Where MAH BITCHES AT?

This past Saturday I spent the afternoon with my group of friends, my girls, my ladies, my bffs, my kaffeeklatsch, as my mother in law calls them.

It was the first time in a long time that we were able to get the whole group together and it made me realize just how much I need these ladies in my life.  I need their friendship and love and laughter. 

Most of us brought our babies, too, so it was a madhouse of noise and toys.  I told one of the girls that it’s nice to have a grouping of women because you know that there’s always someone to watch your kids and keep them from falling down the stairs when you’re too busy talking and aren’t paying as close attention as you should be.  That doesn’t happen with guys. 

So in honor of that fantastic visit (and also because I’ve caught the knitting bug and all I want to do when I have free time is make sweaters and socks, not write blog posts) I’m reposting a column I wrote for the newspaper in January 2010 about these lovely ladies. 

I love you guys.

This is the only picture I could find that had all eight of us in it.  Sad, right?

Some of us have been friends for 25 years. We've experienced Bible school together, first loves, parties, concerts, birthdays, church softball, boybands (Casey!), weddings — including many bachelorette parties —  sicknesses, births, deaths, parenting woes, marriage woes, fights, tears and so very, very much laughter.

This group of girls, my best friends, have been crutches to lean on in hard times, have laughed at my quirky, not-very-funny jokes and have helped me learn how to be a better person.

Our personalities are different. I think we’ve grown past labels, but some of us are a little country, some are a little rock ‘n’ roll, and all are a little bit of everything. Some of us are married, some aren’t. Some have children, some don’t, and one, Heather, is expecting her first. We’ve got redheads, brunettes, blondes, freckles, glasses, no glasses, a teacher, a pharmacist, a saleswoman, an accountant, a few in customer service and then me, the newspaper lady. In some ways, it doesn’t make sense that we’d be such good friends, but who can explain how or why friendship happens? 

I have no actual memory of meeting any of these girls. They just always were. Most of us went to the same schools in Meade County all the way through. They're all younger than me, so we weren't in the same grade. I think some of our mothers were friends, and it just sort of happened that we all hit it off. We found out later that most of us actually are related, which may help explain the kinship.

Since they were all younger, I didn't become good friends with them until high school. Jo Ellen was a guitar player/songwriter/poet like I was, and we spent many an afternoon after school jamming (acoustically) to Jewel. (Don't laugh. She was folksy and good then.) She, Laura and I were together often. Since I was older and had my license before them, I’d pick them up on the way to school and drop them off afterward. We put a lot of miles on my little Festiva, driving around the county. 

Jo Ellen was friends with most of the rest of them, and I just kind of integrated in. As I said, they'd always been there, it's just now I was one of them.

I went to college first, and most followed a year after. Amanda followed a year after that. College was where we picked up our final member, Robin. Lauren brought her in, and we made her an honorary Meade Countian. And it just seems like she's always been one of us, even though she was from Louisville. 

The next few years were spent getting together on Sunday nights at school for dinner, getting together on Tuesday nights for dinner and watching 'That '70s Show' and getting together pretty much whenever else there was an abundance of food.

We’ve had get-togethers at Laura’s parents’ straight-out-of-the-‘70s cabin at Rough River where we spent hours on the back porch listening to music and talking. 

We've had nights of drunken debauchery (sorry, Mom) and nights of quietly discussing our plans for the future. We've also spent nights just talking about how we didn't know what the heck we wanted to do with our lives.

We moved on from there, most of us back to the area that will always be home. 

We've matured into adults, but that doesn't stop us from giggling like little girls whenever we are together.

We try to see each other about once a month, but life, more often than not, doesn't work out that way.

We know that, no matter what, we always will be friends. We may not see each other as much as we'd like and we may not be very good at keeping in touch — or even at having a quick phone chat.

But we know whenever the need arises, whenever we need our girls around us, they will come running.