growl-o-ween party

Last night my friend C and I went to the Serenity Springs growl-o-ween party, hosted at the home of the owners of Serenity Springs, Jeff and Julie. Maybe I shouldn't have been driving. I mistook C's neighbor's yard for a driveway and also went to the wrong house. C found me and the neighbors weren't mad that I parked in the middle of their yard.

The party was seriously in the middle of nowhere. I drove past the road I was supposed to turn on and had to turn around. When we found the road we realized we were entering a gated property. Then we drove around on random dirt roads until we found the house. It was HUGE (15,000 square feet of party space). We walked in and found ourselves in a room that had a swimming pool, complete with a slide, diving board, and of course a giant disco ball.

I want to live here!

The walls were stone and the ceiling was wood with intricate patterns. The place must have cost a fortune to build. It's on 40 acres of land and Jeff is going to build enclosures for some of the cats that are injured so they can recover before moving to the sanctuary.

We spent about an hour talking to Julie about the sanctuary. She's open to some of my marketing ideas and I'm going to talk to her about them in the future. She and her husband pay most of the sanctuary expenses. She also showed me pictures of two two week old white tigers. She hasn't advertised them yet. I think I'm going to adopt them for the kids of two of my work colleagues.

C did some Jamaican shots called bob marleys (the party was catered by a Jamaican couple) and then we wandered around the house. It has 8 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms. And art work all over the place.

coming around one corner we stumbled on a knight in shining armor - literally

C told me to stand next to him so she could take a picture and then we would pretend he was my boyfriend - I thought the picture was blurry because of my eyes but it turns out it was just a shitty picture - no offense C!

Then we hung out with Julie and Jeff's son and daughter in law in their bedroom which is almost as big as my house. They just moved to Colorado from South Carolina and we were telling them fun things to do downtown.

They were laughing at me because I was walking funny due to my depth perception going in and out. I kept putting in eye drops to see if that would help and the daughter in law said "I was once addicted to eye drops" and I said "Fuck, I guess I'll have to go to eye drops anonymous".

Then C and I wandered onto a cool deck but people were smoking up so we decided to check out the yard. Right behind the house is a huge gazebo that could easily hold 40 people. There was a little bridge going to the gazebo because it was surrounded by a moat. Yes, a moat.

It kind of reminded me of the drug dealer houses in Central America.

And then we left and went to a party that C's parents were attending. It was someone's birthday, his name is Pops, or that's what everyone called him. I got to meet C's mom and dad and they said C makes them laugh with stories of the crazy shit I do at work (I was like "but most of the time those things are HER idea!"). I left and C told me to text her when I got back to the hotel because she was worried about me but I was fine.

Text at 1 am this morning with C:

me: I should go to sleep but I'm wired tired. I was exhausted at the party but now I can't sleep. I watched tv for an hour. I think it jacked up my brain.
C: maybe that's why I am so jacked up, I have my tv on 24 / 7...have you been using your sleep mode on your fitbit?
me: yes, every morning I'm like "I had to have slept at least 6 hours!"  and then my fitbit is like "guess what loser, you only slept 5 hours, 4 times awake, 18 times restless" and I'm like "seriously, fitbit? why do you have to tell me that I was restless 18 times? fucking lie to me and maybe I'll sleep better."

Tonight we go to the sanctuary for a tour. Julie said if there's time we can hold the baby tigers. If not we're going to go back in two weeks to see them.