Ladies are stepping out, imbibing and playing around the Preserve

Ann Lange

The Preserve Ladies had their Coming-Out Party on Wednesday, January 18 to debut a new tradition—Ladies Happy Hour, and afterwards, slithered off to the back rooms to play around with their favorite board games. The sign on The Preserve patio club door read “girls only” and 75 or so BFFs yacked it up and met some neighborhood newbies to corrupt and carouse around with. The initiation test is simple, the SaddleBrooke sorority-approved requirements are a size XL funny bone and a size XXL heart. Servers Amy and Tammy stood watch and welcome at the door and took orders for Happy Hour specials including wine therapy, beer for whatever ails you, cocktail counseling, and liquid solutions for surviving cool crisp patio air. The generous assortment of yummies from the gratis pu-pu platters jumped right off the table onto hips and put a quick kibosh on any thoughts about New Year’s resolutions. As they worked the room, the Debs admired each other’s beautiful natural silver highlights, well-earned smile lines, and went right to work on further developing some good deep laugh lines. The sipping continued until all things began to look splentabulous, all were certain exterior qualities equally matched the beauty of interior qualities, and there was no need to develop a formula for WD-40 for women. There is a lot of change going on in the world, but one thing for sure never changes, good old-fashioned girl time together! We are all hoping that our BBFF, (Bonnie Barazani, Fun and Foodmeister), will make this special time a regular event. Just sayin’—when the next email invitation comes out, there will be a gazillion enthusiastic #MeToo replies.

After catching up with news about kids, grandkids, pets and house plants, the talk turned to other ways of spending time. Many are active in the various branches of SaddleBrooke Community Outreach and volunteer at the Golden Goose Thrift Shop, Kid’s Closet, or Adopt A Family. Others are active without even leaving the hood. Neighbors help neighbors right here in SaddleBrooke through SVSB (Seniorvillageatsaddlebrooke.org) helping other residents remain in their homes as long as possible by providing services such as rides, socialization, and minor home fix it problems. Sooner or later, every woman at SaddleBrooke finds the niche that strikes a chord in her own heart. Ah…so little time, and so many ways to give back!

So, after solving most of the world’s problems and packing up our playing around gizmos and gadgets, it was time to head back home and check up on the loving and faithful husbands to see what kind of shenanigans they had been up to. After all, they had been left home alone without adult supervision for hours, playing around in the garage with all their tinker toys and thingamajigs, doodads and doohickeys, and widgets and what-nots.