A Change in Plans

My evenings usually go like this:
Hubs gets home.
Dinner of some sort.
Possible, and likely frozen yogurt run.
A slow sunset stroll.
Change into my favorite PINK sweats and one of Ben’s t-shirts.
Curl up on couch.
Play re-runs of Modern Family in the background.
Cuddle with the babe.
And blog.

And that’s how I like it.
We don’t really get out too much at night,
especially since birthing the Tasmanian toddler.

Tonight these were my plans,
and I was quite looking forward to
my elastic waist band and fro yo with coconut shavings.

But then I got a call from Nina,
that our dear and bestest friend Rachy-Poo {that’s what I call her},
had some exciting news to share with us over dinner.
I hadn’t seen Rachel in over a year.

Rachy-Poo was my maid of honor,
one of my college roommates,
and sat next to me in nearly every class in high school.
I would steal her pencils and hide her backpack,
we thought we were pretty funny back then.

The week Ben and I first met,
she drove me to the Santa Barbara airport at speeds that are certainly not legal
so that I could throw myself through the security check point and profess my undying love for this boy I had just met days earlier–but that’s a story for another day.

What I’m getting at is Rachel is pretty special to me.
And while Nina is that friend that I call multiple times a day
to talk about important matters like what I ate for breakfast,
how many diapers I had to change that day,
and what great bargain I just found at Target,
Rachel is the other kind of friend.

You know the one.
The friend that you can go a year without talking to
and then when you see each other its as if no time has passed at all.
You still complete each others sentences,
you still laugh at the same jokes
and you still make each other smile.

Because this kind of friendship is timeless.
This kind of friendship reminds you of a version of yourself you sometimes forget.
The old you.
The you before you had bills to pay,
babies to raise,
and real life decisions to make.
The you that played your music too loud,
laughed at Napoleon Dynamite,
and wore pajamas to the super market without batting an eye.
The fun version of yourself.
The young version of yourself.
The version of yourself that wasn’t so afraid of the unknown.

And tonight when Rach announced
that she quit her super important job to travel the world,
I couldn’t have been more proud.
Because in that moment, we weren’t looking back
and remembering a time when our dreams were bigger than our britches.
Nope, in that moment Rachel reminded me that NOW is the time to make those dreams come true.

No this doesn’t mean I’m packing up my suitcase to join her in Italy.
But it did get me thinking about my own list,
and how important it is to not forget what matters most to us.

Here’s to those friends that matter most.