Tolls and Dry Cleaning

My friend Raquel told me years ago she has distinct friend groups that don’t overlap. I do, too. And it’s not because they wouldn’t be friends or wouldn’t get along — it’s because they are just simply different.

I’ve built those relationships based on seasons of life — Chris’ sports, the girls’ sports, college, high school, church, work — and the origin stories mean it’s difficult to overlap the groups. There are times when it makes sense for the middle part of the Venn diagram to expand.

I’ve written before about my very active group texts — Working Women and 5 Gueens. Distinct groups that came together for different reasons — yet whenever a political candidate debate is on, I want to combine them. I catch myself copying and pasting shared memes and texts. Other than creating another group, I would need to introduce and explain and provide back story as to why each person is in the group text. I work with Aileen, she loves the Spurs and her daughter is the same age as my girls. I met Carina on Baylor Twitter, she works in banking and she is the best storyteller. By the time I did the explaining, I’d have a backlog of screenshots to send from the original groups.

So I keep copying and pasting.

My friend groups range from people I’ve known since elementary school to the moms of the girls’ friends. Tenure varies. Context varies. Knowledge of each other varies.

With each friend, I crave a depth that I don’t have time or energy to support. I have friends all over the United States and in different cities in Texas. Keeping up with them is a challenge because proximity. But my friends in San Antonio who are a five or 10-minute drive away — why can’t we connect?

There are times when I’m doing nothing. Yes I’m taking care of laundry or meal planning, but I could do that while on the phone with a friend. I run errands like everyone else and so why not do that with friends.

Actually, I don’t know if others would want to run errands in my style or manner. You see, I keep items in my car so that as I drive by a spot — post office or dry cleaners — I have them at the ready. The clutter in my back seat bothers me but it is pre-planning that supports my methods.

Then I have the days where I seem to zig and zag all over the place not following any sort of organized route and I miss the efficiency mark in errand running. Or, I remember something I need to do and the store isn’t along any usual route.

Some of the errands are based on timing and a schedule — pick up a gift card for a birthday party, deliver a pie for teachers to school or make a cash deposit before the bank closes. (Yes, I work at a bank and somehow can’t get to a teller line during the day at mv office!) Other errands do not have a dependency of time — it’s more of a get this taken care of so I don’t have to think about it. Dropping items off at Goodwill or returning something via UPS aren’t have-to-get-dones but I want to get them done.

My day planner includes my work schedule and personal obligations such as games or practices or get togethers with friends. It also has my work tasks to complete and life tasks. Pay bills, workout, clean house and schedule appointments are on that list along with the errands.

All of these items take very little time to accomplish and yet added together it seems like a few hours every day dedicated to the seemingly meaningless tasks. And they aren’t meaningless. These normal must-get-done kind of things required to make life run are full of meaning.

Buying the gift for the baby shower takes a few clicks out of my day but then the giving of the best no-rinse bath wash knowing it will be used in those early days of a mom’s life with her newborn  — worth it. Making sure the check is written and the permission slip filled out by the due date so Caroline can go to the French night at the Spurs game requires planning and keeping up with the paper but also means she gets to go to a game with her friends enjoying the nosebleed seats.

Full of meaning.

Paying bills doesn’t bring a warm and fuzzy meaning to the task. But there is meaning. Sometimes paying a credit card bill causes me to reflect how we used the card — a dinner, a gift, a trip. Paying one of our streaming services — there are quite a few — reminds me of a show we enjoyed. (One day Camille and I will finish The Gilmore Girls and Gervais and I will watch the fourth season of Ozark.)

Now if I could just figure out our toll bill.  We have two accounts on both toll road organizations because it tracks to our license plates. Inevitably, I pay the wrong one. So there have been times when I have a credit on one account equal to the amount owed on the other. The answer is to pay attention to which account I am sending an online bill payment. Easy yet impossible for me to consistently correctly pay.

The task of setting up a toll pass that just debits my credit card takes minimal time — I think. There’s probably some trickery since we have two cars but it shouldn’t be difficult. I should be able to do it online when I receive the next paper bill.

Instead, I will more than likely text my friends about my frustrations and as they do, they will side with me. Oh and Rachel (Baylor Twitter friend) along with Allison (from the work friend text group) will also make suggestions on how to remedy the issue. Raquel, work friend, and Heather, Baylor Twitter friend, will respond with ‘same’ when I share that I haven’t followed the good advice thing. Kelly (work) will give me the damn bastards comment and Amy (Baylor Twitter) will send a meme reflecting my plight.

Why aren’t we all on the same group text? I’ll figure that out later — I’ve got some dry cleaning to pick up.