Aborted Apostrophe Rescue Mission

I really appreciated all the comments on my last post. It was nice to hear from other people experiencing the same thing. Too bad we don't all live in the same town, huh?

Jenna's out of school for the summer, which isn't easy for either of us. I miss being able to mop the floor uninterrupted, and she asks "Am I going to school today?" every morning. Julia goes until June 4 (thanks to snow and tornado days that pushed the date back) and then we leave for Houston the next day. We're looking forward to seeing our Baytown friends at a certain wedding on June 7.

From the apostrophe abuse department: Every Tuesday/Thursday at Jenna's school since January, I've been walking down the hall past a bulletin board that says "PARENT'S" on it. Nothing after it, just PARENT'S. Meaning, I guess, that the information on that board is for parents. Which means the apostrophe is completely unnecessary. (Unless the board itself actually belongs to a parent. In which case, why is it hanging there?) All semester, I tried to get up my nerve to reach up and rescue that poor piece of punctuation from its incorrect usage. I never did. As far as I know, it hangs there still. I just really like the director and I really, really appreciated her getting Jenna into the school there (because I had just had a negative experience at her previous school and didn't want to take her back there. For what it's worth, the incident had nothing to do with punctuation.) I hope to keep Jenna in this school for the next two school years, and I think the director NOT thinking I'm an obsessive psycho freak would work to my advantage.

Also related to abuses of the English language, we received some coupons (yay!) in our paper yesterday that have "Stock-up on savings!" printed across the top of the page. Why is "stock-up" hyphenated? I'll tell you why. It's because Americans are losing their grip on their native language. I wonder if this is happening in other countries. Are people in Japan forgetting how to read, write and speak Japanese? I know the world has other problems, but it's troubling nonetheless.

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.

Back in the day

Yesterday was an extra-fun Sunday because I got to hang out with Marcia, a friend of mine from long ago. Marcia and I met the summer my family moved to Beaumont, TX, between 6th and 7th grade. We met at Camp Red Oak Springs and she was really my first southeast Texas friend. We stayed friends through junior high -- and even survived liking the same guy (who later married our other friend, Carol). And we stayed friends through high school even though we went to different churches and schools and lived 30 minutes apart. We had a lot of hilarious times together, but I can't really think of a funny story that would be appropriate to share here. I will say that one story involved a bra tied to a car antenna during a drive through Beaumont. Whose bra was it? And why was it there? I'LL NEVER TELL.

Anyway, we roomed together our freshman year at ACU, and then different majors and life in general took us different directions and we eventually lost touch.

We got back in touch recently, and it turns out Marcia's husband is from Little Rock and his parents still live here. So Marcia and her family came up for spring break and she and their oldest daughter met us at church on Sunday. Marcia was something of a celebrity at our church because quite a few of our members used to go to church with her in-laws and knew her husband when he was a kid. So all these people were chasing her down saying "You're Greg's wife! I used to babysit him!" It was pretty cool. Then Marcia and Eva came to our house and we hung out all afternoon. Our girls played while Marcia and I looked at photo albums and caught up on the last 17 (!!!) years. We even called the guy we both used to like and his wife Carol (who is my best friend, so it was OK) and harassed them during their Walt Disney World trip.

Marcia and I plan to see more of each other since they travel up here pretty often. Who knows -- maybe she'll pull into my driveway with a bra flapping from her car's antenna.