"Never Take Friendship Personal"

Wow. You like me. You really like me! Thanks for the positive reinforcement on continuing this blog. The death threats were welcome, too. I completely understand that a few of you would want to hurt my kid, lest I stop writing here, just leave my guitar out of this, okay? She never did anything to you, mmm'kay?

Now on with the show...

Some of the people I consider to be my best friends are ones that I rarely ever get to see.

Today, I met up with my friend Hunter, whom I've known practically since birth (her dad baptized me, and we took several family vacations together whilst growing up), but haven't seen in more than ten years. I've noticed that the friends that I've kept in touch with the best are those who I can not see for quite some time and then pick up right where we left off the last time we saw each other.

Hunter is one of those rare people.

The last time she and I hung out, we were basically kids — free of any meaningful responsibility. This time, however, we had kids, marriages, mortgages (her, not me, thank GOD), bills, and jobs (again, her, not me...bwahahaha) that have become as much who we are as anything else these days. We both also recently turned 30, although, as Hunter put it, she's "new at it" since she celebrated her thirtieth just two weeks ago.

Aside from the new additions to our lives, we caught up on everything else we were up to — which amounted to about six seconds of conversation as pretty much everything we do revolves around stuff that's child-related.

After a few hours of playing tea, banging on drums and chasing the dog, we reluctantly hit the road as Connor's batteries were in desperate need of a charging. He'd been run ragged by a four-year-old and two-year-old girl, and I couldn't have him being shown up by someone else's kids! By the way, speaking of the ladies, why do little girls insist on keeping stockpiles of naked Barbie dolls constantly at hand? I know why Connor might do it, but...ah, nevermind.

I suppose the next time I see Hunter, we'll be 40, and maybe — just maybe — I'll have grown up enough to have a job of my very own.

Nah.