Home again.  I spent the last four days in North Carolina with my friend Stacey.  I had a great time, we caught up on everything and laughed so much my stomach hurt.  She is helping a friend out by staying at her house, a long term house sitting arrangement, which has her outside the city in a large house on a lake.  It was beautiful, and peaceful, and sitting out here with morning coffee trying to expel the shadows of the wine from last night was a great way to start the day.  She is exactly the kind of friend where we can say anything, or nothing, and it’s completely comfortable.  There is no judgment in our friendship, and that allows a lot of openness.  Last night after a bottle of wine we finally got into the last few months, and she knew me well enough, when I broke down sobbing, to not say anything, and just open another damn bottle and turn on the World Series.

We had a spa day, did a little shopping, and took her dog for walks.  We talked seriously about moving to Chicago, a desire I’ve had for a long time, that doesn’t seem to go away.  Friday night we went to dinner and then stopped in a bar (that I am sorry to tell you was called MILF’s) for a drink before heading back to the house.  Somehow we wound up in a game of pool with some guys whose names were Josh and Chad.  I have absolutely no idea now, nor did I then, who was who.  But we played pool badly and let them show off a little, until one of them (Josh? Chad? No one knows) starting putting the moves on my friend.  They were graphic clumsy silly moves and we could not even look at each other because we knew we would burst out laughing, and when they were outside or in the bathroom we threw money down on the bar and ran out like we were the Von Trapp family singers trying to get out of Austria.  It was ridiculous and hilarious.

The next day she realized that one of them (Josh? Maybe Chad) had sent her a friend request on Facebook, and we were able to forever remove him from contention based on his egregious use of “lol” after every statement.  It might sound picky, but a girl has got to have standards, amiright?