4.30.2008

My friend April

Today is my friend April's birthday. I wanted to share a bit about my good friend.

We met through a mutual friend about 6 years ago. (Funny how neither of us are friends with that person anymore. I still keep in touch with that friend, but we have drifted, and I found that we don't have much in common anymore.)
I was sitting at the the kitchen table of said mutual friend, and in walked April. She immediately sat down next to me and introduced herself. I knew right away that she was nothing like the other friends of said mutual friend. They all made me feel uncomfortable, self-conscious, and quite frankly, ugly.
But not April.
We talked and drank for hours. She was warm, kind, and laid back. She still is. Apparently we talked about Hooters (the restaurant, not the assets) and alcohol, and we got a little tipsy.

And that was the beginning. Over the course of the next year or so, we went downtown Fort Worth to various bars (and witnessed the drama that is all of mutual friend's). We got stuck in the middle of some random fist fight between two very large grown men who were fighting about different branches of the military (asses). We also began watching The Bachelor together. Each week, we would cook dinner and dessert and yell at the TV when the hot (but stupid) man made the wrong decision, over and over.
Then we went on a weekend trip to Austin with said mutual friend. I made about 4,000 jello shots. We snuck them into a bar in our purses, and proceeded to get very drunk. And constipated (note: please don't eat 4,000 jello shots in 1 night-you will not shit for a week).
And April did not laugh at me when I got the hiccups in front of lots of people I didn't know. And she did not laugh at me when I kept saying, "Jeez! I never get the hiccups!!-Hic-"

I moved to Springtown about a year after we met, and we didn't see each other as much. No more nights of watching The Bachelor together. She got serious with a hockey player, whom she ended up marrying.
April moved to Austin. I had Grace. I missed her wedding (and I'm still sorry about that, April). Then I moved back to civilization, and she moved to f-ing Mississippi!!!
But NOW, she is back! And I'm still in civilization, and we live literally 3 minutes away from each other! I am very excited about that. Yet...
we have only seen each other once. We have busy lives! (Yeah right-that's why I'm always belly-aching about being bored)

Here is why April is important to me, and why I call her friend:

She makes me feel comfortable in my own skin. She doesn't judge me. She is laid back, but also very straight-forward. She will tell you exactly how she feels, what she thinks, but not in an abrasive way. She is funny, smart, motivated, and hardworking. She cares about her family, and takes good care of her friends too. When I talk to her, she acts like what I am saying means something, like I matter. We can not see each other for over a year, then meet up, and we get right back into the groove of things. She doesn't take any shit from people. She has my back. She has no idea how happy I was to meet her, especially after meeting all the friends of said mutual friend, and finding that they were all like the girls I hated back in high school. She is real, and loyal, and a good person to party with (not that we do that anymore!). And the girl likes TO EAT! I love my friends who love to eat! It's no fun to go to Olive Garden and only have one bowl of salad and soup, when you can have 4.

I only hope that I can be as good a friend to her, as she has been. I can only hope that we will stay in touch and hang out, if she moves out of the state again. I can only hope we will someday be old, walking down 6th Street in Austin, with jello shots hidden in our purses, eating pizza slices at 2am.

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