Family and Friends

For those few of you who actually check this site often, you'll have noticed I've been gone for a while. A week, actually. I haven't been ignoring you, I promise... I left last Thursday to go to South Carolina to visit my sister, Julie, and her husband, Josh, and I also used their proximity to Charlotte, NC, to visit my friend Kelly and her husband Daniel. Even though I've been back home since Monday, I've been immersed in the 6th Harry Potter book, along with paying bills, doing laundry, etc. I'm leaving tomorrow to visit another sister, Beth, in Savannah, so expect another absence.

Julie and Josh were great ... Julie is expecting my first little niece or nephew, and we're all watching her like a hawk. You see, I come from a family of four girls, and she's our guinea pig. Will she be cute during her pregnancy, or blow up like a whale? Will her body return quickly to its normal size, or will she forever be marked with hips the size of Texas? (side note: The Terry Girls' "normal size" is by no means small. We're curvy women. We own it.) Will she have morning sickness? How long will her labor last? The answers to these questions will be a large factor in determining mine and my other sisters' paths in child bearing. Thanks, Diddy, for being The First. I did get to hear the baby's heartbeat (from now on, Baby = Bitty), which was really neat. Josh and Julie hadn't heard it before either, so it was a really special thing. Oh, and then I went to Piggly Wiggly next door to the hospital and got a t-shirt. Which was a cooler experience? Hmmm. Hard call. :)

Kelly and Daniel in Fort Mill, SC (up near Charlotte) were my next stop. Kelly is my oldest friend. She moved to my neighborhood in Thomasville when I was three, and, although we were playmates then, we were destined to become lifelong best friends when, in the 7th grade, we both fell madly in love with Zach Derringer, the 8th grader who lived down the street. Zach had spiked hair and played the trumpet in the band, and Kelly and I bonded as we took very slow walks back and forth in front of his house on Robin Hood (the streets in our neighborhood were themed ... I lived on Sherwood, Kelly was on Doncaster; we also had a Friar Tuck, a Nottingham, and a Pembroke. Cute, I know.) Zach ended up being my first "boyfriend", and Kelly was great about it and never held it against me. I hope that I would've done the same had the tables been turned. This all happened before I learned the rule that you never date a guy that your best girlfriend is crushing on. A belated sorry to you, Kel. And if it makes you feel any better, Zach never even got so much as a kiss in the entire 9 months that we dated. Have I mentioned what a prudish goody-two-shoes I used to be?

Anyway, Kelly and I continued our close friendship through college (we were roommates at UGA), and she was the one crucial factor in my getting out of a relationship when I was 21 that was and had been headed in the wrong direction for 6 years. I'll never be able to thank her enough for that. And even though we've had our rocky times together, she's the one friend that I know will stick around for forever. I love her dearly. She was surprised by the amount that I've changed in the past 5 years or so that we've been apart, but I think it's okay. She's happy for me, and I think she knows that I'm finally becoming the person that I would've been much earlier had it not been for other factors. And her husband, who's great, had to deal with me at a very difficult time in my life, and he doesn't seem to hold it against me. So thank you, Daniel, for that. I'm sorry for being so crappy to you.

So, this blog is for Josh, Julie, and Biddy. And for Kelly and Daniel. I love you all!