Day 21 - Today I am grateful for....Surprise Emails!

Today I am grateful for surprise emails received from treasured friends in far off lands!

I received a lovely email from my beloved friend, Ellen this morning. Now that she's living in London, we can't see each other every day and can't speak to each other every day. So email is our main point of contact and even then sometimes life gets in the way and sometimes weeks and months go by.

Ellen & I became friends when she worked at RE/MAX in 2007/2008. We clicked immediately and I was drawn to her amazing sense of humour. We laughed all the time and became close quickly.

Toward the end of 2009, she announced that she was off to explore the world and would be gone for at least 2 years. I was mortified. Was it not bad enough that she was living in Brisbane by then?? OMG.

We cried hysterically the night before she left but we knew each other well enough to know that we would never be far from each others hearts, no matter the distance between us.

A couple of months after she'd gone, my Husband left. I spent hundreds of dollars calling London and crying down the phone. She always made me feel better, even though she was on the other side of the world. She was the only one who called him on his poor behaviour to his face, and boy did she let him have it! She was as angry and hurt as I was.

When I bought my Ex-Husband out of our marital home during our separation settlement, I ensured that I borrowed enough money for me to go OS for a couple of weeks. It was a break that I badly needed. I needed out of Australia and fast.

Ellen planned the whole thing. I told her where I wanted to go and in May of this year, she met me at Heathrow and we had a whirlwind 3 week adventure around Ireland, Scotland, Paris and London.

My goodness! We just had the best time. We talked, we laughed, we cried. We caught up on an extremely emotional 7 months. We had fun and adventures and just enjoyed spending time together. We got lost, we met new people, we walked and talked and ate and drank....a lot. We had many hilarious "Where the f*ck are we Felicia?" moments, and I lost count of the times where my ribs hurt from laughing so much. When it came time for me to go, we really didn't even say goodbye, I just hopped on the tube and said "See you soon" and she was gone. Goodbye is too final and neither of us had sufficiently prepared ourselves for an emotional farewell.

We caught up again in September, when she was here for her Brother's wedding. And you'd swear that 4 hours hadn't passed, let alone 4 months. But that's just how our friendship is. No matter the time or the distance, we can pick up exactly where we left off.

And given the recent crap time in my life the past few weeks, it was such a treat to receive an email from my friend, whom I love dearly and miss terribly.

So today, I'm grateful to be in someone else's thoughts and for surprise emails. Love you girl xxx