KABOOM: The Finale

Picture it: The luau’s in full swing….200 of Margarete’s nearest and dearest…dancing, singing, eating and drinking. Alas, it was too late for the pig.

We’d found the perfect vantage point: a huge, naturally sloping rock that I’m sure the happy homeowners had to blast through with many a stick of dynamite to install the beautiful inground pool, complete with a sandy beach and fire pit.

Color me majorly impressed.

I am convinced that there is a definite correlation between the KABOOMs kicking in and the fact that I no longer seemed to mind sitting on a hard rock for many, many hours. Not being what anyone could ever refer to as an “outdoor-kinda-gal”, the fact that I wasn’t parked in Margarete’s kitchen watching the action through the glass doors was testament to how much fun I was having. Of course, I could’ve moved to another spot, but…that would’ve required…well, moving.

You see my point.

Jack jumped up to join the volleyball game. He asked me several times to join in. You know my answer to this. Then he played horseshoes. Again, he asked me to play….does he not know me at all by now? He wanted me to play a sport…outside…where I had the potential to get sweaty. Can you imagine?!

I’d gotten up twice to refill my cup with this magical potion that made everyone look younger and slimmer and made everything Tonia said extra-‘specially-hysterical and I felt that all that pumping for my drink was surely exercise enough….between that and the laughing, I was sure I’d burned WAY more calories than I’d taken in…

Then, there was this pretty, funny, fantastic, marvelous young lady that began passing out these little medicine-cup drinks with strawberries which had been soaked in some alcohol-liquid. Honestly, I can’t even remember what she said it was…and I asked her not once, but twice. They were truly yummy.

About this time, my eyes begin tracking something blue…moving at warp speed in our direction. I cannot recall now whether I was focusing on Margarete’s blue dress, or her eyes…(did I mention that Margarete has Clinton Kelly-eyes?? I am thoroughly convinced that she’s blown away many a man with those gorgeous eyes…and I’m saying that as an objective observer, albeit a liquored-up one…)

Anyway.

She’s got this tray of test tubes in her hand and they’re filled with a strange, yet wonderful concoction...I can tell. There’s even a little plastic stopper holding this precious liquid inside…it was just like Aladdin’s lamp…only, not.

She sat down, handed out test-tubes (like she’d done it many times before) and uttered one single war cry:

“KABOOM!!!”

And so, down the hatch they went. Hey, she’s the hostess….we have to do what she says….

After several rounds of toasting to anything and everything we could manage to focus our muddled thoughts on, she made the immense mistake of entrusting moi with the remainder of the tray…saying she’d be back. (Ah-nold style.) I snuck in a few…but more for quality assurance purposes than for anything else…and then my muddled brain tracked something blue once again heading in our direction.

Needless to say, the tray was emptied in due fashion and I lost sight of my friend once again.

By now, I’d decided I was ready to hit the beach. I took this right before I rose:




(It’s like it was calling to me…)

I’d pretty much decided that my toes were in serious need of some sand between them, so I teetered and lurched my way through the gate, up one precarious and unexpected step and around the pool, the slide and the other end of that rockbed to eventually find my toes sinking into the welcome sun-warmed sand.

Now I was one happy camper. Between the roaring fire in the pit, the lighted palm tree overhead and the sand beneath my feet, it was….perfect.

So, I did what came naturally: I plopped down and began creating a sand condo-community, using the plastic KABOOM cup as my mold. I figured if I was hammered on KABOOMs, I may as well put the cup to comparable use.

I was in the process of creating a subdivision of affordable, somewhat low-income housing (due in large part to the inferior quality of my shabby construction, I’d decided) when my friends found me. I’d also enlisted the aid of an 8-year-old girl who was acting as Project Coordinator for “Casa del KABOOM-I-O” as it was aptly named. The little girl brought me water from the pool (which only marginally helped to add stability to my crumbling sand-structures) and acted as landscape architect, providing leaves, twigs and the occasional acorn. We built a lovely cul-de-sac and the little girl set to work making a nearby pond, which quickly changed to a wishing well, then to a garden…only to be abandoned in favor of constructing a shopping mall in the nearby town. Seriously.

To say I had to endure an enormous amount of heckling from my comrades is a gross understatement. Everybody’s a critic, when they’re watching one person do all the work.

Then they said it was time to go. By this time, my tushie had lost all feeling from the rock and my knees were all scraped up from the sand and I really wanted to leave some sort of coded message for Margarete to find during her hangover/cleaning up phase the next day…maybe something like “Casa del KABOOM-I-O was here. Affordable housing made possible by many underpaid worker bees, who have summarily quit this gig and gone on to work at the post office. Don’t drink and drive! Donate to C.F.!”, or something to that effect, but I somehow knew there’d never be enough acorns….

So here’s to a great party, Margarete….we had a blast.



And the fairytale part? NO hangover…nada…zilch. I’ve evidently got some super-human genetic makeup that allows me to consume large quantities of alcohol with nary a headache the next day.

I wish the same could be said for my knees and my tush….