Ancient History

I am going to spend tomorrow or someday this week trying to figure out how the scanner works and how to get the pictures posted to my blog. I have so many pictures I want to share and I am going to apologize ahead of time to those of you whose pictures are going to posted.

I'm sorry, so sorry, don't hate me, I ask your forgiveness but not your permission. Teehee.

I am loving this being an adult thing more and more. I miss the carefree days of not having bills, not having responsibilities, not having anyone reliant on me, but as I believe I have written in the past, I love eating my dessert first if I want to. I love getting to go to a restaurant and only getting an appetizer if that's what I want. Or having the choice of when AND where I eat. I also love learning. I am learning so much about myself and about others that I am really enjoying my relationships as of late.

Please, let me state my disclaimer... I may not be the best friend you have during the best of times, but I will always be there for you when you need me. I may let you down during the fun days, but I will never let you down during the bad days. I will never, ever let you down when you need me and when you need a friend the most.

I have been able to get back in contact and spend more time with friends past. Friends past including one who I have known the longest. Twenty-four years I believe. Holy Smokes does that make me feel old. I have spent time with a friend I have know just as long and have been on again/off again friends this whole time. High School was fun with her and taking strength training together (she was one tough chicken!!). I have also spent a lot of time recently with a friend who started out being friends with my sister, Melissa Tyne. I have known this young lady since I was 11 or 12.

These ladies have seen me through many stages in my life. Many strange hair styles, makeup styles, clothes styles, and I have even lived with one of them for a week at a time here and there due to camps and mission trips we went on in High School.

Miss S, Miss A, and Miss K. You guys have really been a blast from the past and I am enjoying every minute of it.

Miss S, Miss A, and I have been getting together with our kids and dogs and getting a cuppa and going to the park or some other outdoor place. It's been a lot of fun getting to know these two better, especially seeing them as mothers. I've known Miss S since as long as I can remember. We have been friends off and on for years and pretty much stayed as friendly acquaintances throughout High School. She has always been very friendly and unassuming. I don't remember her ever caring who was friends with who, she would talk to those around her and joke around. At least that was my experience. Miss S is very natural. I really like this quality in her. She does not eat meat, she boycotts leather, and will buy local before anything else. It's very cute seeing her eyes and eyebrows on her cute little girl. I love that she, too, is a dog person. She also has a great, natural aspect of childbirth and raising of her child. Her outlook was the same as mine until I actually tried to plan mine and God laughed at me and decided to have something totally different happen. She is a HUGE advocate of breast feeding which I am think is very important. I unfortunately could not do that as long as I would have liked, but I am glad to see that more and more women are coming to find this as a norm. I would love to be able to go out in public and not have to deal with the stares and glares of those around me. Miss S, you are such a great "granola" princess.

Miss A moved to Garland, oh, I have no idea when. But, she and her family started coming to church where my family went and she and my sister hit it off and became fast friends. Her mom and my mom also became friends, so it was inevitable that I would get to know her pretty well. I remember "babysitting" her and her brother for a week while her mom was out of town for work or a church thing. I only remember two things about that week and neither of them was about Miss A, I am pretty that is a good sign and that she was great. I have known Miss A through her "goodie-goodie" days (LOL) and I knew her when she rebelled as we all do at some point in our lives. I have really good stories of her and some not so good stories. I am glad not very many people know me as well and for as long as I have known her, I am sure she's got some good ones and I would hate for that many people to have good stories.

I think my favorite memories of Miss A are the times that we spent prepping for and engaging in a Vacation Bible School week in Ignacio, Colorado. She and I taught the class of 4 and 5 year old pre-schoolers. All of us girls that went have some good stories of the houses and the people that were so generous to let us stay for the week. Our house wouldn't let us take showers longer than 5 minutes and the huband was a professional artist. Nothing too big a deal though that I remember. And our time in Glorieta, New Mexico... those are always good memories and I have very fond ones the year I went with her.

I was very surprised to learn that she had gotten married and had kids. I guess most of my friends and those in the varying surrounding circles just never seemed the settle down types. She has although accomplished in her early years what most never ever do, she met the perfect other half and is really enjoying life. She is very much an avid outdoorsman (or outdoorswoman for those feminists out there) and seems to have a great love for the outside, wilderness, and nature. I have only met one of her children and she is amazingly well behaved for how young she is. Of course, there is that hint of spunk that all little girls have, but she all in all keeps it under wraps in front of us guests. I am also a little surprised, but so very excited and proud of what she has accomplished in her spiritual life. She goes to a Baptist church in Holladay where she and her husband lead the youth group. She has some amazing stories about what they have done and accomplished (one of the stories is about how the youth group fasted for 30 hours I think and had a lock-in at the church and raised money for world hunger. AMAZING) Listening to her talk about the youth and what they have managed to get them excited to accomplish is pretty amazing. Going on mission trips and helping those that are less fortunate among the many things is amazing to me. Not enough kids get a chance to see what they have so they can really appreciate it.

It is very humbling to hang out with her and I feel a little more zen after spending time with her. There was a minute of her life where she was very intense and I know that comes with being unhappy and confused while being a teenager. Now, she is still intense in a very different way. She is VERY passionate about what she does and what she believes in but has wisdom beyond her years about not pressuring those around her to feel the same. You can sense her passion and her peace and it's a very peaceful aura to be around. Thanks Miss A! You are a true "natural" princess.

And last but not least, Miss K. I just figured I've always known her! I know there was an intitial meeting and get to know each other process, but I guess she has always been a kindred spirit and so it never really stuck in my memory as a strange and awkward event. She and I have been through a lot. I have been best friends with her since the 1st grade. We were thick as thieves for years. We had other friends kind of come and go in our little duet, but nothing that ever stuck in the middle of the two of us. I pretty much lived at her house. Every day after school, we'd go there and I would eventually make it home to my house. Her parents of so great to me and I appreciate their tolerance of my loitering at their residence. We were readers, writers, imagineers, we would push each other to do better in school. I think we had the best relationship, we could both be competitive, but it was never to the detriment of the other, we just wanted each other to excell. Oh, and we fought. Did we ever. We were like sisters for so long that nothing was taboo in the fights. Plus, we were both pretty good at thinking on our feet that it got pretty good. I still remember a few and they make me giggle.

Around the 6th grade, I started to feel the pull of peer pressure. I never cared before, but I guess that is part of the puberty thing. Something in the hypothalamus or the neocortex of the brain becomes sensitive to that sort of thing to go with the hormones, zits, and awkwardly growing bodies. I started spending a lot of time at church because they started a youth group. I really wanted to be a part of this group because I was not Mormon and not that it mattered at the time, it did now that I was looking at boys and wanting to date (sometime in the near future). So, I started to spend more and more time with these kids with the youth group and became really good friends with one of the girls there. She and Miss K did not get along so well. I wish I had the knowledge then of what I know now, and I would have just said that Miss K really meant too much to me to start spending so much time with this other girl, but again, peer pressure and wanting to fit in somewhere and wanting others to like me caused me to make a bad choice. I say it's bad now, only because I was not liked in the youth group for a few years. In fact, I think I can honestly say that most of the kids were downright cruel to me. I would go home, cry a lot, and then go back trying to make an effort to get along with these kids who went to a church and were supposed to believe in the same religious views that I did. There was a lot of suffering on my part for about 3 years dealing with church and youth group and missing my best friend. I couldn't just stop going to church, it was important to my Granny, therefore, it was important to me. Especially since I lived with her for so long and was living with her a lot at the time.

Now, why, do you ask, did I not just go to my best friend Miss K and tell her I was wrong to phase her out and that I would like to try to stay friends? Pride. Isn't that a sin or one of the 7 deadly something or others? I felt so dumb about it, and figured she'd laugh at me, and figured she had moved on and found better friends than me. It was a sad time. I needed a friend so bad in the 7th and 8th grade that I could really feel I could be myself with and I had put that person out of my life. Now, don't get me wrong, I had a few friends at the time, but no one I hung out with and no one I felt I could be myself with. I think 7th and 8th grade was the worst time of my entire life. Without a doubt.

So, moving on to High School, I had met a girl who was in band with me and I had a few classes with whom I became better friends with than I had in a while. She also had a friend with whom I became friends and we were the 3 musketeers for a little while before stupid girl stuff parted Miss M from our little trio. (That's another story that I regret. She was a fun, fun girl and I loved her parents.) By then, I was getting over this youth group thing, realizing I didn't care what they thought, I was different, I was becoming ok with that, and I was moving on. I guess basically I was growing up a little. I think it also helps I got my braces off and got contacts so that really helped me with my self esteem a little bit. Of course, I still missed Miss K, but we were running in VERY different circles by then. I was sure she would just laugh at me if I were to try to elbow my way in.

I will say, that no matter what happened, he family still really was a part of my family. Her dad ALWAYS kicked my ass...literally, when he saw me and gave me a hard time for not coming around or not taking his class. Her older sister was always nice and friendly and we'd chat. Strangely enough, Miss K's big sister and I ended up becoming friends and she was very close friends with the man I ended up marrying. I think that is something akin to fate or karma or something and that Miss K and I are supposed to be friends no matter what... isn't that what a BFF is? LOL

During High School, we would see each other and we would stop and visit, but I think we were both nervous about what the other thought about our friendship. I guess communication and going out on a limb are things you learn as you get older.

2006. Ten years after High School. So much has happened with me as well as with Miss K. Hanging out with my future husband and all of his friends (including the older sister to Miss K) I was able to eventually get an email address, start to email and now with it being 2009, we are finally getting to know each other again. She was able to come to my wedding in 2007 which was a big deal to me even though we hadn't really talked or spend much time catching up at that point. It's been so much fun reminiscing and really letting out our sides of our stories. It's been very uplifting and I feel like a weight has been lifted. Really, she and I are kindred spirits and I wish we weren't too old to have sleep overs. (And if you are reading this, watching "Ghostbusters" and rewinding the scary part over and over or watching "Young Guns" cause Emilio is hot.) I think we could spend weeks just talking and telling stories and getting to know each other a little better and become a little more up to date. It's too bad we have the distance of 60 miles to have a visit, and having kids makes it hard, but email is awesome, and I am going for a visit this week.

So, all of this reminiscing started with an email I got for my birthday. It still makes me cry when I read it. She sent something to me that has really made my year. It has touched me in a way that makes me so happy... well, lame as it is, I guess it's because it is so from the heart and not at all surface talk... "For the record, I never thought you were plain or gangly. You were my best friend and I always thought you were beautifully perfect!" Ya, I know, I am pregnant and hormonal, sue me. It makes me laugh that I remember her old phone number from childhood and every year I have always thought of her on her birthday. Strange. But, like I said, I love being an adult more and more the older I get and realize that I am only living by the boundries I am setting for myself. I am branching out, no more fear, no more regrets. Well, working on that, I am still a shy, insecure, girl that no one gets who is a bit strange on the inside. =)


PS- remember how we both used to fight over who got to name our Barbie Jessica? You almost always got the right. I was very surprised to find out you didn't name your daughter Jessica. LOL.