It’s my birthday today (Yay!) and I am all about celebrating my birthday. (My age, not so much.) There are plans for a nice dinner out tonight with my husband and two of our best friends. Tomorrow night will see a dozen or so of my best girls descending upon my house with wine and appetizers, for a great night of wine tasting and talking and gut-busting laughter.

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I was chatting with an acquaintance who works at a local store and we got to talking about the holidays and what we’ve been up to. She mentioned that she’d gone out to dinner with friends the night before and had stayed out way to late talking and was tired. Then she joked that she felt a bit weird because she was the only single girl at a table with three couples. I assured her that if they were good friends, nobody else probably even noticed.

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Or so this Globe and Mail article says: Wives who are ‘just one of the guys’ may contribute to erectile dysfunction: study

The study they refer to has even coined a term to describe it — ‘partner betweenness’.

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There seems to be a bit of a backlash against women who say that their spouse is their Best Friend.

It’s not healthy.

You need to have a best friend who is not your husband.

Calling your spouse your best friend means that you can’t make friends of your own.

I call B.S.

This is not because I do not have great girlfriends, no. I have a small group of friends who I refer to as my “besties.” They are smart and they are funny and they are open and they are honest and we speak freely and we share our struggles and they are all that a woman could ask for in a friend, amen.

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You’re sitting there reading these words I have typed, so I think that it’s safe to assume that you joy reading blogs, whether they be the ones here at Work It! Mom or elsewhere. I am sitting here typing this post and have been doing so in this space for two years now (and at my personal site for over five years), so it’s pretty obvious that I like blogging.

My husband is not a reader of blogs, unless he’s searching for some hunting/fishing tips and stumbles across them via Google. He only reads my site if I make him (which I do). He didn’t really “get” why I liked it at first and while it’s still a bit of a mystery to him, he supports me in doing what I love.

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I’m back working in an office that I’ve floated in and out of for the past nine years. The senior staff are pretty much the same group as what existed back when I first started. As such, we have a history and there are a few that I consider to be more than mere colleagues; they are friends.

One of these friends seemed a little quiet and “off” last week, so I asked if everything was OK. He told me that he’d talk to me in a bit. A few hours later he emailed me to say that I could come talk to him if I wanted to.

The details are no mine to share, but his marriage has fallen apart. It is done, done, done.

Hearing of any marriage ending makes me sad, but when it happens to someone I actually know my heart aches on their behalf. I want to do something but it has been my experience that there really is nothing I can do but listen. I have not walked the same path, so I have no advice to share and cannot commiserate about the heartache they are experiencing.

What I can do is just be there. To listen, to nod in sympathy, to just let them know that I am here whenever they need me.

I still feel so helpless, though. Any advice from those who have lived through it would be much appreciated.

This will probably come as no surprise to anyone who knows me even a little bit: I am a social being. I took one of those quizzes once and it told me that I was an introverted extrovert. That sums me up pretty perfectly. I do need my down time and feel the most balanced if I have quiet time to read and to write and to just recharge.

On the other hand, if I am at a social gathering  I become entirely energized and lose all track of time while I sit and chat with with friends of mine. I look forward to these times of connecting, so much so that I go on regular girls’ night and usually take a few solo trips a year to spend time with these people whom I hold close to my heart.

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When I returned from my trip to California I was refreshed, renewed, rejuvenated. Between work-related trips and fun-filled get-aways (such as the California one) I get the heck out of dodge a whole lot more than many Moms seem to do. And also, a whole lot more than my husband ever does.

My hubby, in all of his wonderfulness, takes care of our three kids on the many weekends that I go away with nary a complaint. OK, fine. He teases me a bit. My response upon returning from California was that he needed to book a trip. Correction. He was ORDERED to take a trip.

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Last February my husband and I brought our three kids to their grandparents’ house and spent a week in Mexico. Together. With no children. It was the first time we had both been away from them for longer than one night and amazing does not even begin to describe it. Towards the end of the week we talked about returning in a year or two with the kids and taking a family vacation in order to give us all a break from the long, cold winter.

Try as we might to find a good deal for the five of us to travel, we could not seem to do so.  Even with a decent price, once you multiply it by five it gets to be in the “ridiculous” range. It seemed a little extravagant to spend that sum of money in light of the economy. My husband and I were open to taking another jaunt that consisted of just the two of us but there is that issue of three small children who needed to be, you know, taken care of in our absence.

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I used that title on a personal post of mine that I wrote last year about my group of girlfriends, and the Google hits are still coming in. Who are the guys looking for “moms gone wild”? Would they not rather see hot college girls as opposed to women bearing stretch marks, skin tags and banana boobs?

The Google hits on that last sentence should be interesting.

Last night I hosted a “Girl’s Night In” at my house. I have a pretty fantastic group of girlfriends for whom I am eternally grateful. When my husband and I first moved to our small town we were the only young couple in our church. There were a few work colleagues our age, but nobody that we clicked with. I wanted a girlfriend. Just one.

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