August has been rough for me.  Personally, professionally, and three or four other p-words-ally.

My birthday passed, on the 15th.  But I rescheduled it for mid-September.  I'll let you know when so you can shower me with all sorts of good things.

I loved my few days of absolute freedom in New York at the beginning of the month.  I don't know if it made it harder to come back to life, or if I would be lying in a gutter somewhere if I didn't have those days. 
Nearly a decade ago, a good friend said to me, "it's a shame your birthday is in August.  It's the worst month of the year.  Bad things happen in August." 

"Bullshit"

But maybe she's right.  I've stepped outside myself and my obsession with my birthmonth and took a look around the past few years and holy crap.  A lot of bad things happen in August.  Every August.

Good things happen too.  An old friend got married last Saturday.  I was in the wedding.  Our other best friend from middle school was in the wedding.  We are always in each other's weddings.  Three of us, four weddings.  Four white dresses.  Two cranberry.  Two red.  Two lavender.  A yellow and a light blue.  My wedding party all wore different colors.

We are that age when people are getting married.  Again.
The years bring ups and downs and babies and dogs and marriages and divorces and ex's and oh's.

The friends I have made and kept over the past 15+ years since graduating high school are the ones I turn to for grown up things.  Births and deaths and love and hate and bills and notes and houses and floods of all sorts.  We can have great fun, but we most often serve to hold each other up through the stuff that bombs a lady after she becomes of age.

These two girls seem to never change, even though their lives have.  Drastically.  Mine has too, I guess.  Being on the inside looking in on things, nothing seems to move because I'm right there moving with it.  But it does.  Sure as the earth spins and revolves.  Things are always moving.
 
When we three get together we giggle and wiggle and jiggle until everything that goes on outside of our insides falls away and fades to grey and we are left with whatever it was that brought us together as children. 
We saw each other through less than ideal teen years.  Through math tests and varsity sports.  Through bad break outs and bad break ups. 

Through the stuff that made us the women we are today.

That's us.  The photo is blurry.  I cropped most of it.  It's an amateur photo of a professional photo shoot but I like the way we look here.

There we are again.  I'm wiping lipstick off Mik's wrist.  Martha is looking strong.  Martha is always strong.
She is a professional All star tight end.  She's the athletic one.  She's also the funny one.  And the gay one.  And the smart one.

And the one who isn't so good at putting on her own make up.  But that's okay.  I like doing make up.
I like taking care of those two girls.  I owe them for taking care of me.  I also owe their mothers.  I should tell them that. Maybe a thank you card next Mother's Day, or a note written into this year's Christmas Card.

Here we are the two of us.  Full faces of make up, lots of hairspray, and red dresses on.  You can't see it in this picture, but our hands are in our pockets.  Hooray for dresses with pockets.  We are the type that keep our hands in our pockets. Bad habits. Twin habits.

Peek at you!  This was so hilariously uncomfortable for us.  We are hardly demure.

Bunny ears.  Sort of.
Dave's face on the blog. Full force.

I needed last weekend to remind me indeed that the more things change, the more they stay the same.