A Post About Productivity and Missing my Friends

Hello, friends! You know what I have done this weekend? Minus a brief time at work on Saturday morning, I have been parked on the couch while my very productive husband has slaved away on our wedding video. 

But I wouldn't call it unproductive. After all, I have watched Oprah interview Joel Osteen, learned about a woman who was addicted to smelling gasoline, a girl who carries her teddy bears around all the time, and an obese girl who eats nothing but cheesy potatoes. Can you tell what channels have been great today? (Answer: OWN and TLC. You're welcome.) I was thinking that I haven't had a real lay-on-the-couch, veg-it-out day since college. Like, every weekend in college.

I was also just thinking this morning, I haven't had meltdown in a little while.

...and I didn't have a meltdown today. Just a little bit of tears and sap while I watched the last fifteen minutes of the Sex and the City movie on USA. You know at the very end when Carrie and Big get married in the courthouse, and as they're leaving Carrie says that the wedding was perfect--just her and him. Big asks if maybe she wishes a little bit that the girls were there? Carrie says "well, yeahh..." and he opens the door and right there is the rest of the crew?!

I've seen that movie a few times, and that part gets me every time--when they all go out for brunch after, and then the very end of the movie when it's just the four of the gals sitting around at a fancy NYC bar, sipping cosmos and toasting to their friendship.

I sat up and looked at Ian and said with tears running down my face, "This makes me miss my friends".

Ian looked up from his computer and said, "Why? What are they doing in the movie?"

"They're out.....sitting with each other....drinking and stuff...." 

Then I got up to blow my nose.

It makes me miss my friends. A certain group, to be exact.

Meagan Jepson Photography

I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't missed these girls, brought up a story about one or all of them at work, or just longed for the days when summer nights consisted of rounding up the gang to run around the neighborhood or sit in someone's basement eating ice cream and watching Veronica Mars DVDs. 

Let me go back a little further. We have all pretty much known each other since the beginning of time.  Some of us went to preschool together, and the whole group was formed in elementary school.

While other friends came and went, the seven us remained strong through thick and thin, through the awkward pre-teen years...

...sticking together from school dances to awkward Halloween costumes...

....growing into pretty good looking young women...

People compared us to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Which was pretty much the best compliment ever to a group of sixteen year olds. In fact, the first summer in high school that we all spent apart, we made a Traveling Shirt that we sent around to each other. (Which is still floating around in someone's closet out there....)

We were those girls who would show up to camp in a group so large that we were our group. While everyone else was making memories with friends they would probably never speak with again after that week, we were just making more memories that we would still talk about 10 years later.

What we have is real special. Plenty of people have certain friends that they have known forever, but a whole group of 'em? It's pretty neat.

Now we're all grown up and all over the world (quite literally; Courtney is teaching in China, Hannah is Peace Corp-ing in Nicaragua, Megan B is Young Adult Volunteer in Nashville; Katy is in grad school in Kentucky, Shannon is holding down the fort in PA with her new job, and Megan T is finishing up her last year at Washington and Lee) but I don't see things ending here anytime soon. There are still phone calls to be made, emails to be sent, and the excitement of being reunited one day to pull us through.