I miss...

      The other night I did something stupid. I started looking through all the photos in my phone. I was looking for pictures of a specific model horse but I started paying attention to all the photos. And thinking about the things I miss. 

       I definitely miss horse shows. I miss groups of friends casually getting together over performance entries to make them the best they can be. 

     I miss how casually we would take photos like this, without a second thought about social distancing. 

 I miss seeing groups of hobby friends.

And going on road trips to visit hobby friends.
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      And I miss when it was OK to get up close and take a selfie with a friend. 

We thought nothing of saying squeeze in closer, so we could fit more of us in the photo.

So many of my hobby friends are not just hobby friends.

And I miss them. 

       I miss special occasions where we thought nothing of bunching together to play games and take pictures. Even when half of us were strangers (I knew 1 person in this photo at the beginning of the day)

I miss going out with friends. And really, just going out (not that I do it much).

How casually we did these things.

I miss getting together with old friends.

And I miss making new friends.

I miss my school friends.

I miss having lunch with them.

Chatting about food and track and whatever.

I miss my doppelganger (The kids seem to think we are interchangeable, lol)

I miss the madness that is graduation. 

I miss that last chance to see the kids (I won't post any of their photos, though I have 3 years of graduation pics with my students)

I miss my family. I really want to hug my mom. 

I want to go play with makeup with Gabby.

I definitely miss my family...

I miss my family of choice (Amanda is my niece, but no relation)

I miss my sister Crystal (also no relation,  she's my bff)

I'm glad we started the selfie habit. 

It helps and makes it harder at the same time. 

Some days I miss Elecktra so much that it hurts.

        I miss being able to be close to people. I am very grateful I have Ethan and Travis. I know that some people live alone or have jobs that force them to be socially distant from their families while living in the same home. I at least have a couple of people I can hug. But I want to hug a whole bunch of other people. This isn't new for me, I love hugging people. I find it to be therapeutic. And when all of the COVID-19 stuff is under control and we can go out and hug people again, I am going to need a whole lot of therapy.