Stay Beautiful

My family loves me. My family loves me. My family loves me. My family loves me.

I don’t sit like this all day in a comatose state, rocking back and forth, staring out the window with drool coming out of the sides of my mouth.
Only on Tuesdays.
I make sure they get their undies folded, homework checked, cartwheels in gymnastics classes get cheered on, their cheerleading uniforms are always clean, there is always money in their lunch accounts, the driving, the cleaning, the doing, it is all being done, sometimes even with a smile on my face.
At night, I fall into my bed with my weary, but amazing husband who never complains about his wife and her smells of Ben-Gay or her lack of oomph and we talk about our days, his long 12-14-hour days at his dealership and we pass out after sometimes even sneaking a kiss or two in.
Yes, I am there, but not really.

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Over the past seven years, I have developed a friendship with two high school friends I reconnected with on Facebook: Kari and Vikki.
Actually, one of the above friends, I wasn’t actually “friends” within the small-town Ohio high school we attended, More like “acquaintances,” but we shared a few classes together and so we friended each other like people excitedly did on social media back in 2008 when Facebook was new to us.
At that time, I had a six-month-old baby and an eight-year-old little girl, and I was just so excited to read about other people’s lives.
Especially those who I went to high school with, those who lived far, far away, who could take me far away from baby bottles, pacifiers, dirty diapers, Hannah Montana and High School Musical please and thank you.
Not that I didn’t love being a mom, but when you are in the thick of it, sometimes it’s just too thick, if you get my drift.

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It was through Facebook and then after I started my blog in 2010, that the three of us grew closer each year.
They would comment on my blog, we would write comments on each other’s Facebook pictures, we would send each other funny pictures via email or recipes that we think each other would like.
It was like having pen pals, only in the digital age.
The difference was that I knew these pen-pals; I felt comfortable with them; I had grown up with them.
It was this cool story of three girls who had once known each other, but grew apart, then grew back together again.

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Over the past six months, we have messaged on Facebook continually, and over text as well, with notifications that I have to mute because they are so ongoing that my family literally laughs out loud when it DING’S.
“It’s your KariVikki text going off, Mom!” 
They were “with” me when I went to my oldest daughter’s high school orientation, telling them how unbelievably massive her high school was (THREE FLOORS!) and laughing because I knew only they would truly understand how little I would feel walking inside of it.
Whenever I typed “OMG” on my iPad, it said “I JUST FARTED”, we laughed so loud and so hard it woke my youngest daughter who was laying next to me in bed while we were on vacation.
When we are having a bad day, we tell each other (sometimes before our loved ones) just because it is a nice sounding board before having to tell the rest of the world.
We are each other’s cushion in a really un-cushiony world.

So these humans have been that for me for a few years now.
A non-judgment zone to make me laugh/cry/laugh again, and I love them so very much.

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Fast forward to this crappy winter of 2015.
They know, as do most of my family, friends and you lovely people here how icky this winter has been for everyone, but especially for me as I have been meandering through this King of Pain Tour 2015.
I have talked about it here and there in texts with them, but honestly, I never wanted to dwell on it too much with them because to literally talk about pain brought me physical pain.

They know I have been a mess.
So this past weekend, my friends who both work full-time jobs, have kids and dogs and responsibilities, re-arranged their lives and took vacation days from work, and drove seven hours from Ohio with a car full of food to love on me.
Without me knowing.

Gulp.

They had been planning this with my husband since NOVEMBER!
So on a Friday afternoon, they knocked on my garage door, and there they were in all their glorious absolute beauty like two angels from above.
Standing in the frigid cold ready to hug me, feed me, and love me.

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We sat at my dining room table, with our favorite hometown Jones Chips, listening to 80s music and looking through our old yearbooks, laughing at popped collars, talking about all the people we had study hall with, who we had crushes on, who we went to reunions with…

We laughed until we cried; ate more chips; made comments like WHY IN THE HELL DID WE WEAR OUR HAIR LIKE THAT? can you believe we are almost 50?, why don’t we live closer?

We did some 30-year high school reunion planning, helped Ellie with her massive amounts of first-grade makeup homework (back in our day we didn’t have this kind of homework), wait, did we just say “back in our day??”. We stayed until midnight, laughing, talking.

It was the best Friday night I have had in a very long time.

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On Saturday, Anna had a house full of teenagers over, so Kari, Vikki, Ellie and I were pushed out of the house, Ellie and I took them to one of our favorite places to eat, Portillo’s (they had never been), and they loved it.

On the way to Portillos, I told them a funny and long story about how, when I first moved to Illinois in 1989, I wooed some boys I worked with with my central Ohio accent. Wooed is not the correct word. My accent piqued their interest.

So, while we were at Portillo’s, one of the employees, Dominick, was cleaning up tables nearby and started chatting with my friend, Kari, as she was emptying her tray into the garbage.
They had a lengthy conversation about a variety of topics, and she mentioned she was from Ohio, to which he replied, “Oh,” and walked away.

When she told us this after returning to the table, Vikki and I just laughed and laughed.
Then, as we were leaving to use the restroom, Dominick returned to our table, this time leaning into Vikki and whispering in her ear, “stay beautiful.”
To say we nearly peed our pants would be an understatement.
“See?” I said to Vikki. It’s the accent!”

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On the way home, we went and visited an old friend.

Mr. John Hughes.

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This you need to know about my Ohio people, family, or friends: they come into your kitchen and just start cooking.
My mom does this when she comes to visit.
She goes to the grocery store and just starts whipping things up.
This makes me happy.

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Kari arrived with cutting boards, knives, pickle juice, and everything else she needed for preparing my comfort food.
My friends, Mike and the girls, sat in the kitchen and told stories, listened to the Polish Prince, and just loved on each other while she was cooking.
Rebecca came over and got to meet these women who she had only met on Facebook, and it was so cool to see my two worlds collide; my adult Chicago life and my childhood Ohio life, over homemade deep-dish pizza in my little Illinois kitchen.

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Vikki got the computer ready to do some Internet stalking browsing.
I got to see Vikki and Kari’s houses and the roads they drive on as if we were in Richland County, Ohio.
We discussed the morning Vikki’s grandmother died in a car accident. We talked about how long it takes Kari to get from her house to her parents’ house. We sang Bobby Vinton around the table, discussed favorite recipes, and wondered when we could do it all over again.
And why were we not best friends in high school?

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Kari made deep-dish pizza and pierogi pizza from scratch.
Amazing.

We cuddled up with blankets and watched movies from our teenage years.

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The following day, we set out to see the sights of Chicago with a focus on John Hughes films.

The day was filled with teen memories, movie lines, laughter, and a plethora of movie quotes.

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HI, TEE HEE. courtesy of loroutloud.com

I apologize for blurring Ellie’s face. It’s not your fault. Keeping her protected from creepers.

Grandad. Who also looks a ton like Bates from Downton Abbey.

I wanted to cry when she recognized the name.

They had no idea we were there to see a loved one.
That day, a great-granddaughter read her great grandfather’s name for the first time on her own.
Also, Ellie said that she did not want to leave the bar that day because “this place is really, really fun.”
Her 100% Irish grandfather was grinning from ear to ear somewhere in Heaven.

courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org