Friday On My Mind

My week continued out of my fog related state and I found my way to Friday. As you all know, I love Friday. It is my favorite day of the week. I think it goes back to when I was young and it brought the end of the school week and the anticipation of a weekend of nothing but fun. I always think of Friday as being the day that brings the promise of fun.

In my ever changing moods, Fridays seem to evolve with each of my stages of life. When I was in high school, it still meant the end of the school week but it also meant Friday night games, it meant marching at Friday football games, anticipating weekend parties, plans with friends, hopeful for a date or the elusive phone call you hoped for from a crush. All good fun.

In college, once again, Friday brought the total freedom from a week of classes, tests, projects, lectures. My sorority sisters and I would practically sprint back to our rooms, change clothes and race down the hill to our little college town where the evening awaited us. Back then, it was a town of little college bars and restaurants. Most of us had cash in hand from our weekly mail from our parents and were ready to have fun. Errr, we were ready to spend our money, wisely, yes, on the necessary things. Shhhhhh, just in case this gets back to my mother. Anyway, what fun we had on Friday nights. I still remember, in order, the little bars that were our destinations. We always hit them in the same order and always ended up back where we started. We would then make that trip, back up the hill, either to our rooms or to a house party. Then, on Saturday mornings, we would all pile on each other's bed and talk about our Friday night adventures.

My years as a flight attendant, out of college, were a hit or miss on Fridays because as a junior flight attendant, I usually held weekend schedules. If I worked it right, though, I tried to grab the LAX-JFK all night flights. We got to the city at 6am and had a day and a half in the city. Good times on weekends when those trips happened.

When J and I were married and in the years before the cheerleader, our house became party central on Friday nights. It would just continue to fill up with friends. Before you knew it, the music was blaring, people would be dancing all over the living room, the entire patio would be opened up with more dancing, one of our friends would always be hard at work in our kitchen, cooking food. We would end up with stragglers spending the night in both guest rooms. Fun times!

When the cheerleader hit toddler years and we had moved to a beach community. We were in a neighborhood of all kids and frazzled moms. So, what is a girl to do but start a neighborhood Friday Happy Hour. The kids would all run and play and have snacks while the moms would all partake in one of my yummy blender drink creations.

When we moved to Maggie's Farm, I friended, L, who is still my good friend. Back then, our kids were just in first grade and Fridays meant a bunch of us and our kids would either gather at her pool for an all day pool party or go out on a boat loaded with kids, water toys and crazy moms cranking, The Babys, up as our soundtrack and stashing our lipgloss so it wouldn't get wet. No matter where we spent the Friday, the kids all had fun, we all brought snacks and drinks for the kids and the moms all enjoyed our now classic summer drink of choice, Pink Lemonades.

Yesterday, after years of not having these Friday kind of days, L re-instated the Friday pool party. It was quiet since the kids are all either grown or are too old to want to hang with us. As the years have gone by, lives have changed and our friendship cirlces have changed but then, sitting by the pool, yesterday, enjoying my Pink Lemonade cocktail, it as like the old saying...the more things change, the more they stay the same (I think that is how it goes) and it couldn't have been more true. We are at different stages in life, different paths are being taken and we have different friends but the constant that remains is my friendship with L and the Friday Pool Day...the Friday saga continues!