Another Friend Getting Married, Another Awesome Celebration

I'm 29-years-old, as are most of my friends, so perhaps no surprise that over the last three summers everyone has gotten married.   In the last year alone I will have gone to 8 weddings, and three more are in the next two months. The downside: It's burned a hole in my wallet.  Between traveling to the celebration and bachelorette parties, buying gifts, boarding the pup every time, and of course, figuring out what I'm going to wear:  we have spent thousands.

  But the upside (and it's a major upside): So many excuses to see old friends and celebrate!

DIY glittered champagne bottles and a cake shipped in from
NYC courtesy of Abby, Millie's sister and maid-of-honor.

...This weekend was one of them as a number of my best college friends came together in Chicago for Millie's bachelorette party.  The wedding is in Michigan this September.  We're all bridesmaids, along with Millie's sister, cousin, and best friend from high school.  So a celebration.  It involved staying in a beautiful downtown condo that belongs to one of the bridesmaids family members, hand glittered champagne bottles courtesy of Millie's sister, some State Street shopping (the stores downtown have changed so much!), and the opportunity to test out dozens of different scented oils and create our own blend of perfume.

Personalized perfumes created!  Mine is entitled "To Harriette, With Love,"
and is a blend of pink sugar, white tea, and citron oils.

At Aroma Workshop creating our custom scents.

This is a beet margarita.  Sounds icky, it's amazing.  Millie's sister, Abby, is the executive chef at a Grand Rapids restaurant which serves these.  She squeezed the lemons and limes right in front of us to come up with this awesome concoction. 

The view from the condo where we stayed. Ridiculous, right?

Enjoying the view on Saturday morning.

Met the first day in the dorms and still, love these girls so much.

Reconnecting

A Mini High School Reunion: Me, Kelli, Jenny, and Emily holding the babies. (Niveah, Molly, Ella, and Noelle)

One of the main reasons I began the '101 goals' list was in the hopes of final reconnecting with people from the past.  There are so many people I love and adore that I haven't made the effort to visit or talk to over the years.  That said, the past couple weeks have been amazing as I finally reached out to old friends, have been reunited, and well, as expected, have had an amazing time.

I visited Kelli in Winnebago.  We hadn't seen each other for maybe two years, despite the fact that she's just lived an hour and a half from me for the past year.  Her husband took Spencer and I boating on the Rock River, double bonus for reconnecting.

Maddie, also from high school, and I have seen each other twice in the last couple weeks, as she just moved to Chicago to take a teaching job.

Seeing old friends.  It really has made me happy.  I saw most of them in Galena (see first picture), when I went back for the first time in nearly two years.  The last time I was there I was actually with my mom, celebrating her 60th, and final, birthday. 

The town has changed.  As a once-local who hasn't visited much in ten years I really notice it.  It's little things.  Like the way the Newton's old home on Park Ave is now light blue rather than white.  The mansion Jessica P's dad had been working to fix-up for years on end, right across from Grant Park, looks as though it's finally finished. And it's bigger things.  Rec Park has been completely reworked.  You can no longer drive in a circle around the park: the road mom used to bounce along to pick us up from the pool has been covered with grass, picnic benches and playsets have been built over it.  A wide sidewalk has been put in along the road leading to the pool (it was always an unsafe bike ride growing up). What was once Sullivan's or Stair's (our family's small-time grocery store followed by a number of other businesses) is now a bridal store.  The gas station by Piggly-Wiggly (formerly Dick's) has been turned into a Chinese Buffet.  No joke.  There's a new hospital on the west end of town and, a disappointment to me, Galena's green flood gates have been painted beige.  Just outside of Galena, in Dubuque, Cinema Center 8 is gone.  The place where mom and dad took us to countless movies on hot summer days, is now just a field of parched grass.

I could go on for far longer, and also list all the people who are now married, who have families, who have passed away, there's just so much change.  Looking at it from a distance makes it apparent.  With mom gone, seeing the changes made me even more sentimental.  Parts of our families past have literally been bulldozed, built over, repainted, and forgotten.  Life really does go on. 

It's why it's been so great to reconnect with high school friends.  They represent a link to my past.  My family's past in Galena. Connections to them mean I still have a link to my hometown despite having no super close family there.  It's odd for my sisters and I.  We grew up in a town where we don't have a home anymore. It makes it easy to forget how many memories are there, and how much support.  After going back, I feel grounded again.

Galena, IL

Reunited

I had a fallout with a  close friend four months ago.
Correction.  I thought I had a fallout with a friend.  In our last email correspondence he apologized for being a bad friend and taking so long to reach out to me after a breakup. I told him 'Hey, no biggie, although you do sometimes suck as a friend.'
And we hadn't talked since.  Until last night.  The one friend I regularly saw, talk to about my family, my mom, and my dating life, and really felt close to, just disappeared.

I was sure he'd ridden me off, that he'd decided if he's such a 'bad friend' maybe we shouldn't be friends at all.  And apparently, he was sure I had ridden him off. Decided he was a bad friend not worth my time.  See, I lost my job shortly after that email, and he'd been texting my work phone.  He says he text me several times and gave up after he didn't hear back from me.
And so last night when we saw each other at a party, hugged, and sorted it out, I started crying.  In fairness, the alcohol may have added to it too. 

As I cried, and we both laughed, about the misunderstanding, Spencer pointed out how funny it was that neither of us just picked up the phone and called one another.  He's right.

I lost one of my best friends for four months because of a miscommunication.  Funny how that works.  Sad, really.  But we're reunited now, and (cringe, cliche) it feels so good.