So, I haven’t mentioned this amazing visit yet because a huge part of it was the fact that my husband was gone for several weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail.  That is a story in itself, but it is important to mention as this blog is about nurturing friendships and providing self care-specifically when your world has been temporarily flipped upside down.  I was excited for Rick to live out a dream of his and having young children with easy schedules made this one of the few appropriate times of our life to go on such a wild adventure.  So…just to set the scene…Sarah, my BFF since childhood knew I was going to have some long weekends without my husband and planned a rescue visit for a long weekend in June.

I’ve blogged about Sarah before here.  We’ve known each other since we were four.  She has since moved to Durham where she works as a pediatric acute care nurse practitioner because she is BOSS.  To me, though, she’s just Sawah.  And I’m just Rebecca.  And we’re just the same kids we’ve always been, but with grown up jobs and homes and husbands and all that weird stuff.  Here is a picture of us from childhood to remind you that we weren’t always the perfect goddesses we are today:

Anyway…we’ve been listening to this podcast called Forever 35 and were even featured on their show through a voicemail we left during our AMAZING FOREVER 35 PODCAST SELF CARE WEEKEND.  The link to that podcast is here.  Our podcast debut starts in the last 7 minutes or so.  Needless to say, we were FREAKING OUT about this.

So, day one of our spectacular self care weekend starts with not just one, but TWO BFFs.  My BFF Maggie was on her way to our hometown and picked up my BFF Sarah from the airport.  We met for lunch and drinks.  Having these two in the same place at the same time is like having a character breakfast with Mickey AND Minnie at Disney.  It’s kind of a big deal for me:

Then, Say came with me to get the kiddos from school.  Motherhood is weird.  It is something I often talk about with Sarah, but because we live so far apart, she doesn’t often get to spend time with me and my kids.  They both love her so much.  Juliet goes straight to her and Sarah entertains any and all of Jack’s ideas.  She even took them to Walmart and got Jack a new Lego Iron Man and worked on it with him.

One of the things I love most about Sarah is how different, but the same we have always been.  I feel like people wouldn’t necessarily put us together on E Harmony Friends Edition.  When you grow up with someone and enjoy playing the same things and share the same memories it really doesn’t matter if you end up having incredibly different interests.  We support each other’s dreams and always have.

One thing we have in common is our womanly craving for self care.  I have never been one for makeup and fashion and all of that, but I am 100% on board for anything that makes me feel good.  What makes me feel relaxed and healthy is self care in the way of epsom salt baths, face masks, anything skincare, smelling good, manicures, pedicures….all that stuff.  It just makes me feel clean and fresh and ready to face the world.  This is where Forever 35 comes in.  Sarah recommended this podcast to me because the two hosts conversations reminded her so much of us.  They’re just random and unimportant and fun talks like the ones we have at least weekly.  I took a listen and now I’m hooked and convinced that Doree and Kate would just LOVE Sarah and me.  Since we are both fan girls of Forever 35 Podcast and self care, we decided to make an uberly embarrassingly obsessive creepy creepers weekend out of it.

The weekend included facials at a local spa from a super nice lady named Betty, foot masks that promised to make our feet disgustingly (and satisfyingly) peel off dead skin like a snake, under eye patches to reduce our puffy stressies, binge watching Queer Eye, shopping at Ulta, religiously spraying rose water on our faces, and of course taking notes on what we wanted to say on our voicemail to our favorite podcast.  We rehearsed, yall.  We did.  And then we left TWO voicemails.  Because the first one cut us off.  Because we are still teenagers in lady bodies.  We squealed when we hung up.  I promise.

When I had to drop Sarah off at Groome (because I have two kids, y’all), I cried.  I waited until I drove away from her and I bawled my eyeballs out like a little baby.  As I get older, I realize the value of true friendship like this.  We are so good at staying in touch.  In fact, I just got home from visiting her in Durham a few days ago, but when you get to spend that time together, it is so easy to flashback to childhood when we really could see each other whenever we wanted.  We just rode our bikes on over.  We had even cleaned out my childhood closet that weekend and found loads of diary entries that included Sarah because there was a time when no one else was more important to me than her.  She is and always will be one of the great loves of my life.  Her and the co-hosts of Forever 35, of course.  😉

P.S. That foot mask took a week to work, but it worked.  And it was so wonderfully gross.  You’re welcome.