I'm going to New York City tomorrow.  A weekend with my college roommates and life-long friends.  The four of us.  No kids.  Just a beautiful place to stay and a city full of things to do.

This is not my life.  I assure you.  When we vacation, it usually involves a trip to Ohio, crying, whining, and fighting kids and a very long plane ride or cross-country road trip.  And sometimes a dog.   

But apparently, 2011 is just my year.  London, iPad 2, NYC....I guess next year I will go completely gray, break my other foot, watch my laugh lines become actual wrinkles, have to put up with the children calling me gimpy gran, and Max will be relocated to Kansas (not that there's anything wrong with Kansas.)

So I will enjoy the last bit of "This is not my life" and have some fun in the city with my girls.  Do you have these kind of friends?  The ones you have known longer than your husband?  The ones who knew you when you were a political science major and still liked you after every election?  The ones who came to Appalachian Poverty awareness rallies at 8AM on a rainy Saturday morning just to support your cause?  (Even when what they really needed was to be sleeping it off.)  

This will sound completely corny, but there was something magical about our years spent pursuing higher education together.  I'd love to say it had something to do with our academic amazingness, or study groups, or the library, or creating something very scholarly and groundbreaking, or anything like that.  But no.  No offense ladies.  We were all good students but it was something else entirely.

It was Athens, Tiffin Hall, the Dr., running, Halloween, step class, Friday nights, 1705, the gorilla, football ga...I mean watching the Marching Band perform, jello shots, Memorial Weekends, Grand Canyon spring break trip and not talking for 36 hours straight, Jeff Hill, Palmer Fest, food with our initials on it, Aztec shower curtain, exam week, Thursday nights, Cat's Eye, The Front Room, "It's me Franco!" Saturday mornings, laughing together, crying together, and gold bricks. 

We may not see each other every day, talk regularly, or keep up with the details of each others lives the way we used to, but there was something about those years that have stayed with me since.  A closeness that time, distance and lack of regular communication will never touch. 

This weekend will be fun.  To be honest, the four of us could literally have fun in a cardboard box.  All we do is laugh anyway when we are together.  It doesn't matter where.  And while I would totally be willing to hangout with them in a cardboard box in Kansas just to see them, I'm not-so-secretly thrilled that it will be in New York instead. 

http://mygrassispurple.blogspot.com/2011/05/this-is-not-my-life.html