The Mark Game

Soooo if you follow my stuff with any regularity, you know that my husband and BFF and I took a whirlwind five-day road trip to Florida for the wedding of one of my other BFFs (that's us on the left). This makes it sound like I have a bunch of besties but I really don't... I can count on both hands the number of friends like them I have had in my entire life (if I had a couple of freak fingers I could probably do it on one hand). I don't make close friends very easily. I'm a bit guarded, which is probably hard to tell when I'm out there blogging my life every day, but I am. Uhhh. I'm rambling. All I meant to say is that I don't throw the "BFF" term around lightly; this was a very important wedding AND, in turn, a very important road trip.

Given the short time frame, we were going to fly like most normal people would. But when we added up the airfare plus the car rental once we got there - Easter weekend in Florida is hella expensive, y'all - we decided it would be cheaper for the three of us to drive and split gas and whatnot. Especially with Cleo the Prius ($150 in gas, total. That's nearly 3,000 miles for the price of a pair of boots).

On the way there we split the drive up overnight and stayed with my friend Sheila in Nashville and went out to a honky-tonk. We drove the rest of the way on Thursday and landed in Sarasota at about midnight (we may have detoured to visit Jack Daniel's Distillery for a couple of hours). But more on that in a later post... this is about the Mark Game. The way home yesterday and today was not nearly as leisurely and fun; we drove it straight overnight from Orlando to Des Moines. We left Disney at 3:00 yesterday afternoon, and after we picked up the dogs and dropped Courtney off today, it was 3:00 before I was at home on my couch today. It. Was. Nuts. To keep ourselves awake in the wee hours this morning, we played the Mark Game. You may remember Mark from hits such as tailgating and drinking and tailgating. Oh, and from his Bret Michaels hair. It started when I e-mailed him with the subject line "Marky Mark!" a couple of weeks ago which he apparently he didn't care for... even when I said we would be the Funky Bunch. So then I started thinking of other nicknames he might approve. Marcus Welby, M.D., was immediately shot down as well. Fun hater. We warned him that we were going to play the Mark Game on the way home and text him with all of our ideas (Mark doesn't send texts; he only reads them). Let me tell you, at 3 a.m. this morning, this was frigging HYSTERICAL.

• Marko Polo
• Marc Chagall
• Marc Summers
• TradeMark
• Karl Mark...s...
• Line of deMarkation
• Magic Mark-er
• Maker's Mark
• Mark Cohn of "Walking in Memphis" fame (yes, you have to say that whole phrase)
• This little piggy went to Mark-et
• Mark-ette University
• Markansas
• TexMarkana
• Markedly Different
• Markhail Gorbachev
• MarkGruff the Crime Dog
• Markiavelli
• MarkDonalds
• I lost my f*cking bumper due to a downed power line in AlaMarkbama
• Markwing Duck
• Freddie Markury
• Markcaulay Culkin
• The Mark Knight
• President William MarkKinley
• Markret Thatcher
• Markquis de Sade

We've received feedback that Markret Thatcher is the winner (the unwritten rules were "come up with a nickname that squicks Mark out the most), but Markwing Duck made him laugh the hardest. But I'm still taking suggestions if you have any.

And this is how tired I was when we got home today. Yep... that's the dog on my butt. What I can I say, it has a lot of cushioning.

And here's lovely Lisa... more on that later, but how gorgeous, right?!

For now, my bed is calling my name. It says, "Stacy, I promise I'm much more comfortable than being curled up in the fetal position in Cleo's passenger's side seat. Stacy, I promise if you crawl under my covers, I won't wake you up like a shot when Courtney veers onto the rumble strips. Stacy, I promise you will have feeling in your feet when you leave me in the morning."

And all of that sounds pretty good, so...