Trending Tuesday: Adult Friendships

 I got some really awesome and thoughtful questions on my Ask Me Anything form-- THANK YOU. Several of them revolved around adult friendships, and I thought this would be SUCH a fun topic.

Some people were worried that I do not have friends because I don't write about them, and I really DON'T write about friends, but I DO have them, I promise. They just don't seem to be up for public consumption, you know?

I tend to think of my friends in categories-- does anyone else do this?

We have couple friends that we see for dinner (a rotating cast of double dates, as it were). I have friends I love to see for lunch, coffee friends, work friends, exercise friends, dance mom friends, etc etc etc. We are lucky to have lived here as long as we have because we have DECADES OLD FRIENDSHIPS just by virtue of being grad school friends or school parent friends-- getting old is really lovely in that way. Especially because we have out of town friends and back home friends and college friends and childhood friends-- you get the idea.

But! Except for maybe saying I did XYZ with a friend, I really don't write about them here. I do talk about seeing blog friends because, um, blog friends BLOG -- they are up for public consumption.

This was a little different when the big kids were little and we had a group of people with kids the same ages and we all hung out all the time with the kids. As the kids got older (and as we kept having MOAR kids), this group sort of naturally disbanded. And! Without the bond of kids in common, the grown up friendships shifted, too. which isa. thing that happens all the time with adult friendships. Some are strong enough to survive kids not being friends anymore, but I think some are not that deep, as the kids says.

I will say that I am very intentional about scheduling things at the monthly level-- date nights, lunches, coffees, etc. I am less good at the spontaneous meet ups, but that's because my calendar is a shit show.

One thing I am really bad at is book clubs. I am a serial book club drop out. In theory, book clubs are a great idea for me-- I love books. I love talking about books and having snacks. But somehow I never stick around in actual book clubs. I have no idea why this is-- I think I don't like a prescriptive reading list and also it is not easy for me to change my mind about a book or a character. If I loved a book and then a friend hated it, I am not going to be able to let that go. I am on the campus common read book selection committee at my university, and this is the perfect kind of book club-- high stakes and contentious and filled with other big old book dorks.

So, yes. I do make time for friends in an intentional way. When I bust out my big old monthly planner to lay out the month ahead, I have a little square on the side of the spread where I keep track of my social plans because I want to make sure that at least once a week I am filling my social bucket. It can be easy to not set aside social time when I am super busy, but people are always a good use of time.

drinks with friends last weekend

Right before I published this post, I signed up for a yoga class with a friend. I am definitely an extrovert. Or at least an extroverted introvert.

What about you? How do you make time for friends?

Mindset Monday: High School Mom

 Ugh you guys! I am so old!

Swim and dive season for high school is right around the corner, and Cooper has started to have captain's practice for the swim team from 9:30-10:30pm. That is sooooooo late. He gets rides from friends but omfg.  I am usually in REM sleep by 10:45, but now I'm waiting up for a kid.

When real practice starts in a couple weeks, it will be super early in the morning (swim) and right after school (dive). I think that the high school season will make my actual life a little easier because I won't have to drive to campus every afternoon because he will go from his school to the other school where everyone practices dive with a friend, and that same friend will take him to club dive after high school practice.

But. Anyway.

I feel like I am in little-kid parenting mode and in launching-adults parenting mode and just kind of going through the motions with high school. I need to lock in and lean in to these next 5 years (one year just Cooper, three years of both Dorothy and Cooper, one year just Dorothy) because high school parenting season can be fun-- the activities! The gradual release of responsibility! The college search!

I'm also so glad Cooper is swimming in addition to diving because he's a really good swimmer (he just does not love it), and it'll be so fun to watch him. Our lives will get hectic with Friday and Saturday high school meets plus the occasional club meet (like winter nats in Texas!), and right as HS season is ending, club season will kick into its pre-nationals frenzy right as dance season is also heating up. But! It's a short season and a delight, if my memory of Jack's time serves me.

SO I AM GOING TO LEAN IN to all of this. Brb-- signing up for a concession stand shift 

Goggles I found in a Speedo backpack in the basement from last time Cooper swam competitively

I'm sure they still fit

Snapshot Sunday Volume 2

Annabel, telling Minnie firmly that Minnie is wrong, and she (Annabel) absolutely MUST bark at that dog who is always standing nose-to-nose with her when she looks out the front door at night.

Soapbox Saturday Volume 1: I WILL HAVE A PRODUCTIVE NOVEMBER

 I am not doing the daily photo clean up because I have apparently lost MANY YEARS of photos, and it makes me feel really sick. I would rather bury my head in the sand,

I WILL, though:

find a couch and a lamp and maybe an ottoman for the bedroom

schedule carpet installation for our room and Minnie's

finish holiday shopping

prep for Ben and Cooper to go to Texas for a dive meet

take Dorothy to the Chicago burbs for a dance convention

complete spring course prep

run a turkey troot and maybe sign up for a silly Cousin Eddie holiday run

remember to sign up for a yoga class through our community rec program when registration opens (only $60 for 15 1-hour classes! would be a great addition to my fancy hot yoga membership, especially since I only spring for the "cheap" once a week option).

THE CARPET THING THOUGH YOU GUYS. It is such an ordeal. We have looked at carpet. We have had people come measure our house. We have changed our minds about carpet. We have looked at more carpet. Ugh.

I had a great meeting with a course designer about my asynchronous online course and how to design it to make it less tempting for students to use AI. She had so many awesome ideas. I am really excited to dig in! 

Here's to a month of delicious food, family hangs, and extra prep work to give future me a break.

5 on a Friday: 1/4

 1. Book fair season! My very favorite. Minnie was a great volunteer with me and then collected her payment in the form of books, natch

2. It is dark all the time. Here I am walking the dog in the middle of the night. At 5pm.

3. She's always crafting

4. It's my mom's 74th tomorrow, and I shopped at her favorite store.

5.  Buddy the Elf had a couple days off school for conferences, and she made a ring chain with mre than 50 rings to count down to Christmas. Anything to keep her busy, right?

ALSO! I GOT TURKEY MUGS AT WORLD MARKET!!!!!! Thank you for the tip. Blogs are magic.

Throwback Thursday Volume 1

 November 5, 2006

Baby Harry with Uggs in a Bumbo seat

TWENTY YEARS AGO. Omg.

We were all babies.

Wednesday Whines Volume Eleventy Billion

 

I had to put away my beloved ghost mugs, and now I am holiday mug-less.

Dorothy tells me this is silly because I can just get out my Christmas mugs, but this is what she wore to school on Monday, so...

Anyone have an darling turkey mugs they want to recommend? Should I be looking for a pilgrim's head I can sip my coffee out of for the next few weeks? Just bust out the Santa mugs and Spode already?