I apologize for being MIA and crappy about the updates. Where do I start? Well, this happened:
It was a couple of weeks back… a dark, dreary, depressing day in San Diego. Eh, who am I kidding it was obviously warm and sunny. Ginge hasn’t run away yet, so we both deleted the app. This was way more traumatizing for me, as Tinder was a new thing for him and he just happened to hit the jackpot right away swiping right for this dreamy piece of sunshine. I kinda whined and moaned as I hit the “delete” button, and he sympathetically said,
“This must be hard for you.”
“It is.”
My thumbs have so many less things to do during the work day now. If I want to see a good tiger selfie, it has to come in the way of a screenshot from a friend. It’s a whole different way of life, I tell ya. I literally had to counsel myself before clicking delete, repeating in my head, “It will still be here waiting for you if you want to download it again.” I think I have a problem.
Ginge asked me to do something with him that no other man has ever asked me to do:
“Do you want to come golfing with me tomorrow?”
“Are you for real?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to golf.”
“You don’t have to golf. You can just ride around in the cart and drink beers.”
Whoa. Really? BEST.DAY.EVER! I love golfing. Except for the golfing part. At one point there was no one creeping up behind us, so Ginge told me to hit a ball. Easy enough. I’ve hit moving balls all my life, how hard could it be to hit one sitting still right in front of me? Right? WRONG. I swung… I missed. I was shocked. He tells me to swing again. I swung again. I missed again. Three times in a row, swoosh swoosh swoosh (the sound a golf club makes when you swing it really hard and it doesn’t make contact with anything), and then I ran right back into the cart with my tail in between my legs. I was so embarrassed. Ginge didn’t laugh too much. He told me I was swinging it like a bat and we’ll need to work on it. I just cracked open another beer and turned the iPhone speakers up. I figured I’d leave golfing to the professionals.
I dwelled on the golf swinging for about a week. I practiced with a broomstick, I whined to my friends about how badly I sucked. I vowed to practice until I could hit the damn thing. A few days ago I picked Carissa up. We didn’t really have a plan- we just wanted to be outside. We figured we’d just lay out by the bay. As we’re pulling into the parking lot, a lightbulb went off.
“Oh! We should go to the driving range!”
Carissa looks at me funny, “Like… golf?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok.”
So we turn around and head to the nearest golf course. As we’re getting out of the car, I remember we don’t have clubs… hmmm… hopefully they will have them for us. We felt like we were in unchartered waters. We didn’t know where to go. We didn’t know what to say. As we’re wandering around, Carissa says, “Maybe we should have just stuck to the familiar and gone to the batting cages.”
We finally figure out how to purchase a bucket of balls, and the man directs us outside to find some clubs which were all mixed up in a huge trash can. We weren’t sure where to start. Carissa picks one up, but it’s not a driver. I know this.
“No, that one’s wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. Put it back.”
As we are staring into this big confusing bin of clubs, a guy who works there comes over to help. He picks a couple out for us, and I tell him they look kinda crappy, and we’re gonna need ones that hit the ball far. He tells us to start with those, and he’ll go inside and get us some good ones from the office.
We find the spot furthest away from the people… as we’re pretty sure we’re gonna hit someone with something. Ball, club, shoe, who knows. I get ready to go, determined to hit the ball, with all of my broomstick practice. Swing…and a miss. Strike one. We both start hysterical laughing. We are not golfing at the same time. There was a conveniently located Adirondack chair right next to our little launching pad (I don’t know what the hell it’s called), so we took turns sitting in it and cheering the other person on. After a few misses, I started hitting. Not every single one… not even most… but it was an improvement.
Carissa got up and wiffed. Hard. About 3 times. I don’t think the driving range has seen this much commotion in a while. We were trying so hard not to pee our pants. Carissa’s in cutoff shorts and Timbs, which she realized were not suitable for golfing, and became barefoot after several swings. Then she got in her groove and started drilling the balls. Swing, miss, drill one to left field. It was a rollercoaster of emotions. Laughing, screaming, high fiving. I’m not sure this was driving range etiquette, but we didn’t really care. We made an employee friend who lent us his finest drivers, and old man golfer friend who gave us some brand spanking new tees, and got a bit of a tan.
As we started heading back to the car, we discussed taking lessons. We saw a group of teenage boys taking a group lesson and I say, “Oh, that lesson is putting. Boring.”
Riss agrees, “Yeah, we’re not gonna take a lesson. We don’t do putting.”
And we leave.
A couple of days later, as Carissa’s leaving my house, she says, “Oh, I figured out why we are really good at golfing.”
“Why?”
“It’s because we don’t have any boobs.”
I’m wondering if she’s serious. “Ok, but you do know we’re actually not good at golfing, right?”
She looks at me like I have 8 heads. “What??” And then walks out of my house.
When Ginge saw a photo Carissa posted on fb of my awful swing, I’m sure he threw up a little in his mouth. Several hours later I received this document attached in an email:
I died. And now I’m determined to make this look like a golf swing. It’s on, baby.
‘Til later, my little nuggets. Have a safe and happy St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
xoxo
Gossip Girl
breathe in, laugh out 