Even a chick-flick won't do...

A year ago today, my beloved little bookstore closed. We went in to work that morning with the mission of closing it's doors forever. It was very hard - mentally and physically - because it was an end of an era and an end of my best friend's hard work.

Today, I helped that same friend pack up her house. Again, it was mentally and physically hard. I didn't realize the dates until we were standing in the driveway hugging and she mentioned it. I'm sad. I'm sad for me, I'm sad for my friend, my girl, my Beeg. Michelle.

This move, I believe, is going to be a good thing for her and her family. Her husband got a promotion and so they are moving a little over two hours away from here. Starting over fresh someplace new can be a huge blessing; I know it changed my life for the better when we left New York and moved to North Carolina.

So we went today, our girl Danette and I, to help Michelle on this moving day by cleaning her house. There was no time to sit and chat, no time to reminisce. There was a schedule to keep, things had to get done. We watched the contents of her home get loaded on to a truck while we dusted, vacuumed and mopped. The distraction was a good thing for me. I was able to detach myself from the reality of what was going on. My girl is moving away.

In the year since the bookstore closed, we haven't seen each other as much as we used to. Life has a way of getting in the way. But no matter how much time between our girls night's out or lunches, we could still sit down and laugh ourselves silly and never run out of things to say. We made each other crazy at times and couldn't understand each other at others due to our very different accents! She is a total Southern girl and I am a New Yorker - after one trip up to New York to visit family, I came home and called her to tell her what had gone on and after about two minutes she was like "Wait a minute! I can't understand a word you're saying!" I was totally back in NY mode! She had funny southern sayings that made no sense to me. We made a good team.

The silver lining here? I have a place on the coast to visit. Two hours is not a bad amount of time to drive to see a friend. The bad thing? She's not here...and I'm sad.