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I'm tired and dehydrated enough that this could very well turn into one of those, "Gosh, I have the best friends ever" posts, but I try to save those for when I've been drinking. But it's true. Lately I've been constantly amazed at the people who've landed in my life, usually by really weird coincidences.

I knew that parenthood would change my perspective on friendship. Hell, it changed my perspective before I was even pregnant. When we were trying to get pregnant I saw the need to remove several people from my life because I knew that, for various reasons, they wouldn't be good for me.

More of the same during Clara Jane's first two years. Lots of painful housecleaning. I know I did what I had to do, but that didn't make it any easier.

If anything, my patience for people I'm not legally required to take care of starting running low in early 2006, and the supply was totally depleted by the end of that year. I started accepting that I'm an adult, which meant my social circle was going to shrink. So be it.

Then a funny thing happened. I started meeting all these people. Some are moms. Some aren't, but somehow have this innate wiring that allows them to be empathetic to their friends with kids. We all seem to have gone through similar friendship house-cleanings in the past few years and have come to similar realizations: life's too short and our priorities too important to waste time on stupid, piddly shit. In the little time we have together, we're either going to tackle real problems in our lives (without trying to "fix" each other) or we're going to have some damn fun.

Today was a little of the former, and a lot of the latter. We chased each others' kids and corralled them as needed. There was none of that shitty and mean competitive mothering crap going on. Just a lot of kids playing, and a lot of gals laughing so hard they couldn't hear the doorbell over themselves.

And did I mention there was homemade cheese, too?

Gosh. I have the best friends ever!