The Golden Girls...(Godmothers 'Honoris Causa')

Everyone has them -- the friends that you can't stand 90% of the time but love 200% of the time. In most circles, these friends (maybe 4 or 5 of them) all carry a distinct personality - the "nice one", the "mean one", the "crazy one", the "fun one", and the "momma". Unfortunately, these traits are often tied to each friend when they are in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade and no matter how hard you try or no matter how much they evolve, you will always see them as the same little girl who used to forge signatures, or kiss little boys under the stair way, or beat up little boys during house parties like they did over 20 years ago.

Like many other fortunate women, I have a group of friends like this -- girls who I have known for well over 20 years. Through deaths, love, and fights -- marriage, children, relocation, and life-changing events -- these girls, no...these women are always around, somewhere nearby just in the event that there is a need for a celebration cocktail or one of us are about to have a nervous breakdown.

Time has moved us closer and further apart - physically is some cases and mentally in other cases - yet I am always amazed at the universe's ability to keep us in arm's reach of each other. Like I said, sometimes even when I can't stand them - I love them and I am convinced that after 20+ years, neither time nor space will change that.

Over the years, I've tried very hard to try to understand the ever-changing dynamics of my relationships with these women and just decided that these are complex and dynamic relationships that I may never fully comprehend. However, one day when I least expected it - the complexity of our friendships became overwhelming simple. There around the "cool one" we sang a song that has become a tradition for us at weddings, yet this time the words began to take on a new meaning...

"Thank you for being a friend.
Traveled down the road and back again.
Your heart is true -
Your a pal and a confidante.
And if you threw a party, and invited everyone you knew -
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say
Thank you for being a friend."

And there it was. I realized while singing that no matter what life brought, no matter where I paths lead, 50 years from now, I'm sure that I will still be singing that song, with the same group of women, celebrating something -- and grateful that the universe knew better than I did and kept us in each other's arm reach for more years than any of us could have ever have imagined we'd be blessed with.

The Day Job Lounge and the birth of the Sister Circle)..

Two days after my birthday, I found myself at dinner with several other couples to celebrate my husband's business partner, Ozzie, birthday. Despite living in Chicago, all of my husband's closest friends are southern boys who have each have been "transplanted" in Chicago in the name of love (IE. their wives). So there we sat around the table talking about everything from taking out the trash to picking up strip clubs in Vegas - the normal "Venus vs. Mars" debates that happens when we all get together.

The men call themselves the "Four Guys" and they refer to the home of the only single guy as the "Day Job Lounge" or "DJL" for short. The "Day Job Lounge" is a bit of a neighborhood men's cave, or a "safe haven" for any of the guys when they need to get out of the house. When I once asked what goes on at the "Day Job Lounge," Pat only shook his head, got a distant look in his eye and said, "We just talk about life."

So there we were, having dinner and the "Four Guys" began to discuss the need for the DJL.

"Sometimes, we SERIOUSLY just don't understand where ya'll are coming from and we need the perspective of somebody else who's been there."

"Sometimes, we need to just vent...without anyone judging how you feel."

"Sometimes, a man just needs to go somewhere where he doesn't have to be anyone but himself."

As the wives sat around the table and listened to their husbands talk about the camaraderie that they have, we all felt a pang of jealousy -- not because we didn't want them to appreciate friendship with other people but because we recognized that it was something that we missing in our own lives.

So that night after dinner, we all coordinated our Blackberry Calendars and decided to form the "Sister Circle."

Sidenote: It's funny how sometimes you don't realize what you are missing in your life until you experience it. As women, I think it's easy for us to get into the routine of "making everything work" that we oftentimes negate that part of ourselves that needs pure, unadulterated, and uncompromising fellowship with other women. It wasn't until that night that I realized how badly I needed to "let my hair down".

When the "Sister Circle" gets together, it truly is a time where we all feel like we can say anything, ask anything, shout anything and no one will think anything of it the next day.

We've talked about everything from ways to get out of sex when you feel that poke in the middle of the night to how add spice to a sex life when it suffers due to work, a baby, and stress. We are simply friends due to shared and common experiences which is the exact reason why it works. We don't spare any words when it comes to advice but no one is invested in being "right" or someone being better than the other. We only come to together for the purpose of eating, drinking, and talking smack.

I am grateful for the introduction of these women into my life because as a soon-to- be-mother, there are so many things that I don't know and so many things that I can't begin to anticipate once a baby enters my life and marriage. I can always defer to a magazine or website on matters such as diaper rash or onesies, and I can always defer to my mom on matters such as easy dinners and life insurance, but until now, I had no one to turn to when I wanted to know whether my size E's would have ever shrink back to a manageable size or to ask whether Pat was horrible for not rubbing my feet after I made dinner.

So thank you Sister Circle for your honesty, your candor, and your unbridled coonery on all matters pertaining to marriage, motherhood, and womanhood :-)