A Much-Needed Diaspora

Today, I am leaving for Columbus to visit really good friends of The Boy’s and mine. Plans are to drive down to Ashland, I will hopefully get to do some laundry while I’m there, repack my bag, and head down from there to Columbus. Tonight’s plan is to go see Indiana Jones, tomorrow night is to hang out with a Director of Planning from the Columbus office from my business, Sunday I think The Boy and I will toodle around Columbus, and Monday will be some relaxing and heading back to Ashland/Cleveland.

The Boy and I started dating the winter of 2002; we officially started dating on December 1. I think that he took me down to Columbus to meet them in mid-January of 2003. He got a random call from our friends, just checking up on how he was doing, and how was life, and The Boy mentioned that he was seeing a new girl, and hey! would you like to meet her? They did, and so we began our first trek to Columbus at 10:00 at night on a Friday.

On the handful of times that I have been to Columbus, I can only site two times in which I went down and the weather was decent: Midsummer 2005, and (hopefully, today’s trip). So okay, officially, only one time I’ve gone to Columbus it’s been nice, I’m just wishfully thinking that this time will be nice.

The night I went down to meet Dear Friends, it was blizzarding, no fucking joke. At the time, The Boy drove a 1994 Buick Skylark (for the record, I think every Skylark from that year was painted maroon: I’ve never seen a Skylark in another color). Don’t get me wrong, that car was a beast, and I loved it (I got that thing up to 100 mph the first time I drove it). But this car scared the hell out of me in the winter time. In recent years, The Boy got a Honda CRV, which I felt a lot better in driving to Columbus in a blizzard, but not that first drive.

We made it to Columbus by about midnight, and that was my first encounter with Dear Friends. We spent the whole night staying up and talking about their history with The Boy, shared a much-digressed, seven-hour story of their mutual history, and listened to CD 101.1 all night.

Since that night, I have loved Dear Friends, and have met a lot of their other friends – who have, in turn, become our friends. One of the things that I am most looking forward to is our arrival in Columbus, where The Boy and I will come through the door, be escorted in, invited to sit down, and slowly the other members of our strange amoeba group will come by, excited to see us. I am longing for this trip because I’ve had such a rough time at both work and home lately, and I really need to escape and spend time with people I love to hang out with and talk to. This is the first time that I’m forced to run out of their house early on Sunday, and I can actually sit an relax.

I am so glad I am going on this trip.