Close-by friends

I have really great friends. I've never been a person who needed a lot of friends. I love to have just really close friends, people who truly care about me and my life. I want people who want to spend time with me instead of me wanting to spend time with them.

Throughout my life, that has really been hard for me to find.

I made some wonderful friends in college. Friends that I could be perfectly happy having without ever making another friend again.

However, none of us live within an hour of each other.

So yes, we still talk. We blog; we call; we text; we e-mail. But it's not the same as having someone where you can say, "Hey, you want to run to Wal-Mart with me?" "Do you want to grab some dinner tonight?"

I'm so blessed that I have always had Nate, and that I have him so close now that we can do the everyday stuff together. But it's still nice to go out with other people sometimes.

The past couple weeks we have spent time with another couple we met in town. They are a few years older than us, but really, at our age, age doesn't really matter with friends. It has been nice to spend time going out to eat, playing video games, watching football games. It's nice to have a guy for Nate and a girl for me.

Last night, we went out to eat and then spent some time just acting like kids by playing Kinect on XBox and Band Hero. I even got to play with their little dog, Sunny, which was nice because I really miss having a dog. You forget how much comfort laying your arm on a little warm body with soft fur makes brings.

But I was talking about friends, not dogs.

As life brings me to new places, places that I never imagined I would be, it takes me away from loved ones and friends I have relied on in the past. It makes me stretch my usual personality out from quiet listener to open talker. Sometimes that's hard.

However, the reward - friends - is quite worth the work.