Friends

1974, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1983, 1989, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2006.

Those are all the years that I have moved. Either with my family growing up, going off to college, or moving with my husband or husband and child/children. As much as I dislike moving, and as much as I never want to move again, you could say I'm a pro at it.

A big part of moving is making new friends. I can look at all of those years up there and know which town we moved to and who my closest friends were in that town.

Except for one.

While hanging out at the mall with Julia and Jenna this past Saturday, and then again while eating lunch with them after church (Chad was out of town) on Sunday, I had a startling thought. My best girlfriends, right now where we live, are my children.

Of course I have adult friends. There's Carol, my BFF since college who lives in Waco. There's Lois, my best Baytown girlfriend. I still talk to the two of them just about every week.

And I have friends here that I go to lunch with every Wednesday while we're doing Community Bible Study during the school year. I have friends who live close to me -- some from church and some who are parents of my daughter's friends -- who are quick to help with different things, like picking up kids from school or checking on pets if we're going out of town. I really enjoy being with these people. I'd like to get to know them better. I just haven't yet.

I believe there are several reasons for this:

1) Moms of young children are busy. I kind of wish we were like 1950s housewives, who gathered for coffee in someone's kitchen every morning after the kids left for school. But our culture left that behind a long time ago. I got a bit spoiled in Baytown, because my best friend there was retired. I could call her up at 11:45 a.m., say "Want to go to lunch?" And she pretty much always said, "You bet!" We've both really missed those lunch dates over the past two years.

2) I work at home. There are a lot of great things about this, but one problem is that it can be quite isolating.

3) It's easier being friends with people online that in real life. On Facebook, I've reconnected with my best friend from elementary school as well as a lot of people from high school and college over the past year. I'm even Facebook friends with the guy who was my second-grade boyfriend. It's so easy to sit down at the computer, type out a quick message to someone, and then be on my way.

4) I have an innate shyness that has gotten much better over the years. But it still causes me to aware of the fine line -- whether it's real or imagined -- that exists between "getting to know new people" and crashing a long-celebrated, close-knit party to which you aren't sure you are invited. The "new kid" complex. I guess I've existed there for a while now.

5) I could say that the people we know here are spread out across Little Rock and its surrounding areas, which could make it hard to get together with on a regular basis. But the Houston area is like that, too, and I still managed to have friends in Baytown, Houston, Clear Lake, La Porte, Deer Park, Cove and Barbers Hill. (OK, so Cove is a two-square-mile area. But it really is amazing how many people I knew in those two square miles.) But now that I think about it, gas didn't cost then what it does now.

I like hanging out with my girls. But I don't think they need to be my best friends. Besides, the oldest is just a few short years away from junior high, at which point she will begin thoroughly hating me for no particular reason. So something needs to change before then.

Which brings me to my summer plans. My goal is to hang out with people I haven't hung out with yet. And hang out more with people I have hung out with. I'll either end the summer with closer friends, or a whole lot of people who just want me to leave them the heck alone. We'll see what happens.

Little Church-Owned Houses... for You and Me

We closed on the house this morning! On the way to the title company, Chad and I were talking about the different houses we lived in growing up. So I decided to blog about mine.

Birch Street, Lovington, New Mexico: We lived here from when I was born until just after my 3rd birthday. I was little, but I remember a lot about the house. I remember the dark blue carpet and the way the house was laid out with the living room in the front, the kitchen behind it and the bedrooms down a hallway to the right. I remember watching Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights while my mom rolled my hair up in those pink sponge curlers. I remember my brother Brian breaking his arm in the front yard. I remember running around the backyard with Snoopy, our puppy.

Highland Street, Hobbs, New Mexico: My dad got a youth minister job at Taylor St. Church of Christ, and that church had a parsonage. It was one of the nicest houses we ever lived in, and the only four-bedroom house we had. Brian and I were big fans of The Brady Bunch at the time, and I remember thinking that if we had an Alice, she could live in the extra bedroom. I was three and four when we lived there.

700 Trailing Heart, Roswell, New Mexico: We never knew what "Trailing Heart" meant, but this house was cool. It was the parsonage owned by Country Club Road Church of Christ, where my dad was the youth minister. The church building was fairly new, and for some reason the elders were afraid the youth group was going to tear it up. So the church paid to turn our double garage into a giant activity room so the teens would hang out there instead of the church building. It was awesome. It was carpeted and had a (8-track!) stereo and a ton of games. On the last day of school that year, my kindergarten class took a field trip to the park that was right across the street from our house. It started pouring down rain and as the class was running for the bus, I told our teacher that we could just go over to my house. "Are you sure that's OK?" she asked. I assured her that it was, and you can imagine my mom's horror when my entire kindergarten class showed up unannounced at the front door. We had fun though -- sitting in a circle in the big room playing Duck, Duck, Goose.

2713 Carol, Big Spring, Texas: We moved to Big Spring so my dad could be the youth minister at 14th and Main Church of Christ. The church had a parsonage on Cindy Lane, but it needed some work so the church rented us a house on Carol Street until the other house was ready. Apparently, the rent house also needed some work and the elders' wives who met us at the house the day we moved were horrified at the condition it was in. I didn't notice, though. The house was huge and I could make a full circle in it on my Big Wheel.

2502 Cindy Lane, Big Spring, Texas: Finally the house was ready and we moved over to Cindy during my 2nd grade year. I loved this house, too. It had fluffy yellow carpet and my best friend lived one street over. When we moved away in the middle of 3rd grade, I missed this house more than any of the other houses.

103 North 3rd St, Lovington, New Mexico: Yep, back to Lovington so my dad could be the YM at 3rd and Central Church of Christ for the second time. We lived in the parsonage right across the street from the church. There was a separate building in our backyard where the teens met for class on Sunday mornings. So my dad walked out the back door across the backyard every Sunday morning to teach class. This was a small house, but we liked it. I remember watching Dallas on Friday nights with my mom in the living room, and feeling very modern because we were now living in the 1980s.

805 West Gore, Lovington, New Mexico: This was the other house the church owned. The preacher and his family had been living in it, but they built a house and moved, leaving the Gore Street house open for us. This was another nice house. I lived there for 4th, 5th and 6th grade. Over the years, I've met several other children of former ministers from 3rd and Central who lived in this house. One had found where I had written "DEANA WAS HERE" in my closet and he said for years he had wondered who Deana was every morning as he was picking out his clothes.

4060 Redwood Drive, Beaumont, Texas: Ridgewood Church of Christ in Beaumont had no parsonage, so for the first time in 12 years, we bought a house. Beaumont was my dad's hometown and we moved in right down the street from his parents/my grandparents. This was the house that I felt the most at home in. I moved in as an 11-year-old kid and moved out as a 22-year-old married woman. After Brian left for college, I moved into his room where I had my own bathroom. This was especially handy for the nights my boyfriend sneaked up to the house so we could kiss through my bathroom window. My parents moved to Houston in 1994, and Chad and I made one more trip to Beaumont to get my last bit of stuff from the house. I cried when we drove away.

Chad and I have lived in eight apartments/houses/townhouses since we got married in 1993. Our realtor just came by and gave me the keys for the house we closed on today. Hopefully it will be the last house on my list for a long while.