“Make it work.” – Tim Gunn
Today’s post is just going to be a collection of memories, from some of the adventures Lauren & I had the chance to go on, whether it was actually going on an adventure, or it was just sitting in the living room watching TV and turning it into a drinking game.
When Lauren (and technically me I guess) lived at Lindsay’s house, one of our favorite things to do was watch TV. I know what you’re thinking….”What?? That’s not Lauren, she’s a party girl!” You have to let me finish though. We didn’t just watch TV…we turned anything and everything on TV into a drinking game. Project Runway? Drinking game. Always Sunny? Drinking game. Nightly news? Drinking game. It was fantastic. Some nights we drank a few bottles of wine, some nights we drank a fifth of vodka. This happened any day of the week…it didn’t matter that we had to work in the morning, we were just having fun!
One of Lauren’s all time favorite shows was Project Runway, so of course we had to have the ultimate drinking game for that. She spent HOURS one evening coming up with all of the rules we had to follow, and as soon as Tim Gunn and crew came on TV, it was on.
Earlier on in this particular story, I mentioned how we loved doing this when we lived with Lindsay. However Lindsay probably didn’t love it as much as we did. I can’t tell you how many nights we got a text from her,asking us to be quiet. So being the smart-ass drunks that we were, we sent her this picture in return one night:
Somehow she didn’t kick us out.
One afternoon while I was at work, Lauren sent me a text asking if I’d be interested in going to an Octoberfest event thing going on in Miami with her and a couple of her friends. I checked it out online, and said “Sure! I’ll buy our tickets.” This was early on in the relationship, when I still couldn’t believe that someone as beautiful as Lauren would date someone like me, so I bought VIP tickets to impress her more. (Turns out I didn’t need to…I impressed her enough by just being me! But that’s another story). Lindsay and Giselle, the two friends that we went with, just had regular tickets.
When we arrived to the Marlin’s Stadium, the location of the event, you could tell right away how awesome our VIP tickets were…they handed Lauren and I a couple of cheap plastic hats to wear…plus a ton of free drink tickets!
I could go on for hours about that night, but I’ll try to sum it up quickly. Lauren and I had access to a VIP tent with free booze, Lindsay and Giselle did not. We laughed, we did shots, we danced, we had a great time. I also schooled Lauren in rap music that night, the one and only time I knew more about it than she did. Haha…I miss her.
Back before I smiled in pictures apparently
One last story for the night…
Lauren and I found out that she was pregnant in early December, but we weren’t ready to tell people yet. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, seems to be an easy thing to hid. For us though we had a weekend full of parties that everyone would fully expect Lauren to be drinking at, and drinking a lot. My timeframe for these may be a little off, and I apologize if they are. You’ll see why that may be in a moment.
Part 1: Santa Pub Crawl
That December we had already RSVP’d for a Santa Pub crawl. All the girls had matching outfits, and the guys wore whatever. (In theory, something “Santa’y”) We obviously had to go, since skipping it would be suspicious. This ended up being the easiest one to get away with fake drinking for Lauren; her work party was later that day, so she was letting me drink at the pub crawl and she would drive to the party and drink there. Mission: Success.
Part 2: The Work Party
Lauren’s office had their annual holiday party at a restaurant in Delray Beach. They rented out the entire inside, including the bar. Normally an open bar excites me…this time I had to ask my liver for forgiveness ahead of time. So many people kept coming up to us and ordering shots for Lauren and I to take with them! But it was still a good night, from what I’ve been told. Mission: Success. I think.
Part 3: Giselle’s Annual Christmas Party
Lauren and I plotted for awhile on how we were going to pull this off. This wasn’t going to be easy. I made my amazing brie dish to the party, in hopes to distract some people with food. I made the announcement to Lauren as soon as we walked in that I was the bartender for her and I that night, and I was going to get her drunk! Every 20 minutes or so I’d grab her glass of diet coke and “rum” and top it back off again. Whenever anyone yelled “Shots!” I’d run up and take one before they realized Lauren wasn’t doing them. It was going great! No one suspected a thing…until the other Lauren, Shulman, called my Lauren out for not doing shots with her. We looked at each other, debating on how to answer, when Shulman took all the pressure off of us by saying something like “No I get it, he won’t let you do shots. Now that you’re in a relationship you can’t do them. Michael, you get over here and do one for her!” (now at this point I was drunk, so I’m guessing at her words. Pretty sure that those were close to what she said.) In any case, I did more shots, and Evan stayed a secret for a little longer! Mission: Success.
I hope you enjoy my stories. I haven’t slept much lately, so I apologize for the format and whatnot. At this point I’ll just call it my style of writing. Thank you for continuing to read Our Tale.
I miss her, more and more everyday. Writing these stories gives me another chance to reconnect with her, while also sharing stories with everyone that you might not know. She is an amazing person, and she’ll be with us always.
As many of you know, my beautiful wife Lauren passed away after a serious battle against cancer. She had been out of work since December, and I had been home taking care of her. She passed away without life insurance, so all of the funeral costs were out of pocket. We have been blown away by the outpouring of support of donations and love. Thank you all so much. If you have a chance, please visit our GoFundMe fundraiser (https://www.gofundme.com/knmv7f7q) and give it a share. Any funds that we raise over the cost of the funeral and bills received during Lauren’s treatment will be put in a college fund for our son Evan. Thank you all again.
Our Tale 