Back on Track....

I spent the morning and early afternoon with A today.... we went to the Greek restaurant for brunch and then we shopped around Wal-Mart for a while. More importantly, we celebrated her birthday which is later on this week, and even more importantly, we had another long talk.

It's been an up-hill, down-hill journey with us this past year, but we came to terms with our lives today and we "agreed to disagree" and just accept the fact that we're not as joined at the hip as we once thought we were.

After all the years of working side by side up in New York, we mistakenly thought that we were mirror images of one another, and we tried to have that kind of relationship when she and her family moved down here a few years ago. Granted, we worked very well together up north, but we had more things not in common with one another than in common. Trouble is, we didn't realize that till long after we were floundering in a no-win friendship here in Clear Lake.

The funny thing is that my husband's mom told me long ago that A and I were as different as night and day. I discounted her opinion of that because I thought she just hadn't known A long enough to come to that conclusion. But down here, I heard nearly the same thing from my friend Frankie, who told me that A and I were as different as ham and eggs. And I discounted Frankie's statement also, for the same reason I pooh-pooh my mother-in-law's opinion.

Well, I'm sure both Audrey and Frankie are up there on a cloud somewhere, looking down and saying to one another "See?! Didn't we say that a long time ago?"

So today is a new beginning. Both A and I realize that we don't like the same things, we don't like the same people, we have different methods of keeping control of our lives.... and that's just fine. We are who we are, and neither one of us can (or should) change for the other.

We had a delicious brunch at the Greek's, the birthday gift I gave her made her ooooh and aaaah, we caught up with what we've been doing, then we walked around Wal-Mart and found some goodies and had some much-needed laughs.

All this pressure we've been living with.... each of us trying to say and do and be what we thought the other wanted and needed. And what we needed was just to follow the rule that dear Frankie always lived by--- "In all ways, on all days, just be yourself, because being someone else takes too much work and life is just too damn short for that!"

If you're reading this from your silver cloud, Frankie, I wish you'd sit on my shoulder from time to time, and tell me to "Snap out of it!" when I do foolish things.