ok ok so im like 2 days late with this post as I have successfully been posting my weekly om’s on Wednesdays. I use it as a way to get through the rest of the week; however, I have been having a helluva week and I have to say it has made for some interesting times. But neither here nor there. I thought I should do a special edition of the weekly om and I wanted to take some extra time to put it all together!

Basically I want to give my friends some recognition for being totally awesome, most badass mamma jammas I know! (yea, i said mamma jamma… what’s it to ya?!)

Anyway, so welcome to the weekly om, friendship edition — da da da dadadadaaaaaaaaaaaa (in no particular order)

1) Leah – man oh man what do i say about Leah. hehehe. I have a completely hetero, girl crush on my homie Leah. Let me tell you why. Leah is by far one of more amazing individuals I know…second only to my immediate family. We have had many-a-good times together. In the past year or so, we have gotten to know each other on a much deeper level in terms of talking a lot of gchat and having get togethers every thursday where we will have a few beers, dissect the week, and prepare for Friday. She played on the NASA softball team with me last summer but that mostly consisted of us meeting up in the general vicinity of the field, deciding it was too hot then going to a local restaurant, having a cosmo, a few wings, and the occasional bitchfest. Our dogs like each other a fair amount and I just can’t do Leah justice in this paragraph. She takes my crazy ideas that I put forth and runs with them, with me! She helps me put ridiculous into motion and is a true partner in crime. She is up for most anything – and puts forth ideas to me that I often like. My idea for doing the Disney Princess half wasnt my idea at all — it was actually her idea to run it! and it was an amazing time!!! One other thing I really want to note, yknow when you leave and come back from a place and you have friends but you suck at keeping in touch and so sometimes friendships can be awkward, well with Leah, they werent at all. She made my and my husband’s transition back into the DC area a lot more pleasant and friendly. I mean, obviously all of the people on this page did that, but I single out Leah for this (and her husband, see below) because they would come over and kick it Thursday or meet up with us when a big even happened or whatever. They drove to Old Town to have dinner with Jerid and I the day I found out that I had gotten the new job at the smithsonian. She listens to me with a non-judgemental ear. she calls me on my bullshit and is just generally fun to hang out with. The true danger of our friendship was discovered at disney world… we found out that when we go shopping together, we are a force to reckoned with!!! always nice to have a running buddy, shopping buddy, ranting buddy and just general awesome buddy rolled into one. so much more that i want to express but cant really form the words to do it right.

2) Cass – One of the most forgiving and non-judgmental people I know, Cass and I have been friends for quite some time. Like all relationships, we have hit some bumps in the road of friendship but since I moved back from Oklahoma (and even before that), our friendship has been on solid ground. She listens to my crazy rants throughout the day (and when i say crazy, i mean crazy) and as far as fitness goes, is my swimming mentor/coach/person who yells at me when i havent seen pool water in days/weeks. hahaha. so back in september, I convinced her and two other friends to sign up for the rocketman tri with me at the beginning of May in Cape Canaveral. The attraction being that this is a real space coast event, with the bike portion of the tri going around both launchpads! Anyway our recent chats have consisted of some ranting and a lot of discussion on pool running and how i should swim instead of pool running, but it is hard to convey to a swimmer that anytime i can look like a complete ass, i tend to gravitate towards that! SOOOOO pool running it is! WITH the SHOES!!

3) Rachel – Rachel and I became friends when she was dating my brother in high school but we have known each other since we were 5 and played on the same soccer team… all three of us (me, ben and her) with my dad coaching. With Rachel I have discovered many things about myself; for example, how much I enjoy the song I like Big butts, why i know what rent is, how awesome lynyrd skynyrd is, an awesome new soccer team (that i last talked about here), and numerous other things. In high school, we played ball together and would go to friendlys before every game and get 5 scoop crazy sundaes and eat them then try not to vomit on the field. Now, we mostly chillax and hang out with the husbands and dogs and laugh a lot. We still revert back to our high school and college selves by watching Wayne’s World or Zoolander or one of the other many great movies that I saw because of Rachel. This girl has seen all sides of me and while some of them are ugly, she has managed (somehow) to handle it all and for that I am truly grateful. As mentioned above, all relationships have ups and downs. the downs in this friendship were like the one above… i had my head too far up my butt and took some really great people for granted and when that happened, they bounced for a little bit, but when i was ready to not be a jerk anymore (approx 4.5 years ago), we started rebuilding and are as strong as ever. I have gone to this girl with problems involving anger, upset, pain, happiness, and anything else you could possibly think of and yet for some reason she keeps answering her phone 🙂 hehehe. babbling and moving on. SHE IS THE REASON I LOVE PHO! enough said. hehehe

4) Michelle – I know you have heard me talk about my BRF, Michelle, quite a lot. Especially lately, but I just want to reemphasize the massive amounts of love I have for this lady. She is pretty damn awesome! She is always very encouraging and has pushed me and run with me more times than I can count. When she was living with me, we would get up at 5am to go running. I had to be at work at 730, she didnt have to be at work until 9 so she could have run at a later time, but she got up earlier, at an ungodly hour, to be able to run with me. She ran with me during the Disney Princess Half too and stayed with me the whole time! it is pretty freakin awesome to have a good friend like this.

5) Sheena – Sheena was named after someone, it is escaping me presently but it was after someone awesome. She has always been very dependable and is very smarty smart smart. She is like my brother. PhD in Biology with a focus in smart awesomeness! When I told her about my plan to run the Disney Princess, she got on board. When I mentioned the Rocketman tri, her and her husband signed up also. She is up for anything and is always putting a smile on my face when I see her. She always has a plan for everything, girl after my own heart. While we don’t always stick to the plans we make, we make plans! and she and Aaron (see below) have made some pretty impressive showings. She will come out when I need a running buddy (see pic below, she is the reason i got under 55 minutes for my first 8k and frst race ever). She pushes me to be a better athlete and calls to invite me for bike rides (which i can’t presently do right now because of the new tall boot that i got…this morning to replace the shoe-boot). She let’s me experiment with recipes at her dinner parties and never fails to come up with an awesome idea for us to do. For someone I have known since 8th grade, you would think she’d be sick of me… but somehow I don’t manage to annoy her that much 🙂 I am grateful for that.

6) Ben – OMG all of the things I could say about my dear brother Ben. I know that I will prolly do a family edition or something at another time and I will end up rewriting this part a few times because there is so much I can say about my brother. We are 14 months apart. He is older, book-smarter and sillier (and sometimes louder) than me. We look very very similar except for our noses and we now live only like 3 miles apart as he just moved back to VA with his awesome girlfriend who I absolutely adore! I won’t subject her to blog posts just yet as we have only known each other for a year, but i will say she is awesome and i like her a lot! I have known Ben my whole life, living in the same house for 17 very interesting years, parting ways for college (he went to UVA and I went to Purdue) and then regrouping for breaks. during a period of about 3 years, I was going through a tough time and putting my family through hell and he, like my pop and mom, got pretty angry at me. And to be honest, rightly so. I was angry at me and the world. Anyway, neither here nor there. We are great now! I wouldn’t call us best friends, but lets just say that Ben is on my favorites in my iphone. I have a goal to gchat him at least 3 random things a week and he is just an amazing human being. He is entertaining and always joking around and goofing off and the way that he and his gf communicate is hilarious! You may remember that ben and i have had many a-discussion on gchat that I have shared with you all here, here and here but this next one will be mostly from memory: basically we are all going to this bday party for a mutual friend this weekend and Ben messages me asking if i am going. i affirm. he then asks if i want to carpool (since we live so close). I say sure. He then asks who should drive. I say I can drive. he says ok. Jess than gchats me and asks: did your brother ask if you could drive on saturday for the bday party thing….. muwahahahahaha hilariousness right? Anyway, this is one of many awesome and hilarious entertaining things that my brother brings to my life. He is also running Ragnar with me and I still call him Booney to annoy the crap outta him when I fake whine at him (not to him but at him). He is a great dude and I am lucky to be his sister. He helps me with my homework and we talk tech nerd stuff also!

7) Earl – heheh earl and I have known each other since 2001 and we didn’t get close until some time after that. He is married to Leah (see above) so earl has to suffer through a lot of different versions of Becca. We vent to each other, talk about poop (I was informed on Wednesday evening that we are on that level, so I took it there on Thursday morning as I am never one to wait or miss an opportunity), music, new things in the tech world and a variety of sports that I cannot talk about with my husband because my husband while he is great and he listens to me talk about the Redskins non stop from draft time until December, he is still not a sports fan. Earl on the otherhand is a HUGE skins fan like me. A caps fan and a nats fan. The only dc team he doesnt really care a whole lot about is DC United and that is because soccer isnt really his thing (which is ok because I talk soccer with Adam – see below) –  this is not a big deal. Happy to have a cohort to discuss all things ridiculous with including but not limited to random ideas on how to create a program that will allow him to control his keggerator with his phone and music apps that need to be created. Earl is awesome and i am happy we were able to take our relationship to the poop level recently (i am still testing the waters on this). Basically Earl has one of the biggest hearts in a human being that I have ever witnessed/known/met. Like his wife, he is awesome!

8) Adam – I met Adam, Earl (above) and Aaron (below) all at the same time. Adam and I have known each other since the start of college for me (i am a year behind) and he happened to marry one of my very close buddies, Rachel (see above). I remember convos that Adam and I would have over AIM about stupidity I was currently doing to myself and I remember the convo we had at the start of the Marine Corps Marathon 10k, where I snot-rocketed onto my shoe (one of my finer moments, so proud). At 530am, as we rode the metro to the start line of the 10k, we saw all of the marathoners getting off at the pentagon stop and actually commented about how we felt like pussies only running the 10k (it was then that i vowed, or joked, whatever, to run the MCM this year). We joked about running the marathon next year (being this year) and proceeded to get off of the metro and make our way to the national mall where we started. We walked around for an hour trying to stay warm and just chatting about all things in life. Adam is an awesome individual and like Earl has a big heart. Let’s just say he is on the short list of people i would call if i ever needed anything at all from someone. He is dependable. always willing to help a friend in need. We talk soccer, we talk life and we talk all things running. we talk about work (kinda but more on the topic of programming) and sometimes we discuss problems because we are both problem solvers.

9) Leslie – Leslie and I have been friends since before we were 5. Her family lives around the corner from my folks’ place and has since we moved into the neighborhood. She was the maid of honor at my wedding and is an amazing woman that provides a truly unique view of life. She adds this view of life to my mental space on a frequent basis. We talk about everything and have recently started calling each other on our bullshit. she is pretty damn cool.

10) Aaron – aaron, married to sheena (above) is one of the people who tried to stay in contact with me when i was with head up ass. he always stayed positive and was always encouraging. He indulges my insane requests and is in general a very caring person. He humors his wife and my crazy ideas of flying to florida to run 13.1 miles and then driving to florida for a triathlon. he pushes me to be better and is generally a badass. I can’t even try and keep up with him running because he runs at about 2 min/mile faster than me but he is a generous caring individual whom i admire greatly. he plays a mean bass and jumps at any suggestion to chill, have a beer and shoot the shit. He was able to hang with my soccer team on a pub crawl and put up with my shenanigans when I wasnt doing so hot. He has always been there. I am thankful for that.

11) Erin – <le sigh> Erin and I go back to 3rd grade. The first day in 3rd grade, we met and we decided we would be awesome friends. we remained besties until 8th grade when general shenanigans and antics occurred that forced us to part ways for sometime. We ended up rejoining back up in college. She got me a job at Starbucks where she worked over the summer. We goofed off that entire summer and I had a great time. Erin is one big ball of fun. She always has a smile on her face and even when she worries, she still manages to stay upbeat. it is crazy. Girl has been through some shit and I was there next to her and she was still smiling the whole damn time. She is one tough cookie and I would not cross her. Ever. After a couple of summers at starbucks, life took us in different directions until I moved back to the dc area in October of 2011. We reconnected then and have been hanging out pretty much ever since. She was my date to many events when my husband was still out in Oklahoma finishing up a contract for work. She is someone who makes shit happens, makes shit work, and is awesome entertainment all in the same ball of fun. (last but most certainly not least, so do not call me asking why i put you last! these are in no particular order damnit)

All of these people above are amazing individuals and these shorts paragraphs dont truly do them justice; however, they are important to me and I try to tell them how much they mean to me. They are worth more than any amount that could ever be paid (so i guess what im saying is i would not human traffic them for any amount of money because i need them), and more important than these words do justice. I mean, cmon, they put up with my crazy shenanigans and tolerate my loud mouth on a consistent and regular basis. I have deep respect and appreciation for every single one of the people on this page. We are a big group of friends and each one of them brings something different to the table. Without any one of these people, my life would be incomplete. There is so much I could say about each one of them and it sucks because the majority of my words are escaping me. But I just want them (and you) to know how truly grateful I am for each and everyone of them. Each of them are irreplaceable!

 

my friends are awesome. you should be jealous!