To the Hommies

I had sat down tonight to write a gratitude journal. My day had ended on a slightly sour note and I wanted to refocus by focusing on the things that make me happy. In the interim I called my best friend and we chopped it up about life, about love, and about the injustices of them all. All of the things that had gotten under my skin I described, in vivid detail, to her. Her feedback was basically suck it up and take a video so that she can laugh about it later. Thank God for good friends.

Sometimes you need someone to commiserate with you and then tell you to get over it. Someone who agrees that while it is not fair, it is your situation and your responsibility to deal with it in grace and love. Sometimes you need someone both on your side and willing to take the other side. I am so grateful that I have that in my life. That and a glass of white wine.

When I spend any amount of time thinking about why I am not married I circle back to how full my life is sans husband. Income? Check. Fulfilling career? Check. Companionship? Triple check. Someone to listen to my worries? Check. Someone to laugh at me and tell me not to take myself so seriously? Double check. Amy crazy fact checker? Check. So much love that my heart is full? Check. Plus the freedom to adventure and find new friends? Check. The ability to buy $200 thigh high boots that no girl who is not a prostitute needs? Check. Being single is pretty fantastic in my book. But it is only fantastic because of the people whom  I am honored to have in it.

I love my friends. They breathe air into my life. They color my world, honestly mostly outside of the lines but that’s what draws me to them. The permission that I don’t have to follow the rules but I do need to know and acknowledge them. Keeping me grounded and letting me fly.

This blog is a gratitude to friendship. I’m so happy I have you all in my life.

Love you-

A

That time of year again

It looms. Like the dirty black cloud doesn't just predict a storm but the color itself carries with it all kinds of nefariousness and doom.What looms? The day in which I decide that relation-shipping is a thing to do. The day that reminds me that as much as I love single, maybe coupled is the place to be. The day I love to hate. Valentines Day.

Valentine's Day is a pagan holiday (holy day) with terrible roots. St. Valentine, in an effort to give soldiers going to war one last respectable roll in the hay, married the men to their sweethearts. This ensured that the men would have something to live for and that the women would wait. It was bloody and sordid. It was also illegal as deemed by the powers that be. But somehow from all that we get chocolate, flowers, and teddy bears.

The one time of the year I'm tempted to get into a relationship is now. Mostly so that I can get the candy and hearts. I know that logically I could buy my own candy and hearts. But it's not the same. I want someone to buy them for me. When I was a kid my best friend and I would anonymously send each other flowers on V-Day. Feel happy about it and like we cheated the system. I miss those days, when I knew that I was getting a gift regardless. When I didn't have to be in a romantic relationship to feel loved.

Every year I gear up and try to convince myself NOT to get into a relationship around this time of year. It's unfortunate because they are so easily had. But then I have to spend the subsequent following half of a year trying to untangle myself from this thing that I really didn't want. Such a pain. That marketing is so effective that I am convinced that I want a thing that I don't need just to have something that isn't good for me. Doesn't even make sense when I type it does it? Meh! Frustration.

Count down is on. 48 more hours. I can do this.

A