You know it is officially summer when...

I still can't get over the fact that it's JUNE.  The weather is warm, downright hot most of this week, which is something I LOVE unless I have to be outside doing something super important and have to appear attractive while doing it.  Otherwise, I love the hot.  I love to sweat, and sweat some more.

Even the heat isn't what signals it is summer, to me.  Aiden has been out of school for almost three weeks now, and even that doesn't make it feel like summer.  I still get up early in the morning, take him to daycare instead of to school, and I go to work.  I get to go outside once during the day in my walk to the Cancer Center to do my stocking and ordering there, but otherwise I am inside, until I clock out, roll down my car windows, and speed out of the parking lot.

Summer started today.

Today, after I had finished work, put a full hour in at the gym, went to the track and ran for half an hour, I stopped by Little Caesar's Pizza, picked up a cheese and a beef pizza and a couple of orders of bread sticks, picked Aiden up from the YMCA, and we drove down to the splash park. There, we met two of my best friends with their children, and we ate the pizza, the fresh fruit, we drank the water, and the boys ran around like crazy people.

Summer started today, because for the first time, my best friends and I had a chance to lay out in the sun and catch up.  We got to sit in the grass, gangly arms and legs and the breasts of mothers, and we smiled, and laughed and shared our lives.

These women mean the world to me, they have been there for me, saved me from myself more times than I can count, and because of that, they are my family.  The family that I CHOOSE.

We talked about boyfriends, past and present, plans for the coming weekend, what it is like to be single mothers to little boys.

Summer started today as our skin soaked up the vitamin D, the boys ran off to view Venus through a special telescope a group had set up (because Venus is passing between the earth and the sun for the first and only time in our lifetime.)  We made plans to do it again.

Summer started today as I drove home with sun-kissed skin, tired beyond all belief, and incredibly happy.

Friends on Fridays - Boy #2

Josh and I have been friends for a LONG time.  We're talking 12+ years long time.  His family was my family my last two years of high school.  If I wasn't at home or at work, you could bet money on me being at Josh's house.  We would cuddle under his blue sleeping bag and take naps.  I would lay on his living room floor while he banged continuously on his drums.  This is the boy who nearly broke my nose on his trampoline.

Josh and I fell out of touch in the months before I got pregnant with Aiden.  For a long time I thought I was in love with him, and I was certain that he would never be able to feel the same things back, or that he wanted to, but would never allow himself to.  It's amazing how things like love get jumbled up in our hearts and our heads when we're young.

It took me close to a decade to realize that my love for this boy was not the love you felt for a lover, but rather the love you felt for a friend, or a brother. 

In the last year, more than ever, Josh has served as my sounding board.  He is always there when I need him, only a text message away.  He has assured me, on too many occasions to count, that I am not a terrible mother, that I am not a terrible friend, that people LOVE me.  He makes his point known in a way that is loving but firm.  There is a no nonsense stance to him, and it has only ever gotten stronger as we've gotten older.  This man probably knows more about me than most people, only because he's known me long enough to be able to call me on my bullshit.  When he tells me things, I know they are true.  There is no questioning with Josh.

He took care of me when I was too drunk to walk.  He was my textual shoulder to cry on in the several occasions when it felt like my world was crumbling in on itself for various reasons.  He is the constant reassurance that I have a friend, who wants to be my friend, simply for the sake of being my friend.

I spent a lot of my high school years being mad at him.  Not for what he did, but what he failed to do, and that was fall head over heels in love with me.  Only now am I realizing that perhaps he did, but it was just a different kind of love.

Cheers, Josh.  Here's to another decade of pissing each other off and being there all at the same time.  I love you!

Suwanee : Day Twenty-One

Day 21 – Another moment

This last weekend, my parents invited me out to dinner at the local Tai restaurant.  I have never eaten Tai food before, but I knew that my friend Mike (who I'm sure will not mind me using his very generic first name) LOVES this place, so I brought him along.

My parents (as well as pretty much anyone who has ever eaten there) have been ranting and raving over what a good place this is.  We ordered spring rolls.  We got a sweet peanut sauce to dip them in, but also some soy sauce, a jalapeno vinegar, and a red hot sauce.  The hot sauce my mother keeps stock in at her house, and on the front of the bottle is a rooster.

Mike, with as much class as he is able to muster, asks my mother to "pass the Cock *quietly* sauce."

Hilarity.