoon, went to the HST show straight from the airport, we played to a sold out house (where are all these people coming from?), and then I made Kev take me home. I was exhausted. And it was really good to see his goofy face again. ;)

The rest of the weekend flew by with, somehow, more eating? and drinking? and laying around? And here we are. Her wedding is in like four weeks and I'm excited.

In the meantime, I'll be jogging.