Cheaper than therapy!

Brunch selections, yum!

Brunch total: $51, 3.5 hours of duration. Therapy, even virtual: $125, 50 min of duration. Thats not girl math, that's real math.

Blame it on (outdated) formal education, (ahem, and student loan debt that would make you sad that I didn't find a more lucrative passion) but I calculate everything through the lens of the ROI.

Me: OMG that Lululemon sweatshirt is adorbs

Me: Let me find a "like kind" on Amazon, because I'm full on in mom life mode

(Read: when sporting and camp registration fees mirror your mortgage)

So, I made it to Sunday Brunch today; its important that you get to know me well enough to know that I find this truly sacred time. No kids invited, not timeline, no dresscode...just pure "girl time" with no agenda but provides a space that takes hours to discuss world issues, IG posts, co-workers and the like. Todays topic(s): labels, what exactly earns the right of a "friend", versus the large description of "associate/woman I know"

It's loaded, and I feel I should give full disclaimer that even as an undergrad I was 6 credits short of even having a Pyschology degree...but thankful for not only years of life experience, but also the advent and adoption of memes, and quotes, likely taken out of context and credited to wrong subjects, I feel well equiped to speak on the matter with authority.

Covid times, I had, what I would consider an inner circle. The world was shut down, there wasn't much interaction outside of my family, neighbors, and my kids friends parents because, for sanity, playdates were still a thing. I was rocking that mom life, with my mom friends, still making time for long term local friends to. There were MANY of driveway firepit nights, kids in a cleared pod-gatherings in the yard (and home), and even holidays spent together. We had 100% established "community", no new friends, no new inductees, we were in fact: pandemic family.

Then the world opened up, and the relationships seemed to distance themself, despite the [shallow] attemps of keeping them together. You know the exchange:

Person 1: OMG I miss you, lets get together.

Person 2: I know, its been too long, whats your next week?

Person 1: open, find a time fr

...and then it goes dark

Texts messages with a 30 second reply time is now on average 2-3 days later. The ability to fit in to each others world has harder and harder as the "real" world opened back up.

Then something else happened, that not one person warned me of: your kids grow up and their friends change. And because their friends change, your friends change. But hold on, why?

Ok, so yes, no one necessarily needed to let me know that birthdays celebrate aging for the kids, for me, for all. But these friends that I've shared many days starting at PreK, group texts, spring breaks, sporting events, parent nights , PTA volunteer days, etc with...those age (the wrong way) and go away too? Do they all go away because playdates get harder to schedule, and kids change interest; or were we really not friends, but just sharing a community? So communal, shared space-type of friends, subject to change when those variables shift? This is just a free form, [public] journal entry so I really don't have the reason why, tied up in a bow. All I know that it hurts, if I'm honest.

My invitations to outings have slimmed down as the world has opened a bit more, my focus narrowing in on all the activities and committments of the little humans of the house and less of the bucket fulfillment that girlfriends bring/brought me. This is mom life.

An espresso martini later, I ask you: where does that leave me? Have you lost

friends along the way?