I’ve been away for the past couple of weeks, on the left side of things.

I’ll catch you up my trip and all that fun stuff once I figure out how to get the 400+ pictures off of my iPhone, and shake this awful jet lag.

In the meantime, I feel like I need to give you some back story on some of my friends so when we go forward, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

#13 – I Adore My Ladies

In college, I met an amazing group of women. We all lived in the same dorm (it was the quiet study dorm, because we were all cool like that), and went to dinner together, skinny dipped in the quarry (until it actually occurred to me what a quarry was — the idea of tunnels under the water is too freaky for me), wreaked havoc, laughed until we cried, cried until we laughed, and wore a lot of bizarre clothes to weird parties.

Even though we haven’t all been together in the same place at the same time since about 2002, and our communication is sometimes spotty, these ladies are my family, and no matter what happens, a huge chunk of my heart will always belong to them.

I call most of my close female friends, and even my husband at times, Lady, as a term of endearment, but only 5 ladies are actually My Ladies. And while I have decided to blog about my life, they have made no such decision, so I’ll give them nicknames:

• Lady (I know this gets confusing, but I refer to her as Lady like it’s her name). She just married Mr. Lady two weekends ago.
• The Other 1/4 – A story we will get to.
• The Professor – This woman is the epitome of class, grace, and kindness. She’s going for her PhD right now.
• The Flautist – You haven’t heard flute music until you’ve heard this lady play. She also plays almost every instrument I can think of.
• The Accountant – I’ve never met anyone who loves her job as much as this lady. She carries her handbag on hikes and is never without her cell phone.