I knew Queencie was coming to town this weekend, but I didn’t know when, or even if, we would be able to get together. When I called her after work, I found out she was wandering around downtown alone, having been dropped off there by a friend who was working until 8:30 p.m. I quickly drove out there, picked her up, and brought her back to our apartment. We ended up hanging out for five hours–eating (what we always did best together), laughing, catching up, and reminiscing. I couldn’t believe it had been so long since we had last seen each other (at the wedding).

It’s always a riot to hang out with her. There’s a nice balance of catching up and filling each other in on where we are now with silly fun. After a yummy BBQ meal cooked by Matt, we went to Coldstone’s for free ice cream (Thanks, Suzanne!), which is an old Mel/Queencie favorite activity. I can’t believe we used to eat the medium size all on our own. We then took her up to Kerry park for a nighttime view of the city, and then returned to the apartment.

Queencie got a kick out of a picture of me doing my horizontal balance on a pole trick that I’ve been doing since elementary school, so we went out to the street corner to attempt it. I am so not in shape, because I could barely hold myself up anymore. Some people driving/walking by looked at us oddly because we were laughing so hard around a pole; others didn’t even look at us.

We also took a few of our traditional “boxing gloves in normal activities” poses, with Queencie eating a chip with my boxing glove. Matt came out to the living room, saw what we were doing, and said, “Why do those [the gloves] always come out whenever Queencie’s around?!” hehe…

I’ve been really spoiled recently by having all these special friends around. These are people that I feel really comfortable with, and our friendships are the type where–despite the distance–we don’t feel like we’ve been apart that long. We can have fun reminiscing, but our friendship now isn’t based solely on the past. I’ve moved around a lot, but through it all, there are the same few people who have stuck around who are carried to each place with me. Those people are lifelong friends.