The Outer-Memphis Cheese Club: Frisco, TX

I'm not sure how I survived.  The inaugural meeting of the Outer-Memphis Cheese Club reminds me that I am lucky to have made it out the other side in one piece.

On a previous trip to the Dallas area, my friend and colleague Carla invited me to her house for dinner.  Sitting at the table with her youngest, Tori, the three of us make small talk while Carla works on dinner.  Carla places a bowl of shredded cheese on the table near me and when she isn't looking, I take a pinch and put it in my mouth.  Tori was looking.  So a few minutes later, she does the same thing and - busted - mom catches her.  When Carla tells Tori to stop, I explain it is my fault, I did it first but that I just love cheese so much I couldn't help it.

"I love cheese too", Tori says, "I am in a cheese club."  I ask if I can join.  She says no.  Then she begins to explain the complex reasons beginning with, "You have to go to Memphis".  What?  Why Memphis?  No satisfactory answer is forthcoming.  I continue to plead my case as Carla's oldest, Charlotte, comes in and wants to know what we are talking about.  When I tell her, she says she also wants to be in a cheese club so that seals it, Charlotte and I decide to form our own club right then.  Tori isn't happy with us and now wants to be in our club.  I tell her that I will get with the other members (currently just Charlotte) and we will vote on it and let her know.  When the middle of Carla's three girls, Caroline, comes home, we let her in the club.  Tori is never given a decision  regarding her pending membership on that trip.

But now, I am coming back and Carla and I have decided to surprise the girls with a cheese club meeting and I have the perfect name: The Outer-Memphis Cheese Club.  My customer's office is right next to a specialty grocery store so on the way out of town, I stop and pick up supplies:  7 types of cheese (Smoked Gouda, Edam, Dublinger, Manchego, Kickapoo Blue, Camembert and Lemon Goat); 3 jams (Fig, Pricky Pear and Super Fruit); 2 kinds of crackers; honey; butter cookies; and most important, an assortment of chocolate truffles.  Carla has agreed to supply the venue and the beverages.

When I arrive Carla and I set about making a nice layout.  She has nice dishes and platters out and even champagne glasses for the girls for the sparkling grape juice (which 2 of the girls happily don't like, leaving most of the bottle for me). 

Someone is very interested in testing the truffles and I almost caught them in the act.  Ironically, Carla also picked up chocolates.  Great minds.  It is an impressive spread.  There are also meatballs, two kinds of smoked sausage and Hawaiian rolls.

 

While waiting on Tony, Carla's husband and our only male member, to get home we decide to come up with some club rules.  And because Caroline immediately sits down next to me and starts to write them down, she is voted in as our club secretary.

 

1. You can refuse to try 2 items per meeting.
2. There must be chocolate at all cheese club meetings.
3. All meetings must have a minimum of 4 cheeses.
4. There will be at least one new cheese at each meeting.
5. If you are late to the meeting, you forfeit your chocolates.
6. You are not allowed to cut the cheese during the cheese meeting.

Carla made us some sheets where we could rate each item.  We would also go around the table and read our comments out loud.  The plan was to try each cheese at the same time but some of the members were very impatient and/or invoked their "no try" clauses.  Here is Caroline's rate sheet.

 

As the comments are read by the girls, they read it all.  So for example, when Caroline reads her comments for Kickapoo Blue we hear:  Makes me want to barf exclamation point frowny face broken heart exclamation point frowny face broken heart.  When we get to the next one, Camembert, that practice has to be discontinued.

 

Struggles - like this one over the comments being read - begin to break out.  The girls generally want us to go faster and not worry about telling our comments.  Tony is very detailed in his comments (all of the comment sheets are at the end of this post) and some of the girls grow agitated and impatient...there are chocolates waiting.  They complain, they yell at each other.  One of the girls reveals herself to be something of a "scorekeeper", taking me back to my own days as the mother of 3 young children.  My daughter would count the donuts in the Mrs. Baird's bag of powdered sugar donuts and inform the rest of us how many we were allowed to have.  Never mind that I purchased said donuts.  There are issues with the seating arrangements at one point because two of the girls can't sit by each other.  David and I regularly heard, "Blake's looking at me".  You try not to freak out after the 35th time and scream, "IF YOU WEREN'T LOOKING AT HIM YOU WOULDN'T KNOW HE WAS LOOKING AT YOU". 

 

So when I say I'm not sure how I survived, I don't mean the cheese club meeting.  I mean my own days as a full-time parent.  Being at Carla's always reminds me of how hard it could be at times to have three so close together.  There was an article (click here to see I am not making this up) on Today's website I read that says 3 is the most stressful number of kids to have.  The number both Carla and I have.

 

Me and my kids at Six Flags.  They are roughly the ages in this photo that Carla's kids are today.  The big difference is me.  Carla is two years younger than me and this photo was taken more than 15 years ago.  My kids are 23, 24 & 26 now.  I have three grandkids.  One of those grandkids is only a year younger than Tori, Carla's youngest child.

 

Don't get me wrong, Carla & Tony are great parents and they have great kids.  But being a part of the noise and chaos that inevitably go along with family life reminds me of how hard it can be some days.  And I don't envy them.  I can't help thinking "Thank God my kids are grown".  At my house it is clean, no school books and backpacks laying around.  It is quiet.  When I am at home working during the day, David is at work and the only noise at my house is the dull hum of the electronics or the heating/air conditioning, or if I choose, the radio in my office.  Every now and then, the dog barks. 

 

So I watch Carla and Tony and I know what they are going through and I know where they are headed.  They have some fun and wonderful and hard years ahead.  The teenage years.  Middle School (the worst in our book) and High School.  And I hope that someday, like us, they enjoy their empty nest days.  Some people think I am mean or cold when I say that I don't miss the days of my kids living at home.  I love my kids.  I did it all back then while also working full time:  coached softball, attended PTA (even ran the clothes closet for a while), took them to church and sports practices and games and dance recitals and choir concerts.  Parent-teacher meetings.  Chicken Pox. Head Lice. Birthday Parties, and trick-or-treating, Valentine's boxes, playing Santa.  They have their own lives to lead now and I so do I.  I had my first child when I was barely 19 and all three before I turned 23.  I don't think it is wrong to want this part of my life to be for me.  I think I earned it.

 

After the meeting I had the great idea for us to play Apples to Apples but unfortunately, things continued to deteriorate.  People's feelings get hurt when their answer doesn't win.  Some of us are hyped up on chocolate and sparkling grape juice.  Someone is hungry.  Finally, after the second game (which we played with sped up rules), the girls are sent upstairs to bed.  We are all participating in a 5k in the morning so they need to get some rest, wink, wink.  I go to the guest room and close the door.  Once the noise upstairs dies down, I hear Carla come downstairs and she approaches my door and stops.  Listening for sound I assume.  I don't make any. 

 

If she had heard me up, she might have felt obligated to entertain me further but I need to be alone in the quiet of this room now.  And I consider this a gift to her as well.  While the kids are quiet and she has the opportunity, I hope she goes and enjoys a moment with Tony, or a long, hot bath or a chapter of a book.  Whatever makes her happy.  Because tomorrow, there will be one that doesn't want to go to the run at all, people will have tummy troubles and other assorted ailments, Tori will get her finger smashed in a recycle bin by Caroline - allegedly at least - and there will be crying and accusations. 

 

But there will also be breakfast with warm syrup and laughing after hugs and high-fives at the finish line.

 

I think Carla summed up our first meeting perfectly: "Eating cheese can be a really messy business".  But she and I both know she isn't just talking about cheese.

 

Me and the junior members of the club:  Caroline (bottom left), Charlotte (top left) and Tori (right).

 

Rate sheets for the rest of the club, if you are interested:

 

Carla, the club treasurer

 

Tony was so detailed in his responses that when he wasn't in the room, 3 of the 4 remaining members voted for him to be our club president.  Tori was NOT happy.  She wanted to be president.  We pointed to her rate sheet as the reason she couldn't be...

 

We eventually made her sergeant at arms and I try to convince her it lets her boss people around.

 

Vice President Charlotte

 

Me - Historian, of course





 

Haunted Hotel: Alabama & Amarillo

My mom will tell you that all of this is my own fault because I think about dead people too much.  At one time I had tons of pictures of them all over the walls of my dining room but I decided to do away with that some time ago.  Understand, these weren't random dead people but people in my family.  This story starts in Alabama with my grandma.

Here she is holding me circa 1969.

My grandmother (my dad's mom), Meriam, died on Halloween in 2000.  I don't remember how I was told which is kind of odd because I remember vividly how I found out when both of my grandfathers died but with Meriam - nothing.  I do remember that the decision was made for me to travel to Alabama with my parents to attend her funeral.  I had three kids and no money so mom and dad kindly let me stay in the same hotel room with them.

Before I go too far, let me back up a few years.  When my grandpa died in 1992, I also returned to Alabama for his funeral.  My son was a baby and my parents had business to attend to so they left me at my great-grandmother's house (Meriam's mother) for a while.  She told me stories about her mother and about how she met my great-grandfather.  Her stories stuck with me and were what ultimately got me interested in researching my family history.  By the time Meriam passed, I had been doing research, primarily on my dad's side of the family for quite a few years. I should also mention that Meriam herself was a little odd and had some weird habits regarding the dead.  She would routinely call the local funeral home "to see who was down there" so she would know if she needed to go take pictures.

So back to the trip.  We checked in to the hotel and while I unpacked, mom got in the shower and dad left the room.  I'm unloading my suitcase when the television comes on all by itself.  I had to search for the remote because none of us had picked it up at this point having just arrived.  I switched it off and went back to what I was doing.  I do remember thinking it was odd but explainable - a remote in another room could have done it through the wall (not an expensive hotel) or a timer was set.

The next morning, we get up to go to the funeral.  My shoes were lined up under the desk, three total pairs.  The pair in the middle are my "church shoes" and what I plan to wear but when I put my foot in the first shoe, it was completely filled with water.  It turned out that both of them were.  My other casual shoes, set on either side, were fine, dry as a bone.

That night, back at the hotel, we had been laying in the dark for a little while when the television came on again.  The timer thing now seems unlikely as we haven't watched TV in the time we have been here and the time of day is totally different than the first time it happened.  The next day, we go back to the cemetery and while standing by Meriam's grave we watch a dust devil going across the cotton field next door.  When it got to the fence between the field and the cemetery it kind of broke up and we all went back to what we were doing.  For me, that was taking pictures of headstones.  Some of you are probably thinking I am a total weirdo now but in my defense, I was only trying to document information for my family tree.  I am related to almost everyone in this cemetery in one way or another - or in some cases - more than one way (my dad is also my half great uncle but that is a story for another time).  As I am taking pictures, my cousin's daughter suddenly says, "Look out Noelle!" right as the dust devil comes back and goes right over/around/through me.  I quite literally felt my hair stand on end.  My family sees this happen too and they come over and ask if I'm okay.  Except for mom.  Mom helpfully says, "They were just marking you so they could find you later." 

Back at the hotel I am laying in the dark and I can't think of anything but dead people touching me when - you know what's coming - the TV comes on again.  Mom sits up in bed and says, "Stop it Meriam!"  But Meriam doesn't stop.  When I return back home to Texas, all sorts of weird things keep happening.  A knife flies off the middle of the kitchen table onto the floor when no one was in the kitchen (we heard it hit the tile floor); a lamp on a dimmer switch suddenly comes on full blast; David and I are talking about Meriam when a chair across the room swivels around to face us.  That kind of normal, every day stuff.  And David and I agree, there is a "presence" in the hallway at the top of the stairs.  So we get used to living with our ghost.

Meriam with my kids.

Fast forward to 2014 and I am in my hotel room in Amarillo. It is midnight and suddenly the television comes on, waking me.  Of course, I immediately think of Meriam.  I turn the TV off and go back to sleep.  The next morning when I am putting on my makeup, the clock radio alarm starts going off.  Again, some of you are thinking that could totally happen.  But the TV came on by itself again the next day after more than 24 hours and I had refused housekeeping so no one had touched it.  And I had verified that any alarm or timer was off.  As for the clock radio, it wasn't a normal one, it was an iPod docking station so the alarm was actually on my iPhone and I had not set it.

At this point I decide to do what any normal person with an iPhone would do and I download an app. Yes, there's an app for that.  I get the Ghost Observer app for free and fire it up.  It has a radar on it that will show you the location of your ghost. 

And there it is.  If I am at the center of the radar then the ghost is RIGHT NEXT TO ME.

 

Let me just say that even though I am not afraid of my ghost grandma, having the app say "Ghost Detected" in a creepy electronic voice when you are alone in a darkened hotel room can make it hard to sleep later.  I immediately turned off the app because, frankly, I don't need to know more.  Then I got the idea to take a picture in that general direction to see what happened.

 

I sent this picture to my son.  He did not appreciate this as he was also trying to get ready for bed. 

 

Later that week I changed to another hotel in Lubbock and had more "occurrences".  When my key card stopped working and I had to go to the front desk to have it fixed the guy said, "Huh, that's weird" and I said, "It's probably the ghost in my room."  He looked at me for a moment and then blinked once and said, "No, you probably just put it too close to your cell phone", like my statement was totally normal. 

 

Incidentally, I did fill out the survey sent to me by Holiday Inn Express in Amarillo and told them about the TV and the alarm clock and that I thought they had a ghost in that room but at this point, they have not responded.  I was kind of hoping for some free points out of the deal or something.  I'm going to have to have a talk with Meriam later.  If she is going to follow me around, she could at least make herself useful and get me some free stuff.

 

P.S.  I'm going back to Amarillo in December.  I may ask for the same room.

 

P.P.S.  A dust-devil for those of you who don't know, is a small tornado, made out of swirling dust.  And by dust I obviously mean the dust of my dead ancestors so they can find me later.



Western Montana Fair & Rodeo: Missoula, MT

I may have mentioned before that after moving to Montana, David became interested in photography.  I was already interested but up to this point, he was politely interested in my photographs but not at all interested in the process.  Now, we frequently go out and shoot photos together.  I thought that the fair and rodeo would provide a good lots of good subject matter for such an outing.

David and I have never been to a rodeo together.  I have suggested it in the past but his excuse always has something to do with this...

That's David.  He thinks he was around 16 when this was taken.

I think he felt he would be too nostalgic and possibly would want to try and compete again.  I played men's rules baseball once but I can still attend a professional baseball game without getting weepy.  I realize that I can't do all the things I could when I was younger and only covet the job of the bullpen catcher.  But he was resistant.  Until now.

First, we take in the fair.  I have been to the State Fair of Texas more than once, having lived in the Dallas area most of my life, and I have reasonably low expectations for the fair part due to the size of Missoula in comparison.  There are just over a million people in the whole state of Montana (the 4th largest state in size).  There are over 13 million in the Dallas metro area alone. 

But though this fair is smaller, it still has most of the things you expect at this type of event.  There are shows:  art, quilting, photography (why didn't we enter??), livestock, cooking.  There are the typical fair food vendors.  There are rides.  There is even a place to play bingo, which I talk David into doing. 

That's what BINGO looks like baby!  It cost me $2 for our cards and I won $6 (I had to split the pot with another winner) so I will take that $4 profit, thank you very much.

I need to buy David a treat with my winnings.  He didn't get very far with his card.

Treat acquired!  David's idea of a treat usually involves charred flesh of some kind.

And LOTS of mustard.

One of the most interesting things we stumbled on at the very back corner was the DockDogs competition.  Dogs would run down this platform and launch themselves to either catch a thrown baton or one suspended from a pole.  They land in a pool of water and swim back with their catch. 

If there had been any shade to sit in, we probably would have stayed here a lot longer. But we came as one competition was ending and there was a lull in the action and it was very hot that day.

And it is almost time for the rodeo.  Our plan is to watch the rodeo and then do some night photography on the midway.  We have good seats on the second row in the middle of the arena but next time I think we would try to sit slightly higher because there is a fence in front of us that was an issue for some of the shots we took (or wanted to take).  And yes, I said next time.  Despite saying it felt weird to be on this side of the arena, David really enjoyed himself.  There was some talk between him and a former rodeo teammate on Facebook about riding again when they turn 50 but I feel pretty confident that I can squash that before it becomes serious.  He still has residual knee issues (not to mention really ugly toes) from his former bull riding days.

When David got his camera, we got him a Nikon.  I use a Canon.  This wasn't on purpose but it does solve the issue of borrowing equipment.  Mostly for him since I am notorious for losing my lens caps, or leaving the house without my memory card (because I left it in my computer from our last outing), or not having my docking clip for the tripod.  A friend suggested that this would also be good from a competitive standpoint but this isn't an issue for us.  David and I can be standing side by side and the photo we will end up with is going to be vastly different. 



I asked David to pull out his 5 favorite shots from the day for this post, I think you will notice a theme:

Notice the guy in the background on this one.

All action shots from the rodeo, 3 from bull riding.  I know he liked a couple of his DockDogs photos but when pushed to give me only 5, when we took over 300 pictures EACH, this was the resulting field.







Here are my 5:

None from the events of the rodeo, unless you count the trick roper with the flaming whips, though I took several.  Normally I don't really like taking pictures of people but at this venue, that is really what was primarily available as a subject.

The fair was a little better than I expected and the rodeo was a lot of fun.  We will definitely go back.  Maybe next year, we will enter some of our photos in their contest, we have a few (hundred) to choose from.  We make good photography partners for one reason and maybe this makes us good partners in general.  We see different things even when we are sitting right next to each other.  

2012 In Review

2012 saw me traveling more than I ever have in the past.  Once upon a time, my job might take me on the road 10 times a year.  This year, out of a possible 48 weeks (if you take out my vacation), I traveled 27 of those.  I even traveled the week of Thanksgiving.

This is not all of the room photos.  There were a few trips towards the end of the year where I simply forgot.  I had a lot on my mind.  More on that in a moment.

David made numerous jokes about how it was like having a girlfriend on the weekend only.  One stretch in the summer saw me gone 8 weeks in a row.  Here's where I went, in order:

• Hazelwood, MO
• Washington, DC with stops in Knoxville, TN and Bethesda, MD to see our brand new grandbaby (this was a combined work/family trip).
• Laredo, TX
• York, PA (with a side trip to Maryland to see my daughter and granddaughter)
• Fort Worth, TX (I only count this local trip because I had to stay at the hotel where my company was hosting our annual conference)
• Omaha, NE
• Amarillo, TX
• San Francisco, CA
• Santa Rosa, CA
• Oakland, CA (Vacation with David)
• Yosemite National Park (Vacation with David)
• San Francisco, CA (Vacation with David)
• Houston, TX
• Jacksonville, FL
• Omaha, NE (again)
• Lubbock, TX
• Georgetown, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Victoria, TX
• Corpus Christi, TX
• Omaha, NE (yes, again)
• Kansas City, MO
• Alexander City, AL
• Pensacola, FL (Vacation with Kendall, my parents & my niece)
• Hammond, IN
• Malta, NY (Vacation with David to see our son)
• Cooperstown, NY (Vacation)
• Miami, FL
• Dickson, TN
• Franklin, TN
• Columbia, TN
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Missoula, MT (with David)
• Edwardsville, IN
• Chambersburg, PA (with a side trip to Maryland to visit my daughter and granddaughter)

The idea behind this blog was to force me to get out.  Get out of the hotel.  Get out of my own way.  Over the 12 years I have traveled for work I spent the bulk of that in the hotel watching television and/or working.  As much as I hate to travel, that didn't help.  So this year I was going to get out and do something, find out what these places had to offer.  So I did.  And now I can't imagine ever going back to my old ways.

I saw a bunch of plays and musicals - both community theatre and national tours of Broadway shows.  I saw the Texas Rangers play in Oakland and San Francisco.  David and I took our first real vacation after 25 years of marriage.  I went to a couple of interesting museums and ate at a few good (and a couple of bad) places featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  For the first time ever, I looked forward to traveling because I looked forward to exploring something other than my hotel.

Best Work Outing:
This would probably have to be the two times at Jersey Boys in Pittsburgh.  First time was planned, the second just two days later was spur of the moment.

Worst Work Outing:
The Samuel Beckett plays I saw in San Francisco, Xanadu was a close second.

Favorite City of 2012 - Work Trip:
Omaha was a nice surprise, especially since I went three times.  They are already on the calendar for 2013 so I am going to have to start being creative.

Least Favorite City of 2012 - Work Trip:
Miami.  I still don't like this city and this was my third time there. 

Best Vacation Outing:
Sitting in "they yard" at Alcatraz watching the sun set behind the Golden Gate Bridge.

Worst Vacation Outing:
The Texas Rangers game at Oakland.  The stadium was awful and the man in front of me was completely obnoxious.  Also, Texas lost.  Badly.

In the beginning I was writing three blog posts a week.  Now I am down to about once a week.  Life sometimes gets in the way.  I still have a few from 2012 to write about but I have been busy.  This is because the trip with David to Missoula, Montana back in October resulted in us deciding to move there. 

So this coming Wednesday, we will get in the car and begin the 1,798 mile trip from our current Grapevine, Texas home to our new one in Stevensville, Montana.

I won't be posting for a couple of weeks.  Be patient with me because I will be back once I am settled in our new home and back out on the road.  I already have trips set up for Phoenix, Bakersfield, CA and New Orleans.  I think the strangest thing will be returning to the Dallas area as a tourist.  This is something I will do 4-5 times a year as part of my job (I am taking my current job with me).  Also, there will be lots of exploring in Montana to do. 

So as my dad used to say, "Hang in there, we'll see you on the flip side".

The REAL Fountain of Youth

Friendship isn't a big thing...it is a million little things. - Unknown

The last night in Jacksonville I am returning to my room around 9:30 pm when I get a push notification from Facebook.  It is a message from Kim, someone I haven't seen in more than 20 years.


If I had taken the picture of the castle, she said, I was about 20 minutes from her house.  She asked if I was going to be in town long. 

This is the picture she referred to.

I tell her I am going home tomorrow but could meet for breakfast if she is available.  She isn't, a conflict with one of her kid's schedule.

So I didn't get to see her but I know this would have been the real fountain of youth for me.  This is a person I spent a LOT of time with during elementary and middle school.  I ate entire cans of cake frosting in one sitting in her living room.  I wore her clothes.  We shared ABC gum.  I slept in her bed, on her couch, in the motor home outside.  Her family took me on vacation once.  Mostly, we played a lot of sports together.

Our elementary school softball team the Angels.  Those adults in the back are my parents. I am 2nd from the left on the top row, Kim is 3rd, right next to me.  I did most of the pitching, Kim the catching.

Another Angels team, different year.  My parents are still coaching joined by Mr. Davis.  Kim is on the top row, far right, I am one over, 3rd from the right.

Angels team party at Kim's house.  Kim is 2nd from the bottom of the slide, I am third.

Kim and I are in the yellow shirts, she is the one on the left.

Walking back after the race.

Kim was the pretty friend, I was the ugly friend.  When I have talked about Kim in the past people usually say - oh, no...you were not.  Yes.  I.  Was.

During these years, Kim always had a boyfriend and I didn't.  I was jealous of her.  She was prettier, funnier, just a little bit better at everything than me.  

It doesn't even matter if that was really true or not, it was true to me.

Regardless of this, she was my best friend, my BFF.

7th grade volleyball.  Kim is the tallest one, in the middle, I am to her left, your right.

More middle school volleyball, from the yearbook.  I am third from the left, Kim is 4th.

Middle school basketball.  Kim is in the center, I am to her left again (your right).  Even our numbers are right together, she was 31, I was 32.

More basketball.  I am on the bottom row, 2nd from the left (with the leg pulled in), Kim is next to me with the basketball.

More volleyball, I am 4th from left, Kim is 5th.  This team won the city championship so there are more pictures of us.

I am 3rd from the right, Kim is 4th.

Are you seeing a pattern?  We called our team the "Attack Pack".

We even stood together in the huddle.

More softball, this time the Swingers.  Kim is the one standing up, leaning on the wall, I am seated on her right.  We don't look happy.  I assume we either lost or are getting a lecture or both.  My parents are no longer coaching us.  We did some crazy stuff while traveling with this team.  Things I am not going to share here. 

We were both on the track team during this time too.  We both threw shot put.  I remember once when we were throwing indoors (we had plastic shot puts for this) due to the weather and Kim didn't see the coach was still marking the floor from someone else's throw.  She threw and hit him in the side of the head.

During these years we both had other friends and sometimes other people even replaced one of us for a time. Erin for me, Debbie for her, among others.  But we always found our way back.

Kim on the left, me on the right.  Stacy in the middle, she was one of the few that was friends with us both.

That last F in BFF is hard to achieve.  We started to grow apart in 9th grade (junior high for us).  Kim was more popular than I was.  In the 10th grade, we had a fight that in my memory (which could be faulty), took place in the girls locker room.  Not a physical fight, just words.  After that, it was never the same again.

I left sports behind in 11th grade and she continued.  I was dating my future husband and we spent more time with his friends who had already graduated.  She made other friends, I made other friends.

Our lives went in vastly different directions after that.

Here I am at 22 years old after giving birth to my 3rd child, a son.  My girls are 18 months and 3 years old.  Kim is in college.

I saw Kim once after my girls were born.  That was the last time. I remember what we fought about in that locker room but it isn't important after all of these years.  It put me on the path to the life I have and I can't regret that.  She eventually married and has 2 beautiful children and I hope, a wonderful life.  I only regret we didn't have those things with each other in the picture too.

Forrest Gump said, "Bubba was my best good friend and even I know that isn't something you can find just around the corner."  Kim was my Bubba.

She was my best good friend and now I know, I might never find another, no matter how many corners I turn.