Guest Blogger: Sue Jochens

As our last Honorary Guest Blogger this week, I’d like everyone to welcome Sue Jochens. Sue has been a lurker for a while, but I know her email address now, so I better start seeing some comments! Let’s start this weekend right with a teeter totter (or your drink of choice) and some lovely reminiscents about the good times we have with our girlfriends. (Sniff, sniff… I sure miss the Playfriends!!)

Don’t forget, one lucky commenter will win a book and surprise goody from the Playfriends. Check in tomorrow to see if you won!

Sue, take it away!!!

My name is Sue Jochens (no names have been changed to protect the guilty) and I am a 57 year old (for the next two months, anyway) woman living on the outskirts of Shawnee, in east, central Kansas. I am married with a son. I am also mother to 32,789 dust bunnies, all of whom have been with me long enough to have names. When not being a frustrated wannabe writer and photographer, I am an oxymoron, aka accountant for USDA. I’ve been lying….uhm….writing and telling stories, ever since I was old enough to grasp the green Crayonex crayon in my chubby little fist and make a scrawl. I wrote an account of my 2004 girlfriend getaway, and won $250 worth of books in a contest from Elaine Viets. Check it out at http://www.elaineviets.com/pages/log.asp (Scroll down to the August 17, 2007 entry.)

My hobbies are taking photos, reading, deck sitting, listening to music, and writing funny things to amuse my friends. If you want to be my friend, this is important to remember: don’t touch my cheeseburger, chocolate, or Absolut Peppar unless invited (but think twice even then.)

This is me….and I hate it. I look like a dumplin’ that’s been overpowered by the chicken:



FAMILY VACATION: Several days (or more) trapped in a car, plane, or small hotel room, with some of the people who caused you to need to get away in the first place.

GIRLFRIEND GETAWAY: Several days (or more) trapped in a car, plane, or small hotel room with people who aren’t obligated to like you, but do, no matter how bitchy you can be. In fact, when you do get on a major bitch, it’s the girlfriends who urge you to bitch away. I’d like to see the husband or child that would willingly offer that little service.

Hi. My name is Sue and I take at least one girlfriend getaway a year. Being a late bloomer, I didn’t take my first one until 2002. It was so much fun, that this past year I took two, and if it wasn’t for work interfering, come October, it would be three. I’m a greedy little sucker. Just got back from one, and it was so much fun, I actually liked the family for a few days afterwards.

Things…occurrences….happenings, which would completely send a family vacation down the toilet have been the makings of some of our best times ever. Take 2004. Crossville, Tennessee, and an inn that hadn’t been fixed up since Sherman marched to the sea. Chiggers, ticks, a small lake with so much scum on it you could walk across and stay dry, and a lawn with so many holes we spilled more liquor than we drank, didn’t stop us. We had fun with a capital F.

The next year we took a couple of cabins in Branson, Missouri and hardly left the deck of the biggest cabin. Ten women together in tight quarters for 4 days, and blood was not shed. We cooked, laughed until our faces hurt for a week, watched poker on TV, imbibed a few adult drinks, played Trivial Pursuit, and went to an outdoor deli with a fabulous view and an accordion player who took requests. That was a complete hoot.

The view from our cabin…who wouldn’t relax?:



We’ve been lost on the University of Georgia campus trying to find the theater where King Lear was playing. We’ve had a blowout fixed by the courtliest little fellow who ever lived under a troll bridge. (I defy you to have a rollicking good time being lost on a family vacation and having a tire blow on top of it.) While out of town with the girls, I’ve even had my credit card company call me about a large purchase made at a liquor store in Dalton, Georgia (one of my proudest moments as an independent woman.)

This year we chose a tiny town in Tennessee for our destination, because it was having a production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” featuring a few people we know.

Several of us drove to Bell Buckle, unloaded, and headed to the Nashville airport to pick up those flying in. Less than ten minutes on the highway, traffic stopped. I don’t mean got slower – I mean turn off your engine, open the windows, get out of the car and wander around stop. For two hours. Had I been with the family, not only would the highway patrol have been investigating a hit and run, they’d be investigating a murder, or at least a serious maiming. Fortunately I was with girlfriends. We called back and forth between cars and those waiting at the airport. We sang Aretha songs. We watched a huge, beefy trucker climb down out of his big rig and walk his itty bitty Chihuahua. Several hours later, when we finally got there, were those waiting even a wee bit cranky? Nope. They too were with girlfriends and had been having a blast.

Two days later, the good times kept rolling during a torrential storm that trapped us in a large tent where we were supposed to be watching a play. It was a Noah’s Ark type rain that flooded the tent to ankle deep, and wind hefty enough to fell a tree on the road to the highway. They eventually called off the show, so we took our wet selves back to the inn, played guitar hero, ate cheese dip, drank margaritas, and recreated the hysterical Pyramus/Thisbe death scene that we had seen the night before during good weather.

I defy you to endure those sorts of conditions and have fun with the family. Can’t be done. Someone’s gonna die and I can bet it won’t be me or you. Girlfriends rock!

Trying to figure out what essentials to take on a girlfriend trip:






Got a girls-have-more-fun getaway story of your own to tell us? Spill it!