Friends

Had a Facebook post this week about what are friends and what do they mean to you.  My reply was a conversation that I had with an 8 year old niece.  "As you get older there are two things that will come to mean more to you than anything in the world, that is family that stands behind you no matter what, and friends who are willing to do the same.  Friends are family by a different set of parents."

My friends are something that I count as one of my dearest blessings.  Someone said that if you have 5 true friends then you are blessed beyond measure but if you get in trouble you would probably be able to only count on two of them.  Wow!!  As I sit here I can think of close to a dozen that if push came to shove that I could depend on.  That makes me a blessed person indeed.

I could name names but at the risk of leaving someone out, I won't.  What is so awesome to me is that several of them are friends that I have made through my daughter and my son-in-law.  I still am fairly bemused that these folks who are young enough to be my children like to interact with me.  But there are a few of them that I know if I called on them would be there.  Then there is my BFF who we don't have to talk every day I know she has my back and I have hers.  Think Lucy and Ethel meets Thelma and Louise! 

And as I have mentioned before most of my close friends are men.  I am not sure what that says about me or them but it is what it is.  One in particular is a gentleman that I can talk to about anything at any time.    When you know that you just accept each other "as is" it goes a loooong way toward making a friendship even dearer.  Even when I call him a dumbass and tell him that I want to smack him in the back of his head and he is talking to me as he is getting ready for a date I know that deep down this is a true friend.

I am tremendously blessed by the friends that I have.  As stated before, I am above ground, vertical and have not been pronounced.  Have worked at 4 different jobs this week (I am now looking for the 5th).  Life is good, stressful, but good.  Wish everyone else could say the same.