Being back in my hometown has been wonderful. It has been a long time since I was able to be here for this long. Usually I come home for a week or so at Christmas or whenever there is a wedding. But having a whole month here is luxurious.
To me being from Cle Elum is a pretty special thing. I have always been proud to say that I was from there. If you have ever driven from Seattle East on I-90 then you have been past Cle Elum and may have even giggled at the "Easy Thru Access" sign. Most people I have talked to who actually know where Cle Elum is usually say, "oh yeah, I peed there." Being "home," and no matter where I live this will always be home, always leaves me feeling refreshed and my husband jokes with me about having my "batteries recharged." I could go on for days about the wonderful things that are Cle Elum, and about growing up in Cle Elum but that is not the reason for my post.
Coming from a small hometown has afforded me great friends with whom I have grown up with and have strong friendships that have lasted over a decade or more and whom I have millions of memories. It's these friends I am going to brag on today.
My best friend, T, has been my best friend since she asked me if we could be best friends at lunch time in the seventh grade. She and I had been friends since the first grade and one of my first memories of her was spending the night at her house, playing with her ducks and having her little sister annoying us. When I think of CE she is one of the first people I think about and whenever I do get the chance to be home we always make sure to get together for at least a few hours. I could probably fill up volumes of books with all the things we have done together. We have been to Hawaii together twice, done a lot of camping and have had a lot of fun filled with debauchery. She is the kind of friend who is a rock. We were in both of each others weddings (in the same year) as well as lots of other firsts together. With our friendship getting close to a quarter of a century we have literally grown up together and I know we will grown old together.
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| T and I at Stehekin for 8th Grade Honors Camp. | Halloween 1999 at the CE DQ |
My other awesome Cle Elum friends with whom I always need to get in touch with when I am around are my DQ girls. Although we have been friends since we were in middle school we really didn't bond till they were freshly graduated from High School and I had just completed my first year of college and working the summer before going back to college at the CE DQ. We all really bonded that summer over late nights at the DQ, silly camping trips and lots of drives to Seattle to go shopping. TR ended up transferring to WSU just 8 miles from UI where I was going to school and we got to hang out at the Pullman DQ working together until graduation. We had so much fun that summer that we have a theme song, "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls which may seem weird but we had so much fun blaring it out the car windows on the way to the lake and singing at the top of our lungs. In the 10 years since that summer we have been through a lot together, including weddings and babies, and when we are all together I know we know we are going to laugh a lot and leave with lots of new memories. Now they both have little families of their own and we hope that someday I will maybe have a little girl and they can all carry on the tradition and the fun times we had together.
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| Circa 1999 on our way somewhere. | New Year's 2002 |
Another bestie of mine is more like a sister. She and I are totally cut from the same cloth. We can't be in the same place for very long without laughing so hard that we are crying and our stomachs hurt. I can think of a hundred stories that include us laughing hysterically. We met in Alaska when I was living there on my "sabbatical" from school, yeah that sounds good, and my aunt had gotten me a job at the Electric company in the department in which she worked. I am bit of a quiet person at first but I am an observer. One day I had heard her talking about the series finale of 90210 and I popped up over my cubicle wall to talk about it and we have been friends ever since. We try to get together at least once a year and usually the destination is Las Vegas where we eat, drink and laugh a lot. I really think she is my soulmate/sister and we have had a great 10 years with a lot more ahead of us.
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| Before a Soul Asylum concert. We had all won tickets on the radio. | Circa 2002 at our summer lunch spot. |
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| Vegas 2009 |
My last, but not least, bestie that I want to talk about that I have been friends with for over a decade I met at the University of Idaho on French Hall. My first memory is of her standing in my RA's room with her bright red pea coat (it was January in Idaho). I was really curious about the new girl and she ended up hanging out with our small group of girls and she and I totally bonded over our love of Frank Sinatra. She and I were always together for the years we are at UI. We even got the same tattoo, a Buddhist symbol that represents eternity. Our decade of friendship has been filled with a lot of laughs, pop culture and pure craziness. We have grown in to adults together which is coming a long way from the girls who used to do made up cheers on the Tower lawn.
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| We were taking some of our guy friends "presents." | We loved the teepee at the park and would ditch class to drive out there. |
This was just a little bit about my besties that I have had for a decade or more. They are my friends and sisters who I have grown up with and whom I will grow old with. I couldn't imagine any better friends to have shared all these years with and I would love to share every memory of them right now but I don't have the time but I can guarantee you that the stories I have to tell would make you laugh and cry. Love you girls!
My girls in my wedding.
And finally, I love this song, and I dedicate it to all my great friends whom I have known for decades or whom I have known for only a few years.
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