Magazines...

First of all...my birthday turned out fantastic...and there will be a post shortly with pictures of the impromptu party. In the meantime...here are my thoughts on friendship.

I wish friendships worked like magazine subscriptions. I should actually probably back up and say I DO think they work a lot like magazine subscriptions, I just wish it were more clean cut.

Seriously...humor me for a moment. We subscribe to magazines we like. Currently (if I were not so cheap) I would subscribe to USA Today, Woman's World, and Southern Home and Gardens. Now you'll notice USA Today is a daily magazine...Woman's World is weekly and Southern Home and Gardens are monthly.

Now. There are plenty of magazines that I used to want to read but don't now. In Bolivia I wanted to read PEOPLE-all.the.time. I have no clue why. Never before and never since.

Others, I've outgrown. Seventeen is one example. When I was in High School I had a subscription to 17. Now you'd be pulling teeth to get me to read a whole issue.

When I get tired of a magazine, I unsubscribe...but even with the ones I have NO DESIRE to ever subscribe to again...there is always the option of picking it up and scanning through it in the checkout line...and you know what...even the ones I don't like will occasionally have something on the surface that causes me to scan it in the check out line.

SO What does this have to do with friendships you might ask? Here you go.

Some friends I want to hear from daily...When I'm dating someone they fall in this category, other really good friends fit here too. Other people I only want to hear from weekly, and more than that I get annoyed...but weekly is good. Finally there are people I can only take about once a month, even though I LOVE the time we have together once a month or so.

There have been people who have only been a part of my life for a short time, and others I have outgrown.

The problem starts when your friends don't feel the same way as you do about the magazine subscriptions. I wish you could just call up your friends and cancel the subscription. Please note that canceling the subscription has nothing to do with not wanting to be friends anymore. Chances are I still want to pick you up at the checkout counter and skim through the highlights while I'm in line. And every once in a while, if something catches my eye on the cover, I may even want to invite you back into my life for a period of time.

I just think things would be easier if they were as clear cut and emotionless as magazine subscriptions.

*Thanks to Marie for the conversation that helped to develop this post.