F to the Riends

Happy Wednesday which feels like Tuesday which is a week from Hannah's Mexico vacation! I'm so stoked about my vacation. I can't wait to spend a week not thinking about insurance, housework, grocery shopping, laundry or what I am going to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner for an entire week.. I have to admit that I may be a little stressed about having to go through an airport but since I have some company in this journey and my journey ends at the beach, I think I will survive this time. I won't be bringing my phone or computer for a whole week so that will be a little bit of a shock. I know everyone will be so sad that they can't read any blog posts probably for the next two weeks but hopefully my next post will be so awesome that you will forget. I do have some more sad news to report before I get into my topic...... Katy Perry and John Mayer were reported being back on after they were reported to be done... Boo! Hopefully my future girlfriend makes the right decision and leaves him.. I wouldn't mind being one of her friends! (Nice transition into my next paragraph.. My English teachers of the past would be happy by this transition.. However, they would not be happy by my troubles with commas..)

Friends bring me some of the best moments in my life. I can't resist being in a good mood/happy when I am surrounded by a group of people I love. However, I can't help but being in a terrible mood when something isn't right with my friends.. I was thinking today about all of my different groups of friends that I have in my life. When I started thinking of my different group of friends I immediately thought of my old friends.. Not my old friends age wise but my friends who have been in my life the longest aka Vienna friends. I have girlfriends that I remember being in kindergarten with way, way back in the day. Since I don't live in Vienna anymore I don't see my old friends as much as I really should. I know a lot of this is my fault.. I need to make a better effort to see them whenever I go home to see my family. I was home for 2 days this weekend and didn't have go see some of my best friends back home.. This scenario = bad job Hannah. It is funny how we all used to in high school all get together on the weekend at parties or friends house and now we see each other at class reunions or weddings. I do have about 2 really good girlfriends that I still see on a regular basis. I love when we get together we tell tales of all the crazy/fun times we had in high school. I realize that if I told these stories to non-Vienna people then they wouldn't understand or think it is funny but we tell the stories and are almost in tears because we think it is so funny. I guess it should have been told earlier that since I am from a small school that all the kids a few years older or younger than me could be considered my old friends. Curt and I have some of our best friends right now that we knew growing up but we were never super close until the last couple of years. I guess that goes to show people that you should never lose contact with people because they may end up being your best friends.

College... College is kind of a weird time for kids. It was weird for me because I was one of the few people in my group of friends that was actually going away to college. Most of my friends were staying in Vienna and just commuting to school. I found that most of my friends who stayed behind actually became better friends while I was drifting away in a far away land called college. I literally got dropped off at my dorm without a car and maybe knowing two whole people on campus, both of which were older. If that doesn't motivate you to make friends, I am really not sure what will. Luckily, my roommate in college was awesome and was in a similar boat as me. We had to become friends or we would spend a lot of time alone.. This is a prime example of how opposites attract. We had the same morals but otherwise we were completely opposite. I have no idea why her mom made her join a freshman sports interest group as I get texts from her on a regular basis on all sorts of sports questions but I am glad she did it. I kept making new friends at school but it still felt weird because I had all of my friends back home. I found myself having less and less to talk about with my old friends and spending more and more time with my new friends. I think this is a cruel joke that someone is playing on 18 year old girls.. It's not like they are confused/emotional enough much less adding this new scenario of balancing friends. In the end, I just had to find a balance between both of the groups.

After college.. I remember a little bit after I graduated college going through my phone and wondering what I should do with the phone numbers of my college friends/classmates. I knew that I would probably never need their numbers again but I felt like deleting them would be like a wiping them out forever and closing a chapter of my life.. It is like you aren't old but you aren't young anymore. What do you do with these old friends? Most of them were moving on and leaving you behind. Do you really want to do a long distance relationship with people who were your friends but not best friends? Sadly, I didn't put the effort in for a long distance relationship and deleted most of them out of my phone.. Luckily, most are my Facebook friends so they are never far away.. I can always creep on them when I want to keep up with them. How did people keep friends before Facebook? I stayed in the same town in which I graduated college. I can drive by all the places I used to go to hang out with my friends but not have the same friends to go with me. It was depressing. I was in a familiar place but all alone. I watched all of my friends pack up their belongings and years of memories and move off to their new lives while I was still here. Luckily my senior year of college I scored an internship at an insurance company in the same place as my college. I was offered a job before I even graduated college so I didn't have to deal with the finding a job stress. I didn't realize that when my college life was over and my college friends were leaving me that I would find new friends through work. I seriously work with some awesome people and they have become my new core group of friends. Curt happens to work with awesome people too and they have became my friends by default. I honestly don't know how people don't work because I would go crazy. I miss my co-workers and social interactions when I am gone from work.

I think I am kind of a weird girl. I love sports and bluntly talk like a man sometimes but I follow celebrities and like fashion/makeup.. I used to be a huge tomboy but I guess I realized that in order to communicate with 99% of the female population I would have to expand my knowledge of clothes/makeup/shoes. I always joke with Curt that I hate it when we go to our friend's house to watch major sporting events because all the wives/girlfriends like to sit and chat while I actually want to watch the complete game. I want to hear the commentary while the other girls like for it to be muted. It is hard for me to find girlfriends because we don't have a ton in common. We do have a couple friend where the girl, Nikky, likes sports a lot also. I told Curt that my new rule is that I will only go to major sporting events at other people's house if Nikky is going also. A friend of mine once joked that we are friends because we hate the same people. This made me laugh so hard because this is probably true.

Politics.. I need the November election to be over quick as I am not sure I can remain friends with some of my friends after I see their political statements/views. Curt tells me that I am a confused voter so my beliefs are all over the dang place. However, I cringe sometimes when I see a friend's/spouse view on politics posted all over Facebook. People probably think this about my views too which is fine. I think November needs to hurry up so we can all remain friends. I sometimes have to stop the urge to comment on people's posts because what they posted drives me nuts.. I have to say, I am doing pretty dang well. Please remember this in the future if I post something you dislike, don't blow up my status bashing people/ideas/things that I am obviously in favor of.... That is all I am going to say on politics.. Next topic!

Facebook... I can't type a lie on this blog so I must confess that I creep often on the Book. I feel like if you put it on a public site for my eyes to see then I won't feel bad about reading it. I have decided that I like some of my friends way more because of Facebook. I didn't know some of my friends could be so insightful/humorous/awesome because of Facebook. I feel like this about blogs too. I read a couple of blogs and it makes me like people way more than I did before.. However....... This goes both ways.. Facebook sometimes makes me dislike my friends.. I am not the best with grammar but I don't think I am horrible either. My Nazi grammar friend, Kristin, may disagree though.. Kristin and I have a game where we screen shot a status that someone posted on Facebook and text it to the other person and the other tries to top it... One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use the incorrect form of your/you're and there/their/they're... Look over there and you will see their beautiful new house. I bet they're happy with it......... I bet you're happy with your new Ipad purchase so you can creep on my blog....... If you struggle with these words, please use the last couple of sentences for references.. Facebook needs some spell check so I don't judge you.. I am a horrible person..

Family.. I normally thought of family as just that, family. However, the older I have gotten the more I am seeing family as my friends also. I remember severely disliking my siblings growing up. They were not my best friends to say the least.. I couldn't wait to leave the house to get away from them.. Now they don't live in my house but 2/3 live in Columbia with me. We now get together about once a week as friends to play games or just to hang out. Someone makes dinner and we all sit around a table and eat-something we used to hate doing. My family/friends have expanded as my brothers are now married. I'm really glad I have siblings now that I am older even though I hated it when I was younger. A great part of getting married was I also inherited Curt's sibling to be my family/friends. He has a great sister whom I love hanging out with as a friend as opposed to a sister-in-law.

I must confess that I really started thinking of the friends topic at a BBQ with friends on Labor Day. We hung out with 2 other couples and honestly had a great time. We all got along and actually enjoyed each other's company. One of the couples was an old friend from high school and his wife and the other was a couple who was friends with our old friends and then we became friends also. Curt and I were discussing this on the drive home and decided that we are finally extremely happy with our friends situation. We feel like we have surrounded ourself with positive/happy people. I am done having friends who are negative. When I am around those people I find myself conforming being two faced and not the person who I want to be. You can never ever have too many friends but you can have too many negative friends. Actually one negative friend is probably one too many. I am now to the point in my life that I am not striving to be accepted by people and will do whatever it takes to be someone else's friend. If those peole don't want to accept me for me then I don't need to change to be their friend. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed the group of friend we were with at the BBQ. I didn't feel pressure to dress up, act like a normal girl or be someone I am not.. It is a really good feeling to finally be in this place in life..

I know this post wasn't a normally fluffy Hannah post but I will promise one of those posts soon. Say a little prayer that I don't get kidnapped in Mexico like my father-in-law is sure will happen. As always, thanks for reading my rambling!
H