Pregnant groupie part two.

Jason and I have been on three vacations in the almost six years we've been together, to Atlanta for my 18th birthday, New Orleans two years later, and Memphis last weekend. I don't know if the majority of the world would consider one night in a hotel in a town that I grew up in that's only three hours away a vacation, but there was a hotel involved and sleep and a break from reality so, yeah, that's a vacation to me. Especially these days.

Those of you with kids are probably rolling your eyes like "just you wait," and I very well might be slapping myself in six-ish months that I even bothered complaining about the need for a vacation before I had a crying infant on my hands, but for now, OH MY GOD that was the most amazing night in a hotel ever.

Jason and I went to dinner the first night we got there with his old roommate and his girlfriend.

Jason and his friend took an obligatory shot of tequila and had two beers. With each first chug the girlfriend and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes, because isn't that just what the girlfriends do? Except I'm not the girl who sits out on the shots. Usually.

The two of them, although not as settled-settled down as Jason and I, are a lot calmer than most of Jason's old friends. They're a couple, they live together, they both have full-time jobs and have moved past the "what happened last night?" phase. So we sat at dinner and talked, and then by eight Jason and I were back in our hotel, I was in my pajamas in the bed, Jason was crawling in next to me, the TV was turned onto Planet Earth, and my eyes were closing--like it or not. So on our one night away from home, in a hotel (I have a strange obsession with staying in hotels--there is literally nothing I look forward to more on trips away from home than the tiny bottles of soap and the room service menus, even if I'm just browsing at them pretending I can afford a $20 breakfast), we fell asleep to Planet Earth around 8:30 at night and slept until 8 the next morning. And we could have hopped in the car and headed home then and I would have been fully satisfied.

But we came for Jason's band, a group of four playing backup for a wannabe country music star from Wisconsin. I'd already heard the band practice, and they're all, including Jason, incredibly talented musicians, but it's not a band for the sake of the band, it's all for the singer. And he's a country music singer from Wisconsin.

Later that morning Jason and I headed to a town about 45 minutes outside of Memphis called Oakland. The band was supposed to play at a Wal-Mart opening, because we live in the South and that's what wannabe country music stars do.

So there I was, sitting by an acoustic set-up in the electronics section of Wal-Mart, watching my incredibly talented fiance play guitar with the Barbie aisle visible behind him. About a dozen people stopped their shopping to sit through the entire performance, dozens more filtered in and out with their shopping carts, most of them wearing pajamas because we were in the middle of a Wal-Mart in the kind of town where Wal-Mart is the main attraction.

Before the "show" started--and, yes, that's a W Jason's signing for the venue.

Later the band played at the Delta Fair in Memphis to a much bigger and less shopping-enthused crowd, and I sat in the front row with the singer's publicist singing along to all the country songs I'd never heard before.

I don't understand country music. There are a few songs I like, but I usually end up really confused by the story and mixing up the tune with another Garth Brooks song because seriously THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME. On the drive to Memphis, Jason played through a CD of their lineup. The song Dust on the Bottle by David Lee Murphy came on, and I sat there guessing out loud what the hell the lyrics were getting at--the song starts with "Creole Williams lived down a dirt road / Made homemade wine like nobody I know / Dropped by one Friday night and said can you help me Creole?" And it just MAKES NO SENSE to me. Who the hell is Creolle Williams? Why does it matter that he makes homemade wine? Who's he asking for help?

And because I'm that clueless about country music traditions and styles, Jason convinced me that the song is about cougars, or Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher kind of pairings. And I believed him for about ten minutes until he cracked up laughing, and left me feeling really stupid but still with no NO IDEA what the song is about.

At dinner the next night I told the band this story, thinking everyone would find it as hilarious as I do, only to be informed by a much less amused by country music band member that, um, it's about marriage? And how could I not get that? It's, like, so obvious? (The chorus: There might be a little dust on the bottle / But don't let it fool ya about what's inside / There might be a little dust on the bottle / It's one of those things that gets sweeter with time--it really, really could be like cougars and no one would know the difference).

Sitting in the audience watching your significant other doing something he loves couldn't be anything but a great time, though. And I had the best, most stress-free two days I've had in months.