First - The girls had a good first day at school. Minus K's issue with following directions and hearing what I'm actually saying, but that was yesterdays post! Onward... L found out that her photo class will require anywhere from $70 to $90 depending on how much film and paper she uses. WHAT?! (Did I tell you all that her friggin books cost me $187 last week? For used text books! That she'll turn in at the end of the school year, and I'll receive a total of $31.20 credit for. AND the school will turn around next year and charge another parent $35 for the same text book. Someones raking in the dough here and it's NOT me. That's so bullshit it's not even funny.) So I'll have to figure out a way for her to pay for that class because for her to drop it will cost me $40. Since when did public school cost so much money? Really.
I met up with Cheryl and her boss, Brandon last night at Gino's East. Cheryl grew up in Glendale Heights until Freshman year. That was when her parents decided to move out to Morrison which is basically farm country. I met Cheryl at a church camp in MI the summer before Freshman year. We instantly became best friends. We remained friends all throughout high school. Then I went and had a baby and got married. She went to College and joined a Sorority. Our lives took two completely different paths and we lost contact for about 4 years.
One day I was missing her a LOT. If I remember correctly I had a dream and she was in it. At the time I had separated from my husband and had moved back into my parents home with two little kids in tow. So I googled her. I found three email addresses for her name. I sent an email to each address which said something like "I'm looking for a Cheryl who grew up in Glendale Heights, IL and then Morrison, IL. If this is you, Chippy Hick, I miss you. Please contact me." I got one email back that said "Sorry, but I'm not who you're looking for. Good luck to you." And I got another email back that said "IT'S ME! IT'S ME! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FOUND ME! I MISS YOU TOO! CALL ME!!!!!" I was so excited to have found her again. We reconnected and it was like we had never been apart.
She lives in Louisiana now with her husband, Kye, and her step-son, Mark. She travels a lot for work so anytime she comes this direction I try to go see her. She's not usually as close as she was this week though so it was nice to be able to go meet her for dinner as opposed to taking time off work and traveling 3 hours. Our dinner last night was great! We met at Gino's East and introduced Brandon to Chicago Style pizza. He was floored that the sauce was on top and the cheese on the bottom, but he did end up eating 3 pieces! Which is hard to do!
If you've never had Chicago Style pizza before its pretty simple. You have a really buttery crust that comes up the sides of the pan, not unlike a pie crust would do. You then have a layer of cheese. Then you have your toppings. We had the sausage. Patty form which is literally a layer of sausage instead of the crumbles of sausage you get on a regular pizza. Finally you have your sauce, which in a Chicago Style pizza is a chunky sauce which resembles a marinara sauce more than a tomato sauce. Do not confuse a stuffed pizza with a Chicago Style pizza! They are basically the same thing but a stuffed pizza is NOT a Chicago Style pizza. (The only difference with a stuffed pizza is a thin layer of dough between the toppings and the sauce.)
Oh my, did Cheryl and I talk about the old days! We told Brandon how we used to sneak out of her parents house to go to parties. What high school kid doesn't do that, right? When she had her drivers permit, we snuck her mom's car out to go joy riding around the block. Remember that she lived in farm country at the time. Her "block" was more like 4 suburban blocks long on each side. We nearly ended up in a ditch, almost ran over a guy on a snowmobile (did I mention that it was the dead of winter?) and she turned down a dead end road. To get out of that she decided to practice her 3-point turns. We backed over a baby Evergreen tree. Two years later we went to see that tree, and it was growing crooked.
Then there was "road trippin". Because she lived in the country there wasn't much to do. Their downtown area had a couple mom-n-pop stores and a Hardee's. The kids would all gather at Hardee's and then go off from there to ride around the country, smoke a bowl or a joint, and return to Hardee's only to get into another car and do it again. (Yes, as an adult I realize just how STUPID we were. I'm not condoning this behavior in any way, shape or form. I'm simply telling you what we used to do as kids. "Do as I say not as I do", right?!) During one of these trips I swear that I saw two bright lights streak across the road from a field on the right, up into the sky and disappear. Cheryl swears they were white birds. What white birds do you know of that fly at night?! They were alien lights, dammit!!
Finally we discussed Hurricane Katrina. Cheryl moved to Biloxi about 2 months before Katrina hit the golf. She'd told me she had weathered Hurricane Dennis which ended up only making it rain for several days. When Katrina was getting close, and Biloxi was evacuated, Cheryl called Kye (they weren't married at the time) worried. Kye told her "don't worry about it. A hurricane is nothing more than a little rain." To this day we both give Kye shit about Katrina being "a little rain". I remember seeing the news about Katrina and watching the path of it on the weather. I was so worried about Cheryl. I couldn't call her because cell service was out down there, so I called her mom. When I'd reconnected with Cheryl she'd already moved out of her parents house so I hadn't talked to her mom in years, but I didn't care. I knew that if anyone would know if she was ok it would be her parents. Her mom was great! She assured me that Cheryl had gotten out in time, was staying further inland at a friends house, and that she'd spoken to Cheryl just a few hours before.
There are so many more stories floating around in my brain but I'd be writing a book not a blog post, and this has gone on long enough!! We've known each other since we were 14 years old. Not including the 4 years we lost touch, we've known each other for nearly 20 years! It was fantastic to see her again. I don't get to see her all that often and I miss her so much!!
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