musings on a weekend well-spent

Happiness is reuniting with your childhood best friend and realizing that, while you have both grown and matured throughout the years, you will always retain a certain bond that allows you to finish each others' thoughts. To choose eerily similar outfits for the day by mere coincidence. To recall entire events of your childhood by merely uttering a few words of a phrase. To realize that you still share an affinity for the same style of small-ass (but not XSmall-ass) underwear. To share a new story or past experience and know that it will be understood and appreciated without need for any explanation. To spend 4 straight days and 3 straight nights without getting sick of one another.

And then there's that other happiness that comes when you are truly content with your life. I have been living in Texas for just over 2 unconsecutive years, and have, at times, wondered if this is really what I want. If living here is something that I do because of the steady income, or somethat that was done by choice. After spending a long weekend with someone that appears, by all standards of a typical Texas resident, to have a fabulously exciting life and everything going for her, one might think that I would be on the first one-way flight to anywhere-but-the-Bible-Belt. So might I.

Which is why it was so surprising - and refreshing - to discover that spending the weekend with said friend was actually exactly the kick in the pants I needed to realize how great it is here. Of course there are times when I miss living in a big city. But I've been there, done that. Where else can I go to a real-life rodeo, eat fried cheesecake, wear t-shirts 10 months out of the year, and hop on a cruise ship to Mexico? Life in Texas continues to be an adjustment, but I am really starting to see it for what it is - a new chapter in my life. Eventually, this chapter will probably end. But until that happens, I plan on turning over a new leaf and enjoying all the fruits that this great state has to offer!

Having come to this conclusion during the drive back from the airport, my resolve to approach TX life anew was strengthened when I was met in downtown Cowtown by a BNSF coal train slowly pulling into the station as I sped under the tracks towards home. Now if that isn't symbolic, I just don't know what is.

And besides, when I get really homesick for the East Coast, a plane ticket is just $189 away...