Chicagoland

A few weeks ago, I went back to Chicago (only the second time I've done so since moving westward three years ago).

I went for an interview with an amazing company (for a job which, sadly, I did not get), and plane ticket pricing granted me the excuse to stay through the weekend, i.e. Have rad times with all my friends.

As much as I love living out west amid the mountains and treehuggers, I really do miss home.  Which isn't so much a place (I'm not particularly tied to the midwest, though I do enjoy it) as it is the close community of friends I literally grew up with.  Home is also with Nick, but it's a different sort of happiness and safety.  When I was in Chicago, I missed him.  When I'm in Denver, I miss my childhood friends.  Having two homes in two different places can be difficult.

Becky and Meghan and Molly knew me when I wore baggy t-shirts and smudgy tennis shoes.  We went through the awkward, rocky, embarrassing teenage years together.  We speak like each other.  We fight and bicker and laugh and communicate via weird noises.  I'm pretty sure they know me better than practically anyone.

But I tend to do this to myself.  I went to school in Iowa instead of staying in Chicago.  I moved to Colorado shortly after I graduated college.  I think I do it to test myself.  I'm a homebody, and I tend to not leave my comfort zone.  Moving away from everything is a way to force myself to cut down the safety nets of familiarity.

Being back among Becky and Meghan and Molly and seeing Chris, an old college friend, was invigorating.

I've been away from female friends for too long.  I forgot how much fun it is to just sit and talk (okay, so it was really just gossiping).  We drank beers out on the deck in the evenings, sweating in the humid summer air.  We went to see an improv show that took an audience suggestion and made it into a complete Shakespearean style play.  We got nerdy and discussed Harry Potter and the Avengers.  We went to see Moonrise Kingdom.  We partied it up in the suburbs and played with dogs and kittens.  We spent the greater part of an evening in hysterics, rewording the chorus to Call Me Maybe - an abominably irritating song which became awesome when we got hold of it:

I just met you,
and this is crazy -
but here's my number.
I've got a boner.

Because we're so classy.

It was a much needed vacation among my dearest friends.