July | 2014 | Caged Moments

If you say “I think I’m just going to sleep with the first guy who tells me I’m pretty.” And her response is “five. The first five.” This is a non-judgemental friend who is also waiting for the details. Spill ’em, she’s worth it.

If she tells you how pretty you are every time she’s drunk, you love her. She might be saying it to everyone, but she really means it when she says it to you.

The port-o-potty is out of TP at 12 a.m. If she asks a stranger for a piece of paper towel…and tears it in half to share with you, keep her around.

If she can, and will, channel her inner “Family Law Attorney Voice”, and convince your Ex to send a child support payment or face jail, she’s rogue, but a great friend. (I’m sure pretending to be an attorney is super illegal, too, so this law-breaking bitch is a keeper. In this instance, I may have been that bitch. The point here is that no one fucks with my friends)

She questions why you’d keep 24 issues of National Geographic, and doesn’t nominate you for Hoarders when you say “Just incase. I mean. What if someone needs to do a project? This is good reference material.”

When she stops by and finds your keys still hanging from the door lock, she doesn’t have to ask an obvious question like “Did you know your keys are in the door?” Instead, she slides ’em out, throws ’em on the counter, and smiles…because she knows that’s just where you keep them sometimes.

If your daughter’s favorite chicken dies, she gives you three. And she doesn’t even care that your kid nicknamed them “the bad kids”.

If you make her cry during an office April Fool’s Day prank that convinces her she’ll probably be indicted for arson and lose her job…and she’s still your friend, she’s as sick as you are. Keep her.

If she brings her family over and and happily eats chicken nuggets, mac n’ cheese, and some other random leftover…and you then find she’s fallen into your couch for a snuggle, it’s love.

If you pass out early, she’s not bummed. She turns on the Wii and jams to Just Dance until she gets tired…and she does not take pictures of you drooling…only then do you know how awesome she is.

If she comes over to keep you company while you clean, and she ends up matching 742 pairs of fucking tiny mismatched socks, she just might be your fairy-godmother.

If you sign her up for Krav Maga, instead of Beginners Karate (like you told her), and she goes with you for a year, that bitch is hardcore.

If she takes you out after a terrible break-up and you drink Martini’s like water, she doesn’t get mad when you can’t help her get off Cape, because you’re throwing up in the car. (After all, it was your car.) And, if you wake up in your own bed to find her sleeping next to you, with a gallon of water and ibuprofen on the night stand…keep her. She loves you.

When you have your first one-night-stand after 13 years, and you’re still drunk the next morning, she has your dishes done when you get home because she’s awesome like that.

If SHE calls YOU on a work day/school holiday at 6:30 a.m. and says something like “Hey, incase you forgot school’s closed today, bring her here.” …and you DID forget (because you always forget)…not only does she know you like no one else, she is a life-saver. Probably a job-saver.

If she shows up to all your kids birthday parties, and sweats with you as she helps you do hair and make up for 45 kids in a performance of High-School Musical, and she doesn’t even have kids, she’s fucking insane. I mean…she’s a phenomenal friend. You better be babysitting her children for many-a-night-out down the road. Even if they’re bratty, snotty or shitty.

If she helps you pack and move in 7 degree weather, she’s a BFFL. But…if prior to that she helps to secretly label boxes incorrectly as “Office Supplies” so that other people don’t know they’re really filled with 5 years of school papers, bills, ticket stubs, pictures, receipts, school concert programs, and other things you say you’re going to file or put in a scrapbook…keep her forever.

If, hypothetically speaking, during a state-of-emergency snow storm, you wreck 15 cars inside a parking garage (and no one has arrested you), she sends her husband and father of five to pick you up and drive your car home. You two are going to have a lot to say in the nursing home!

Share a best-girlfriend story below in the comments.

Dad retired after 29 years of service on the Fire Department and I’m a summer cloud of emotions. I’m proud of him, happy and hopeful for him, and a splash of sad about this big piece of his life that just ended. I felt some weird feeling of grief, which is strange because it wasn’t really mine to miss. My dad is amazing, and when it comes to men, no one can really measure up.

This year has been filled with endings that are fucking me up a bit. Well, not really a bit. More like…a lot. This was just the latest. And, while I typically have an easy time disassociating emotionally, I’ve had more than one moment that left me feeling “fragile”.

I don’t like being so easily affected. I’ve spent years making sure that worst-case-scenarios are accounted for, expected, and then if they happen I’m not all that messed up. I’m a master at pre-processing all possibilities and being ready for any outcome.

Sometimes, though, a moment just happens. And, sometimes you don’t plan for. So…”fragile” is uncomfortable. I guess even icy bitches have weak moments. Some are harder to shake than others.

Dad’s retirement marks something for me. For all of us. It wasn’t so much his retirement as it was that something passed. An invisible place in time has been reached. There’s been a shift in my little world, too. A slip down a tunnel.

I feel a little bit like Alice, just far less tolerant. And the ‘Drink Me’ bottle doesn’t make me grow or shrink, it makes me have feelings. (Rolls eyes with annoyance.)

This morning, I’m walking backwards down my Dad’s steep driveway. We are heading out for a celebratory breakfast. We’re taking two cars and I’m shouting to my Dad. “Follow me! I have a general idea of where I’m going. If I start to look like I’m going in circles, just bear with me. I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay” he says and I turn. Then, “Hey Heidi!” I look back. “You’ve been like that your whole life, you know.”

We laugh. I smile. He’s not referring to driving, or directions. He means life. It’s true, and I do know it.

I’m glad he knows, too.

I need people patient enough to stick with me when I seem lost. Confident and trusting enough to ride it out because they know I’ll eventually figure it out.

This year has been a bitch. I think this is the part where I’m circling the problems. The place before I figure it out.

I got lucky this morning. At the exact moment that my Dad felt like being a wise-ass, I needed to be reminded that I always figure it out.

Don’t be afraid to drink the bottle. Something will happen. Then, like always, you’ll figure it out.