After my long post yesterday, I realized that perhaps I should share another story. This is a story of a wonderful group of women that are near and dear to my heart.

Back in January I shared my story with you all. When we had decided to go through with IVF, I started to look for drug side effects on the web (there is never enough info from the Doctor’s as I think they don’t want to scare you). While searching I came accross a website, IVFConnections. I started reading some of the posts and continued to do this for about a week or so. Then, one day I decided to join one of the groups. I figured nobody knew me, I could always drop out if I found I didn’t like it. So I started to post on a board for people going through IVF at the same time as I was. A few weeks into posting we all shared the city in which we lived, lo and behold one of the ladies was from Ottawa. She told me about an Ottawa specific board where I could meet others in our city going through with fertility treatments. Gutsy that I am (not), I joined that board.

What I didn’t know was that these group of women would meet in real life for breakfast. What should I do?? Do I meet them? Do I drop out? I was so scared and nervous, I had never met anyone over the internet before. I sucked it up and went. I had the greatest time!

You would think that all we did was sit around and talk about IVF, but that was not the case. We talked about work, staying at home, husbands, everything you could imagine, with a little fertility talk just to remind us how we met.

Four years later, I am still friends with all these women. We chat through email, we meet for dinner (no longer breakfast, we need nighttime meals now), we go away on trips (although I only went once), we have playgroups and we chat. This mix of women is truly amazing, not all live here in Ottawa, but even those that are farther away feel very close. The group is made up of Career Moms, Stay-at-home Moms, Crafty Mom’s and Organized Mom’s. A little bit of everyone put together into the mix makes for the perfect bunch.

I truly love these women, they have made a huge impact and difference in my life. I don’t know how on earth I would have gotten through the scarey fertility treatments without the support of all of them, they made it so seem so easy. And of course I got to meet all the kids who had come before “J” to show me that it does work.

I may have had one friend turn out to be not so great, well she did introduce me to matching underwear at LaSenza and Mexico, but that is about it. But, I have a whole group of friends ( I want to say 24, but that is a guess and it is too early to actually count) that have been so supportive and enjoyable to be around that I am truly Thankful that I met them all.

I had a friend. Well, I have a few friends, but this story is about a friend and I that parted ways.

Our friendship started when we worked together at Eaton’s in Winnipeg, Christmas 1991. She was a Lauder girl and was assigned to work with a few of us in a standalone shop in the mall, called “Eaton’s Soap & Scent Shop”. She was one of those gorgeous girls who had the perfect hair, perfect smile, knew exactly how you should apply your make-up and was earning her MBA to boot. So basically, she was not only beautiful, but smart too!

We had lots of fun working together, I learned a few good things from working with her. I had been laid-off from my Assistant Manager position at Cineplex Odeon. It was good to get other working experience and to see if I would like to work in retail as it appeared that I would be needing a new job soon. Well, after Christmas, I was offered my old job back at Cineplex, which I was more than happy to take. I would often go back to visit my friend at the Lauder counter and in turn she would stop by the cinema with her Hubby to catch a flick.

Fast forward a year and a half… It was spring 1993 and our family had moved back to Ottawa, I was still at Cineplex and enjoying being home. Then, I got a phone call from this friend in Winnipeg, she was moving to Ottawa! I was thrilled. I got myself prepared to help her find an appartment and orient her with the new city. Which I did! I found her an appartment, took her on endless tours of the city, invited her to join my friends in the clubbing circuit, had her for family dinners, we really had lots of fun. Her husband finally joined her in Ottawa and I was able to help him adjust to being an outsider in a new city ( he was not adjusting well, and I knew exactly how he felt).

The next spring (94), I took my first trip to Mexico with her and her hubby. And that is when I learned that you never know your friends until you go on a trip with them. She was nasty!!! Although I was loving Mexico, I was certainly not loving my traveling companion. And then she got a tad bit of heat stroke and whinned like a baby for the last two days of our trip and our ride home. We continued to hang out, but I felt a strain on our relationship as I now knew what she was really like and all I could see was that she was really fake and used people to get what she wanted. I also didn’t enjoy the fact that when we went out clubbing, her main goal was to see how many guys she could pick up and dump by the end of the night (yes with her Hubby waiting at home, if he only knew).

Canada Day rolled around and I had orchestrated plans for about 30 of us to get together at a club downtown. Apparently she was a little upset that I didn’t check with her to see if this was OK. And when I got off the phone, I just knew, I would never speak to her again.

I have seen her around town a few times over the last 10 years and her Hubby worked at the same company I did before the lay-offs started. She hadn’t appeared to change, she seemed the same. Then, yesterday, I saw her! Oh My Word!!! Of course it took three sightings to be sure it was the same person, and confirmation from my sister. The only way I could describe it, would be to say that she looked like perhaps she had been doing some hard core drugs. Her once beautiful brown hair, was bleached blonde and frizzed up and stringy. Her once perfect complextion touched with the latest hues from Esteé herself was pale and sallow, with the most hideous coulour of eyeliner possible for a bleached blonde.

I am not one to knock someone when they are down, nor am I one to judge another. But, for some sad reason, I felt a little better about myself yesterday. This is a girl who used to give me flack because I didn’t use brow powder everyday on my eyebrows (good thing I never told her that I didn’t pluck them!). Who used to call me up and suggest what I should wear to work that day. The same one who thought I wasn’t worth something because I didn’t have a man (which was by choice at that time). So, is it wrong that I walked a little taller away from her yesterday? I don’t know. I have mixed feelings about it really. On one hand I feel sad, so sad for her, but on the other I feel good knowing that I am still the same person and that I never let her change me.