What to do on a Saturday night on St. Thomas when the children are gone? My children’s godmother recently offered to keep my children on a Saturday night so that she can spend some time with them and give me a little free time. Yippee! A free Saturday night!

The first thing to do was find out what’s going on for the weekend; so I text a couple of my friends asking where’s the lime to find out what’s going on. “Lime” or “liming” is our word for partying or hanging out. None of them know anything. That’s the first sign of a pitiful social life: your friends, the people who actually hang out more than you, have no idea what’s going on.

I decided to text my friend Rashidi, a radio personality on the popular station 105 Jamz. Surely he should know what’s popping. And he does. His response to me: “U trying to lime?!” Second sign of a pitiful social life: no one takes you seriously when you say you want to party.

Rashidi is hosting a karaoke night with music by DJ Pete after. Sounds good. But his gig is on Friday. My free day is Saturday. The only thing he knows that’s happening on Saturday is something that – let’s say I would have been delighted to attend 10 years ago. Just as I finished my texting session with Rashidi, my daughter brings me an invitation to our cousins’ 10^th birthday party on the beach on Sunday. Third sign of a pitiful social life: your children have more invites than you do. But it was still Friday, so I remained hopeful.

Saturday morning I went on a cleaning spree. After all, I would be partying my night away, right. So I decided to do something worthwhile with my day. By 8 p.m. after cleaning, dropping off my children to their godmother and shopping, I decided to text a few more of my friends to see what I should get into. They all mention the same event that Rashidi mentioned the day before. But like me, none of them really want to go to that either. I log on to Facebook. I can get some hints of what’s happening there. Shawna has already said that whatever we do, she isn’t coming. That’s a bummer.  Finally Tiffy mentions a club, this new club that we can go to. Now, Tiffy is a chic that knows how to have a good time. But not even she has been to this club before, so we’re all skeptical. By now it’s 10:30 p.m. My eyes are getting heavy. Fourth sign of a pitiful social life: you’re tired before the party begins.

I’m not quite sure what happened between 11 p.m. on 2:46 a.m. That’s what time it was when I realized that I had fallen asleep. I woke up around 8 a.m. Sunday morning feeling great! Fifth sign of a pitiful social life: sleeping the whole night through feels just as good as “liming.”

Well there you have it. They irony of a single mom – when we finally have some free time, we don’t know what to do with it. I guess I’ll be homebound for the next few weekends until Kassav’s performance at the Reichhold Center on Oct. 28. With this Saturday behind me, I’m really looking forward to Kassav. Bye… we have a beach party to get ready for.

*Everyone whose name is mentioned in this blog gave permission to have their name and likeness used.