Not Yet a Vet…dot net

It’s been a weekend for reminiscing.  My old roommate was in town for a visit while she’s between projects with her big girl job (a.k.a. she’s done with school and joined the workforce and actually gets paid a salary).  We were randomly assigned as roommates my sophomore year of undergrad and we lived together until this past summer.  It was strange to think that we used to share a space between us that is roughly the size of my current living room.  I don’t know how we managed to get through those dormitory experiences without a single fight.

We are very different people, Old Roommate and I.  We met for the first time at a coffee shop the summer before classes started.  Conveniently, 25 minutes in a car is all that separates our parents’ houses.  She was starting her first year and I was going into my second.  She lived her whole life in a small town.  It’s just like the kind you see on TV where you know everyone you pass walking the sidewalks.  I came from a city and my graduating class was roughly the size of her entire high school.  But she was very nice and bubbly and I knew we’d get along.

It’s an odd feeling to think about how long OR and I have known each other.  I was there when her grandmother died and she was there when I had the biggest fight I’ll ever have with my Best Friend.  She saw me get rejected from veterinary school the first year I applied, and I saw her go through months of intense therapy to work through depression.

We are still very different people, OR and I.  She is a self-proclaimed hippie who loves Whole Foods and history and folk music.  I am a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Cherry Coke Zero and science and the Rat Pack.  Yet even with all of the things that have changed between us these past 5 years, OR and I sat around talking for 4 hours straight today.  We just picked up where we left off the last time she visited.  My dad always used to tell me that you could count your true friends on one hand, and I think I’m finally to the stage in adulthood when I can believe him.  OR is my index finger.

When OR left, I saw “Where the Wild Things Are” with Best Friend and her husband and I, of course, remembered when my mom would read the book to me when I was little.  I think I’m going to have to find the book the next time I’m at home because I don’t really remember things happening that way in the book.  Such is life when books make the jump to the big screen.

I have a feeling I’m going to spend a lot of time tonight thinking about how it all “used to be” before I grew up and became an adult.  I don’t know why, but I always get homesick in the fall more than any other season.  This looks like a good time to go curl up with the cats.