I have had the same best friend for as long as I can remember.  It has been Ginger and me for over twenty years.  The strange thing is, even though we had a small break up for about a year, I didn't even have anyone else in my life like her.  Friends came and went, I hung out, but I never filled up the best friend spot.  I just waited for her to come back into my life.  

Ginger and I have an odd friendship.  It's one where I do most of the talking and she does most of the listening.  Sometimes it seems like I haven't talked for a year and then I get around her and it all just floods out.  I cannot shut up.  Ginger just lets me talk.  Ginger is a very private person, I am not.  We make the strangest combo.  She will eat anything, I am afraid of all foods.  She likes to sleep late and I like to text at 5am.  I'm wonderful like that. She sided with the Dixie Chicks, I sided with Toby Keith.  But for all our differences we have so much in common.  We both devour books.  We love the spa.  We love to swim or float around in water.  We love sweets.  We love to relax.  We love cooking shows and cook books.  We love shoes. We love country music.  

Sometimes at 8:30 in the morning I will text her something like this.

Partially because I love cat memes but mostly because Ginger does that shit to me all of the time. She loves to stick her tongue out at me, and this cat totally made me laugh and think of her.

She texts me pictures of the shoe phone holder on her desk (next to the purse post it holder I got her)

We are a strange bunch.  She texts me to tell me she tried on her heels and walked around the house in them since she can't wear them to work any more and I text her when I'm eating ice cream for dinner.

She drives four hours out of her way just to spend a couple nights camping with me. I drive three hours just to have pizza with her.  When we go camping we revert back to old habits and end up playing UNO.

She might be the only person besides me that I know who can sit and play board games with only two people playing….for hours on end.  We get fierce over games.  She dominates Monopoly and even if we are on teams she won't hesitate to make me Draw 4 in Uno.

She knows virtually everything about my life.  Even though shes moved we text often enough that she is still kept fully in the loop.  I would actually say she knows more then my husband.  She knows more then anyone.  Hmmm. She could be very dangerous.  We have the ability to sit still and not talk at all while watching hours and hours of shitty tv.  Or we can sit by the campfire and talk late into the night about stupid shit Shannon did in ____ Enter era here.  I've done a lot of stupid shit, there is always lots for us to laugh about. 

She makes fun of my cat meme love and I make fun of her Kenny Chesney love.  She calls Channing Tatum, "Chating Tanum," and I called meme's "meh meh's" for the last ten years.  

This girl has seen me at my best and my worst.  She was the only person I called when my grandma died.  She drove me to the hospital when my grandpa died.  She has picked me up more times then possible.  Even figuratively, she has had to pick me up off the floor and drag me to the bathroom because I was having such a bad laugh attack on her floor I was going to pee my pants in her living room.  Yes….she picks me up all of the time. 

I miss her so much now that she moved that I actually talked to my husband about transferring his job to her town so we could move there and I could have my best friend back.  But that wasn't an option with my job.  We see each other often though, we make lots of spa dates, and pizza dates, and movie dates.  

I love knowing that I have a person in my life that I can text at any hour of the day, and after she finishes yelling at me for waking her up she will talk to me.  I love that her and my husband have no problem ganging up on me to make fun of me.  And I love that shes never let me stray too far off the line.  

I wonder how many people can say they met their soul mate in fifth grade?  Can you?