That's where it's at

The apple pie had been made that morning, by the community at Beautiful Hair's church. As we relaxed by the fire with cups of hot tea, eating the delicious pie, Beautiful Hair talked about the apple pie fundraiser she runs. Whole families get involved. Kids peel apples, another group cuts them up. One group of adults and teenagers roll out the crusts. Crimping the crusts is the most important job, given to a group of old women who have been doing it for years. At the very end, a small child has the job of sprinkling "love" or a bit of sugar on the crust to make it glitter. And in just a weekend, the community produces and sells 500 apple pies. Beautiful Hair had supervised the whole process, and she brought Apple Pie #500 to her friends.

We, that is, the group of friends who call themselves Wild Women, were gathered at the home of Gorgeous Eyes, a lovely old house in Town by the Lake. We spent the first part of the evening eating and chatting, catching up on our lives. We haven't shared a meal together since our retreat in the mountains more than a month ago. Since two of the women present hadn't been on the retreat, we felt obligated to re-tell some of our adventures. Of course, by now the stories have been exaggerated wildly.

For instance, my friends are now claiming that when we took a walk late at night to an ice cream parlor, I was flashing my breasts at the cars that drove by. The real story is that I used the white bra I was wearing to SAVE OUR LIVES. Really. Nights are dark in the woods, and we were following a narrow road. When headlights approached in the distance, it suddenly occurred to me that we were all wearing dark clothes: Gorgeous Eyes, for example, was wearing black pants and a black shirt. All those junior high school safety videos about wearing white or reflective material at night raced through my mind. And at the moment, I realized the only white clothing I had on was my white bra. In a flash, I had pulled up my sweatshirt, just in time to catch the headlights of the car and alert the driver that he need to swerve and avoid the gang of women on the road. My action was, in other words, just short of heroic.

Of course, on that same weekend, you may recall that my friends did pose nude for my blog. When I announced that my blog is now the number four yahoo hit for "photos of middle-aged naked women," Signing Woman laughed, but Gorgeous Eyes reacted in horror. "What? We aren't number one?" Junk Food Woman complained that she didn't like her pseudonym, but then she couldn't come up with anything better, which means she is now in danger of becoming The Wild Woman Who Doesn't Like Her Pseudonym.

One of my friends brought a karaoke machine that belonged to her daughter, complete with several CDs of Popular Party Music Mostly From the 70s. Despite the many jokes and sarcastic remarks made as we looked over our music choices, it took only moments for everyone to start singing and dancing to the music. I am not a musician so I won't comment on the music itself, but I will say that seeing the lyrics on the television screen was pretty painful. Does all 70s music have such lame lyrics? And yet, the corny lyrics just made the singing more fun, because mostly we were laughing so hard we could barely sing. We didn't take turns, but all sang at the same time, dancing in unison like the Jackson Five, except with less precision. We ended the night with our arms around each other, swaying back and forth, singing, "That's What Friends Are For."