Tomorrow morning, I am getting on a plane to go to Minnesota. Rural Minnesota. Well first I'm going to Minneapolis, but then we're driving to rural Minnesota, a phrase I've been saying a lot in the last few days because it invariably makes people blink a few more times than necessary. For some reason, if you say you're going to Minnesota, people don't take you seriously. Throw "rural" in there and you've got them.

I'm going to see some friends. Three of them have blogs and then there's another one who persists in not having a blog but did get on Facebook recently, provoking gasps of astonishment across the country. This monumental event will be only one of the many things I am sure we'll be discussing at length.

Last year, Kate came on this trip with me as a crawling one-year-old, and this will be the first time I've been away from both she and Dan at the same time in two years, I realized today. Kate and I have gone on trips alone, and Dan and I have gone on trips alone, but I haven't gotten on a plane by myself and gone anywhere in two years. I've got three good books and I plan to stick my nose in them and steadily ignore everyone between here and The Land of Lakes. It sounds mean, but when you travel with a toddler who is outgoing, you have to talk to everyone in the airport all the time without ceasing and it is exhausting. I pretty much spend a solid day in whatever silence a lot of Sesame Street and graham crackers can buy me after one of our trips. So even the plane ride will be a real treat.

The year that has come between this friend reunion and last year's has been ... well, I guess momentous is a word for it. There has been great joy and heartbreaking loss and much prayer and there will be a lot to talk about. A lot.

Mostly I am looking forward to being with my friends again. When people have known you for as long as these girls have known me (fourteen years or so), there's a certain relief to spending time together. I don't feel like I have to explain myself at every turn for fear of being misunderstood. In newer friendships you spend a certain amount of time, years in most cases, just laying the groundwork to understanding each other. That's good and valuable work, but it can be hard work.

Once you've done all that work though, a friendship is really worth hanging on to. Even if it means doing the hard work of traveling to rural Minnesota and sitting on a porch with a lake view and a hot tub, enjoying the crisp fall-like weather and cooking glorious good meals. Yep. Hard, hard work, I tell you. So here we go.