I’m sure I’ve told you about Nancy. She is my friend. She is a rare accept-me-as-I-am, encourage-me-where-I-am, I-just-want-to-make-you-smile, friend. We only live a few minutes from each other, but we had to go all the way to California to meet.

This summer, she mentioned in passing something like – ‘hey, if I went to Mazatlan for my birthday, would you go with me? Do you think you could swing it?’

The non-committal someday kind of way she asked made me giddily (that’s a word) say, ‘absolutely!’

Then, a few weeks later she said, ‘hey – the airline is having a sale, just so you know’.

See what she did there? I didn’t obsess about it. I didn’t overplan or worry. She laid it all out and was like, ‘hey, you know, whatever…’

She so gets me.

She knows flying is not my thing, so she even sat next to me on the flight. She talked my ear off and kept me distracted. We landed,  exchanged money, hopped into a van, and stepped into paradise.

This. This was our view. The sound of the ocean was loud and beautiful and calming and peaceful. The rhythm of the waves begged me to close my eyes and just listen.

We made a list and piled into our van and set out for the grocery store.

At this point, it was Nancy, Melissa (her childhood best friend), Carolyn (Nancy’s mom), and Erin (a photography friend and same shoe size soul/sole sister).

Growing up in Texas, parents that were raised in Corpus Christi and McAllen, and working in Houston along I-45 add up to mean that I have a small, random vocabulary of kitchen Spanish. I can sorta get by, but today – I felt like I rocked it. We found creamer for the coffee people. All things work together for good. I’m pretty sure it was just the grocery employees kindness and sincere efforts to help that got us by, but I’d like to pretend that I contributed just a little.

We found the cookies I grew up on.

Now, the chocolate cream Presidente cookies disappeared, but no one else was diggin’ the Arcoiris. So, don’t worry mom. I saved some for you!

We headed back to the house and unloaded groceries before deciding to eat dinner at the hotel nearby. We were all too tired to cook and we were ready to see a little more!

To be continued…