I’m always so grateful when I have friends who are still in my life even if I haven’t seen them in a while. I wrote about a friend like this recently, but I got to experience more of that this week.
After doing the drop-off at My Friend’s Place, I went to meet a friend for a late lunch. This friend is someone who was in UCB classes with me and I don’t think I had seen her since our last class. But we stayed in touch through social media and this past weekend asked me if I had any free time coming up. She recently had surgery and wanted to meet up. And it worked out so perfectly that I was free after the donation drop-off and that it happened to be in the same neighborhood that she lives in!
We ended up meeting at Mel’s Diner which is always fun. We were spending so much time starting to catch up that we had to stop so we could decide on what food we wanted. We quickly decided so we could get back to our catch up time. The surgery that she had was very similar to the surgery I had on my hip. She didn’t have to have her cartilage removed like I did and her injury was caused by the shape of her hip socket and not bone spurs, but it was pretty much the same issue. And I was shocked by how fantastic she was doing! She was only a few weeks post-op and was already walking around and looking amazing! At that point when I had surgery, I was still on crutches and taking painkillers.
Besides our surgery talk, we also talked about acting. She has been wanting to get back into acting (she took a bit of a break) and I think that it’s a fantastic idea. I remember from when we were in class thinking that she was really talented. And I know that she has taken a lot of great acting classes so I think that she would be ready to go with auditions pretty quickly. She just needs to get some of the business stuff done and she’d be ready to go. It’s always exciting to watch someone talk about a career that they love to do. And when she was telling me about acting I could tell that it was what she is passionate about.
She’s also a Disney person like me! So of course we had to talk about different rides and things that we love in the parks. She has an annual pass so we were saying that when she is more recovered from her surgery and could walk a bit more that we need to have an adventure at the parks. I’m really looking forward to that because I can always use more Disney friends!
And while getting to have this catch up with a friend was awesome, it was a double friend day because of us going to Mel’s. A friend of mine works there and she happened to be working while we were there! It was just luck that it happened that way but I’m so glad it did! I love getting to catch up with her too (even though we do stay in touch over social media, it’s not the same). She is also an actor and we met working on a project together. We occasionally audition for the same parts, but we have slightly different looks so we don’t always see each other at auditions. So getting to catch up even briefly while I was at her work was a nice treat!
My friend and I ended up being at our lunch for a few hours before I needed to head home to do some errands. But getting to see her as well as my other friend really revitalized me. Being around great friends is one of the self-care things that I know I don’t do enough. Sometimes I forget how much it boosts my mental health when I get a few hours to sit down and talk to a friend. And not just talk to anyone, but someone who listens and is able to give great advice. That is something I am so grateful to have in my life and I need to remember to do this more often.