A safe place

We both just got conked over the head with a frying pan in this picture.
Jeanine and I got our best "wigs" on and went out on the "town" for "drinks" for my "birthday". Unfortunately the waitress made my big birthday "drink", a strawberry lemonade with bloody marry mix rather than Strawberry, so when I gulped a quarter of it down like I'd never had anything to drink before in my life, I almost puked. Hello, HOW MEAN IS THIS!?!?!?! Here I was 33 weeks pregnant and she put horseradish in with my lemonade? Does she not know the rath of prenatal heartburn!!! AND she still charged me 3.50 for the drink, which she replaced and profusely apologized! $3.50 for a non alcoholic /non caffeinated drink, what a disgrace! :)

Am I over using quotes? I'm doing them in the air as I type them too!

Something was wrong with the camera flash, so of course all of the "good" pictures were taken without a flash and this is what were we left with.

Oh well, the visit was wonderful. I happen to be a girl fortunate to have a few BFFs in my life, and Jeanine is definitely one of them. I wish she lived closer, but over the past few years we've managed to see each other several times a year and for that I am grateful. Her kids are getting a little older and travel away from them (or with them) becomes easier for her and Otto, while it is still a logistical nightmare for me. When I think of Jeanine, I think of a person with whom I feel completely safe emotionally. Someone I can share anything with and whose opinion I trust and respect.

We can talk about nearly every topic from parenting to religion, being good wives to being good daughters, loving and hating our childhood poverty, and we laugh and laugh and laugh. We cry and dump and laugh and the time is always too short but we leave feeling absolutely refreshed and recharged. I even showed her that I was still sporting the tail end of the pedicure she'd treated me too back in July...and she loved me anyway! Note to self: must get a new pedicure.

Except for the fact that we were so alike in so many ways, we were unlikely friends from the beginning because we were in SUCH different places in life. We met at 21 years old when Jeanine had an 8 month old baby and a one year old marriage and I had a knack for partying until the wee hours. We laugh now at how I'd come into work in the morning all disheveled and unshowered and hungover, and she'd have spent hours up already with her baby after not sleeping through the night, wondering if "those were my real legs... like without nylons?". Of course I was too insecure to see the beauty she saw in me. And vice versa. She trained me at my job at NYK Line and we just connected, spent every lunch together, both of us broker than the other, bringing in horrid things like tomato soup with a can of corn and bragging at how for the ten bucks we'd lent each other when for groceries for the week. Oh, those were the days. (What amazes me is that SHE was in new marriage, new baby mode, and was going through this and I was so naive to what that would have been like!) When I met Lawrence she drooled with me over the daily and sometimes two-a-day cards he sent to me, complete with heartfelt love letters. She told me he was the one and she was right. We BONDED so closely, and when I moved away from Boise to NJ to get my CPA license, and subsequently asked her to be in our wedding, she thought I was joking. She was just hoping to be invited. She still says it was one of the most wonderful weekends of her life, and it means a lot to me that my wedding meant that much to one of my friends. (Also it was her and Otto's FIRST weekend away since having kids 6ish years before - but I like to believe it was the confessing our undying love on the mountain top that really sealed the deal for her.)

She is a wonderful example of a mother and a wife, and since her kids (now 12 & 9) are turning out pretty darn good, and her marriage is strong despite some serious trials (we all have trials, but you try getting married when you are 21 to a 20 year old boy and see how easy the next 13 years are! Oh and get pregnant 3 months after the wedding, just to spice things up a bit!) I'm glad I've looked up to her all these years. She's doing things right, even though she hasn't always been sure of that. The wisdom and insight she's offered up to me time and again has been priceless for my own life.

I could go on and on and on about how much I love this girl and how everyone should know her and how every girl should have a Jeanine in their life.

Thank you Jeanine for being all you are to me. (Oh, wait, Jeanine's ONE downfall....I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME GET HER TO READ MY BLOG!!!!! :) though she claims she's checking it now that I beraded her for not! we'll see about that...comment please!)

When you think back over the years or now, who is your "safe place"? If you don't have one. Get one. Because we need friends to survive this life! I am blessed with many of them, each so wonderful and special and contributing to the person I am in some great way.