Sunday, January 21, 2007

Old friends

Two Friends by Daniel Ridgeway Knight

This was a weekend for catching up with old friends. On Friday, I had lunch at my friend Sandra’s house. I’ve known her since our oldest kids were in the same 1st grade class together, and 2nd grade...and 3rd. Ironically, we rarely see each anymore even though she seriously lives 2 blocks away from me. But since I discovered she had a blog several weeks ago, we’ve had a chance to chat more and catch up on each other’s lives online. Isn’t life funny?

Sandra has kept a blog for almost 3 years now and hers is more like a journal where she processes the day’s events and shares insightful thoughts about her children (she’s a great, sensitive mother). I had originally intended to do more daily, record-keeping kinds of posts on my blog, but strangely it has taken on a life of its own. Do you ever feel that way? Like your blog is the one driving the bus and you are merely a passenger – standing towards the back, yanking on the cord yelling “Dude, I think that was my stop back there!....Hey you’re not taking us in there are you?...Wait, this wasn’t where I planned to go at all!”

Perhaps I’ll do more “Dear Diary” type writing in the future. But often my life is too dull to inflict on an audience - or too emotionally raw to possibly distill into an honest entry. And then there are those days when I’m so stinking busy that I don’t have time to write at all. Today was one of those days. We cleaned the house and sorted through boxes and ran errands and got home literally 5 minutes before our dinner guests were due to arrive. Luckily our guests were another couple of old friends who would never complain about the Cheerios on the floor or the fact that we hadn’t even ordered the pizza yet when they got here.

We’ve known Dave and Sheri for 17 years. In fact my kids owe Dave their very lives since he’s the one who introduced me to their father (who by the way insisted at the time that his name was Ken Massengill, but that’s another story). Dave and Ken (whose name was thankfully not Massengill or I would have given more thought to keeping my maiden name) were quite a couple of ruffians when we all hung out together in college. (Well about as ruffian-esque as a couple of Mormon boys at a Mormon university could get.) They were certainly a bad influence on me since for the first week of Political Science 170, I sat in the front row, dutifully taking notes, but once I was sucked into their vortex of delinquency I spent the rest of the semester on the back row passing silly notes and caricatures of the professor back and forth. A few months ago I came across the folder from that class. I tossed all the Political Science papers. But the notes -- those I’ll save forever.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

My blog has definitely turned out quite different to how I imagined it, mainly because I find myself so short on time, so any hope I had of producing deeply thoughtful and reflective essays, has been replaced with spur of the moment brief posts...

Anonymous said...

Yes, er, I dunno. My blog seems to be a mix of what I thought it would be and something else. Whatever it is, that's what it is.

Profound, I know!!!

Honestly, sometimes I write something and think, do I really want to post this? Does it really "fit"? But I write from my heart, so whatever comes out...That's what I post!

By the way, I'm very new to your blog, and am enjoying your style. Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

You know yesterday 3.78% of my visitors were referred by Mental Tessarae? :) Yes, I pay too much attention to my GOogle Analytics I know.

Thanks for the mention though, and I wish I could blog about really entertaining issues like my newly-converted-to-Judaeism mother-in-law or my crazy "Raising Arizona-like" nepheews but family reads my blog and it wouldn't be good for maintaining good family relations. :) But boy would it be entertaining.

Anonymous said...

I think I am still trying to figure out the "direction" of my blog. It kind of goes where it goes, depending on my experiences and mood for the day; it almost has a life of its own. It definitely is a work in progress, but I am content to enjoy the journey it is taking me on.

True friends are the best!

Kimberly Vanderhorst said...

I love your bus-riding blogging analogy, that's exactly how it feels! Who's driving the darn thing anyway?

There's so much I don't blog about for the same reason as Scribbit - never know who might be reading!

I like the aimlessness though. I like never knowing what I'm going to post, drawing on my experiences and pontifications and trying to hammer them into post form. It's fun! ~lol~

Anonymous said...

I thought my blog would be more funny stories from the classroom. I started it while on vacation and when we got back the kids, well, they haven't been so funny. I'm sure that will change. But in the meantime I have rediscovered some old hobbies as a result of blogging.

I met my dh in HS. I was a freshman and faithfully wrote about our dates in my diary. I am thinking of featuring some of those entries around Valentine's Day. They are very funny, so "vintage" 1985. I would love to read or see some of those doodles and notes.

Lara said...

I love that painting! How do you handle the young lovers passing notes in the back of your classroom?

Kate said...

Yeah, my blog all of a sudden has gone from four or five of my closest friends reading it to a bunch of strangers in random countries. I usually like it... until I don't.

But there isn't that much I won't blog about, readership aside. I made a deal with myself early on that it was MINE, and the rest of the world can line up to bite me if they so desire. So I'm not that driven by it. Except that I really, really want to write more about my sister, and I can't 'cause she reads it. Otherwise, babblebabblebable, this made more sense in my head and I'll stop talking now.

Maybe a stream-of-consciousness blog WOULDN'T be such a good idea...