There's this tendency in women to second-guess. I don't observe this tendency in men nearly as much. We women want and then we teeter, we choose and then we waiver, we plan and then we consider the guilt that inches into our periphery and then darts across the room and soon it is swirling around us, causing us to wonder if we are the ones spinning or if we are being swallowed in a tidepool of self-imposed self-loathing. My mother was the same way. She always felt bad. Wouldn't buy herself a new handbag. Some gum-chomping teenager somewhere might break a bracket on her braces and rack up an orthodonists bill like whoa.

So here I am, a woman with a million reasons (e.g. nursing baby, needy toddler, eleventy-four papers to grade) to not plan a girlfriends' overnight. But I married well. And I'm moving. And I have awe-inspiring friends. A million more reasons in my favor to get away for a night.

My girlfriends from the neighborhood--the ones that God plucked from the patch of perfection and planted in my own backyard to learn from and love on and wonder half a dozen times a week how I would abide without them--and I went up to Portsmouth, NH for a night.

We all second-guessed ourselves 428908.301 times over e-mail and phonecalls. Should I go? How can I go? What is this voice telling me to go? Who buys a bathing suit in February? And most importantly, should I bring the fake mustaches?

And yet Saturday came and there we were, pulling across a picturesque bridge to a historic hotel with bags packed full of good chocolate and US Weekly and acceptable jeans. We hot-tubbed outdoors watching ribbons of steam waft up and across the snowy vista, of course talking about our kids and school decisions the whole time, but just FYI, if you ask my friend A. about Hall Passes, she ain't talking about school no more.

We had a leeeisurely dinner and ordered dessert!! and cappuccinos!! because we could!! And then the mustaches came out and my stomach hurt from the mustachioed laughter. After we bopped around and people watched and snorty laughed about Snookie and closed down an establishment air-guitarring to "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Sweet Caroline," my girl LMac said, "Let's do our children proud," and we did. They would have all been so proud.

There was plenty of more chocolate and cappuccino and laughs before we left, with speculation about where we'd go next year, even though it wouldn't really matter, as long as we were all there, the laughter and the lipstick and the mustaches to boot. About that, there would be no second guessing. Not one single doubt.

*** Cia, A-Dub, Girl w/ the Green Truck

Same as above, plus T-Red and Stefita

Stefita, LMac, Meggo my Eggo

Royalty

Sillies.