Constant friends are better!

Well, I spent most of the day cleaning up the house (yes, we're already discussed the fact that I'm slow) because we had some old friends that we haven't seen for years coming over for dinner. We used to go to church with this couple when we went to PCBC, and when we moved to Trinity we kind of lost touch and then they moved to Tulsa for a while and now they're back and we saw them a couple of weeks ago when we visited Council Road. So last week Kathy wanted me to invite them over for supper and then he didn't get back to me for a couple of days and I figured that they didn't really want to get together and then he called and invited us for supper and then Kathy explained we were going to have them for supper since they had never been to our house and I told her you never argue when someone is going to feed you a free meal but they were going to come over here and so I had to clean and then Kathy (who has been having some trouble with her knee) moved wrong or something and anyway, she hurts too much and so I had to call and cancel but at least I got the house clean, which I'm wondering if that wasn't Kathy's plan all along. Whatever, I've decided I like constant friends better. Susan and Jim have been over to our house so many times that Kathy doesn't worry about the place being spotless. Susan knows how hard Kathy works and knows how worthless I am around the house, and let's face it, Jim's a guy and unless the mold is crawling up his leg on the couch he probably wouldn't notice whether the house is clean or not. Actually, as long as Susan has a flat spot to sit and knit, she probably wouldn't notice either. So my question is, why do we do this to ourselves? Do we really care about these people's opinion? If someone is more worried about how clean your house is (let me stress here that our house isn't like a toxic waste dump or anything. After all, the grandkids are crawling all around the place so Kathy makes me sweep and mop fairly regularly) than spending time with you, do you really want to hang out with them anyway? And if they aren't that worried about how clean everything is, why the heck did I spend all day cleaning?

Do you ever wonder what makes a friend anyway? I saw a guy in 7-11 the other day over by my mom's house. He kinda looked familiar to me and he said I looked familiar, but we couldn't figure out from where. Nobody's name sounded right and he didn't go where I went to church or school, and let's face it, if I don't know you from church or school I probably don't know you because I don't really go anywhere else (kinda sad, that). Anyway, between that and canceling today, it just got me thinking about old friends. I don't really have any old friends. Not people I've hung out with all my life or anything. Most of the friends I've had just kind of fell off the radar, you know what I mean? I lot of my friends that I had in my twenties were friends of me and my ex-wife, so during the divorce they felt like they had to take sides and weren't really willing to. Or they were her family, (one of my best friends ever was my ex-father-in-law, he really didn't know how to handle the divorce) and kinda had to take her side. Then in my thirties most of my friends (and I really use that term loosely) were somehow affiliated with whoever I was dating at the time. So when I broke up with Ms. X (usually because whoever she was marrying didn't see why I was hanging around) they kinda fell by the wayside. Whenever you make friends at church, well, maybe I should say whenever I make friends at church, if you change churches they kind of fade away. That's probably my fault, but it always seems to happen. The people I go to school with, I don't really socialize with because, after all, most of them are my children's age and I don't socialize with my kids that much either. They're only there to deliver the grandkids anyway. Kathy says that the reason I don't have many friends si because I tend to hold people at a distance, and that's true. But sometimes I think that people want to be held at a distance. Several years ago I went to Promise Keepers with a large group of men and when Kathy asked about them I could tell her about their whole lives (except what they didn't want people to know, I don't tell secrets) but they didn't know anything about me. I'm a great listener and a great talker. Not so good on the sharing part though. The guy that probably knows the most in the world about me, we only talk about once a year. He lives maybe 5 miles from me and we love each other, we just don't spend much time together. My brother probably can't remember my wife's name (his wife's name is Linda, but that's kinda cheating. After his first wife Kay, every woman he's been involved with is named Linda, he claim it keeps him out of trouble) and my sister probably doesn't want to remember my name. I have plenty of cousins, but they're all kinda weird and they think the same thing about me.

Oh well, getting back to constant friends. Mainly because I was starting to depress myself. Constant friends are better. Susan and Jim and Kathy and I eat together on all the weird holidays. Ok, sure, they had thanksgiving with us but that was really a fluke. We're more the Flag Day celebration types. Besides there are more weird holidays, so we get to eat together more. After all, Christmas and Thanksgiving are just two days and they're jammed together anyway. When you get together on Flag Day and Arbor Day and St Patricks Day and times like those, you get together a lot more times. My other friend Jim can fix anything. So I call him fairly often for dinner or just to hang out, that way he doesn't feel like I'm only calling him when I need something fixed. Not that that would matter. He would drop whatever he was doing and come help me fix whatever it was anyway. My friend Alice sends me e-mails and e-cards and pictures of her kids and grandkids even when I sometimes get behind and forget to respond to her. She just keeps plugging away at me, and there are times when the e-card she sends keeps me from sliding into a black hole. My son-in-law D'Artagnon is willing to do anything for me. He has helped me cut down trees and pull up stumps and build a deck and even was willing to climb in the crawl space and fix a broken pipe, although he couldn't fit in the crawl space and had never soldered a pipe before (Jim to the rescue again, not only can he solder, he's so skinny, he could fit in the crawl space with room to spare.) My son-in-law Jeff has helped me so many times it is amazing. He even helped me build the flagstone patio before he was my son-in-law. But it was for their wedding reception.

You know, I do have friends. Thank you Lord, for the consistency of my friends even when I am inconsistent.

Treat yourself and your friends well today.

Wayne