I took a hiatus from NaBloPoMo. I am doing NaBloPoMo Light,* which allows you one break midway through the month so you can take a quick trip and not have to worry about posting while you travel, or worse yet, writing posts in advance like some sort of super organized and efficient person. That sounds hard.

I spent the weekend in Minnesota, where I attended a 40th birthday party for one of my best friends from high school. She didn’t know I was coming, and she hates surprises. So of course I nearly gave her a heart attack and jumped out of a hotel bathroom right into her face. Because I am a good friend. She screamed. She cried. Good times were had and it was a great night reminiscing and celebrating with some of my oldest friends who knew me when I had big, terrible hair.

As luck would have it, I was also able to get together with a gaggle of college friends on Friday night. I don’t know the technical definition of a ‘gaggle’ but in this case there were seven of us. I love those girls something fierce and it was so fun to spend time together. They knew me when I had short, mushroomy hair and they still befriended me, so I’ll never let them go.

Yes, my life story is punctuated by a series of horrendous hair choices.

I am still high on friendship fumes, which I’m hoping will sustain me through the winter. Quality time with lifelong friends is invigorating and soul-filling. I need to do it more often. One year ago I wrote about the challenge of finding new grown-up friends in this weird world of parenthood. Not surprisingly, that post also had a photo with an atrocious haircut.

Such a warm and friendly smile. I still think I should put this photo on a business card to hand out to potential friends, or drug dealers, at the playground.

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* I made this up but I do think it’s a solid idea to offer tiered NaBloPoMo plans to remove some of the guilt and failure for we flaky people.