Ideas on keeping in touch - The Coffee Date

My Best Friend and I have known each other for, gosh, 12 years now. We have only really lived in the same geographical location for about a year. We were both in high school, at a time where we "could" communicate by email, but we didn't. We preferred to write letters. As we got older, and she went away for college, we started conversing by phone more (thank you cell phone plans with unlimited long distance). After she had children, it became increasingly hard to communicate by phone, with the boys (who I love and get to be their "honorary" auntie) wanting more and more of their mom's attention, no matter who called whom... We switched to email, but wanted to keep the verbal communcation that we had had for so long. At one point, it looked like we would both be moving into the same general geographical location (where we both met and grew up) when she graduated from vet school and I had decided that I had enough of "village life." We were looking forward to getting to spend "adult" time with each other, going out to restaurants, just the 2 of us, or out for coffee on a Saturday... Sadly, just before she made the move "back home," A got a job that took us away again... Pooh...

We decided that with our increasingly busy lives, we would have to schedule time to talk to each other, outside of email. So the invention of the "Coffee Date" was born. The rules of the coffee date are to be distraction free (no husbands, kids, pets, etc) and one of us would call the other at a set time on a set date while we both were sitting down to coffee in a coffee shop so we could fill each other in on our lives. If one of us needs to talk to the other, and email will not do, she will email the other to suggest a "coffee date soon," at which point, discussions of when happen. We usually do this when there is a lot to fill in, or we just miss each other's voice. The coffee dates saved my sanity while I was in exile (on Oahu...).

Of course, if something happens and we MUST speak to the other, we do pick up the phone and call the other. We know each other so well now, and our general conversation schedule, that if this happens, it is for a reason and the other person will drop what they are doing. We are very good friends.

With us both blogging now, it is much easier to keep up with eachother's lives. But, we still need our coffee dates. We are also planning on (sometime soon) taking a weekend trip together somewhere. We're hoping to make it a yearly thing if we can. I think (and correct me if I'm wrong, cause you know I'm a ditz) that we are planning the first "meet up" in Seattle. It's pretty much the middle ground for the both of us. So much has changed in our lives since we first discussed it, I'm not sure when it will acutally happen, we'll just have to see.

Friends are very special to me, and I find it hard to keep in contact with them. I always feel like I'm interrupting someone else's life by calling them, especially if they have children. I even do this to family. I know people want to talk to me, but I always feel like I'm intruding... So any way I can find to communicate with those I love best and stay in contact, I'll do it.

So here's a shout out to my BFF - you fat pig... you water-retaining sea cow!