I have a very wide array of friends, an eclectic group some might say. Friends who make me laugh. Friends who don’t mind when I cry. Friends who are total geeks and proud of it. Friends who get me when no one else does. Friends I never talk to but I can connect back with in an instant. Friends who I see everyday and never get tired of. Lauren is one of those friends. She like the little sister I never had but always wanted. I love Lauren because we can go from the most serious conversation about life, love, and other mysteries to being completely silly seamlessly. Tuesday is our normal ‘lunch date’, but we also try to hang out at least one other day/evening each week. This week we decided to treat ourselves to pedicures on Sunday after church. Click To Continue Reading…

So Lauren and I went out last night to grab dinner and just catch up. We had a great time at Chili’s and in an effort to keep the night alive stopped at Barnes and Nobles. In the midst of perusing the discount books, we saw a small child come around the corner with her arm attached to… you know who. Being the mature adults that we are…. I grabbed Lauren’s arm and we took off running… straight into the corner of the store. There was only one way in… and no way for us to get out without crossing her path. We had not thought this one out… we would not be good criminals…. because in the span of 3 seconds we had been reduced from mature adults to cornered children. Eventually after much giggling, we proudly strutted out from our corner and straight to freedom. It was empowering… comical… and all-around a typical Lauren/Laurel moment.

I’m warning you now, this may not be a post you want to read. If for some reason you believe me to be lady-like or have some shred of dignity in my bones, this post will shatter that image of me…..
So tonight Jeff, Zac, Keri and I decided to meet for dinner at Ralberto’s before Zac and Jeff had meetings. Jeff had been out of town the past three weeks, and the rest of the gang was need some Chicago-time and wanted to hear all about Jeff’s trip to Thailand. Ralberto’s is one of those hole-in-the wall Mexican food places that has amazing food in an not so amazing environment. So we ate… we talked… we caught up… everything was going fine. Everyone had ordered their favorite dish and had finished when it looked to almost be time for us all to depart ways and continue with the rest of our evenings. All of a sudden, I felt a chip of ice catch in my throat and coughed to dislodge it. The first cough was minor but out of nowhere a second cough appeared. A strange cough…. an involuntary cough that was both juicy in sound and quite paralyzing because this cough was a puking cough. Oh yeah, that’s right I puked. I puked all over the table. I tried to stop it but only ended up with puke all over my hands, in my hair, and down my shirt. I was mortified…. freaking out, silent tears mortified. And everyone else was laughing. What could you do… I had puked and they found it funny. It was kinda like when you’re 8 and do something in front of your whole class that is the most embarrassing thing ever except this time it was random school children it was three of my best friends… who laughed. After what seemed like hours and was probably only minutes, Keri brought napkins to help me clean up as best as possible. Jeff even contributed to a campaign to make me feel better by purposefully spilling his drink on his shirt.. and all I could think was you spilled … I puked. Zac couldn’t stop laughing….. and eventually we all left. Cleaned up the table and went in our own direction…. as least I’ve earned my self a new nickname….. The Exorsister. Thanks, Zac.

So my short fling with Baldy ended. I’ve learned a few valuable lessons that I would like to share:

• Once a cheater, always a cheater. If for some reason you think he won’t cheat on you, he will. The grass will always be greener on the other side.
• You are who you are, not who he makes you. There’s nothing like constructive criticism, but if your whole life needs to be modified to meet his needs…. walk.
• Premature affirmation. If he says I love you before you can say I like you, forever may not be on your horizon.
• If he’s telling you about a ‘new friend’ and is guilty…. she’s more to him than a friend.

So i’ve learned some things… and, sure, I’m upset. Not because he was Mr. Everything. To be honest, he wasn’t really anything special…… his biggest selling point was his attraction to me and that didn’t take long to see through when he settled for the girl who was close and could meet his physical needs. But he was still something and for me, somethings don’t come around very often. Like once every 18 months or so. At least I know now to expect another one until the Summer of 2008. Maybe the future new boy and I can enjoy the Beijing Olympics together. That only last like 2-3 weeks…. that’s not too long to expect someone to stick around…. is it?

As a child growing up we played a game while driving called “The Game”. “The Game” was simple. Dad scanned through the radio stations and the first person to correctly name the artist singing a song got 1 point. This game filled many of the hours of my childhood, and schooled my brother and I in the music of my parents… the music before our time. Playing with my dad was always a trip. He found a way to skip over popular music stations leaving us only a single chord to identify the song but somehow managed to hover around the classic rock stations… he even referred to certain musicians by their first names or just last name… Dylan, Clapton, Stevie, and Neil. This upbringing is seriously what allowed me to enjoy one of the greatest concerts I’d ever been to… Click To Continue Reading…

Zac’s best friend, Joe, stopped by tonight for an impromptu hair cut. I’ve been cutting Zac’s for the last two months but his is quite easy….. buzzed the same length all around. So armed with a pair of beard trimmers and a pair of hair clippers with only two clipper lengths, a 2 & 7, I set forth to conquer Joe’s hair.  39 minutes later, we were both covered in hair but I’m pretty sure I could do it again.  He said I did better than another friend of ours who does it for a living, so I’m pretty stoked.  When I was five I wanted to be either a hairdresser or a math professor at Harvard, maybe I was on to something twenty years ago….

A friend’s dad died Thursday. They sent me an email and apologized for not being able to tell people bad news. Who does that? Who apologizes for not knowing how to tell a friend that their dad has died. Not your dad, their dad. The thing is… I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to say. Just said I was sorry. Deeply sorry that their family was facing this… sorry that they had lost their father…. and sorry there was nothing I could do. They replied that of everything they only needed one thing… to talk. So I did what I could, I talked to thrm at all hours of the night on the phone whenever they wanted. We talked about anything we needed to. I’m not sure how I would handle losing my dad. I look at Keri, and I wonder how she does it… how she faces the possibility of losing her father everyday… and I don’t know the answers but I do truly know one thing…. They’re gonna make it because they’re strong… because they loved their father and because of this love they could say goodbye… because surviving is sometimes all you can do.

My best friend, Sarah, came to town this weekend for some girly fun. Her husband was enjoying a visit from his brother, and she decided to escape and come up to Flagstaff. She hadn’t been at my apartment for over a year and a half and we hadn’t spent any non-wedding time together since last April. I wish I could express in words how awesome it was to see her or how much it meant for us to just be ourselves together. It was such a major event that I even cleaned my house! With Fabulouso! Sarah arrived around noon on Saturday, and we grabbed lunch at Little Thai Kitchen with Aaron. Then we came back to the house and watched Woody Allen’s Scoop. What a cute movie! Then there was a short marathon of America’s Next Top Model and dinner with Zac at IHop. IHop was seriously out of control. Zac and Sarah together meant that countless Laurel stories would be told. I can’t honestly remember the last time I laughed that hard. I was sure I was gonna choke on my pancakes….

Then it was John time. From the Grammy’s to everything else she hadn’t seen or heard, we bathed in the sounds of Mr. Mayer. The music of our favorite singer became the soundtrack to 5 hours of catching up. From dating, to marriage, to our jobs and having kids… we approached each topic with momentary singing outbursts. Finally at 3:45 am our eyes could no longer be held open and we crashed for the night. The next day we did a lil shopping and swapped new musical favorites before she went home. All in all it was an amazing weekend!

I had lunch today with Heather. It was the first time we had eaten lunch together or spent any time together since saying ‘goodbye’ at the airport in Chicago the day after Marilee’s funeral. We had relied so heavily upon each other for three months and then all of a sudden we were on two separate continents. She had separated herself because her grief and I separated myself for survival. Three months of being disconnected… three months of work frustrations overruling friendship needs and wants. Three months of ups and downs and life changes that somehow have to be prioritized into things we need to talk about today and things that can wait. If we would have stayed caught with each other there would be no ‘are we still friends?’ or ‘who is this person?’ worries, but we didn’t. Did we need Marilee to work? Did we need that middle ground? Could we survive without talking about her? Was the pain still too raw to say her name? I knew my answers… but didn’t know hers or ours.

So we silently drove to Frisco St. Grille, a favorite of the three of us and a haven during Marilee’s illness. Natalie sat us and surprisingly enough, we found ourselves easing into conversation. We caught up on each other’s lives and began to find our way back to each other. It was simple; no work frustrations were mentioned. No wounds were brought up. It was as if a clean slate had been presented to enough. Enough of a clean slate to allow us to cross over the bridge and begin a Marilee-less friendship. When it was all over, we set-up a date to regularly scheduled lunch for us. Not based out of emotional need but want. What we talked about wasn’t relevant. All that was was that we had talked because that is what I had missed most…. talking.

[coolplayer] Tickle Me Emo [/coolplayer]