Does distance makes the heart grow fonder?

Dean and I are blessed in that we have some truly amazing friends and family in our lives, and while we have a handful of local friends who live in the same town as us, the majority of our inner circle peeps live at least two hours away.  Some in entirely different states.  We've gotten used to this over the years because, well, frankly we don't have any other choice.  But just because we've gotten used to it doesn't mean we have to like it. 

We just spent the weekend with a group of friends in Seattle, including my sister, and driving home Sunday afternoon I definitely experienced a mixed bag of emotions.  For one I was slightly hungover, which I realize isn't an emotion but definitely contributed slightly to my state of mind, but on the whole I felt happy about the weekend and the people we got to spend it with.  Of course, I was also feeling a bit sad that we had to return home and leave some of our favorite people behind.

This is part of the whole adult life thing that gets on my nerves.  The fact that you can't always live close to your friends and family, the fact that life sometimes makes it hard for us to keep in close contact with the ones we hold near and dear (or should that be far and dear?) 

Dean and I are always talking about moving for one reason or another, and not just to be closer to certain people but also for ourselves, for a change, for a different phase of our lives.  And while I know it's something we are slightly serious about, I also know it's not something that would be done without a lot of serious thought, a lot of work, and a lot of really good reasons.  But hey, sometimes it's nice to just imagine moving as being totally easy and totally doable on short notice. 

While we make an effort to hang out with our good friends and family as often as we can, life sometimes gets in the way and makes trips more difficult if not impossible to carry out.  Sometimes you get so busy with other things you don't even notice how long it's been, but after awhile you realize it's been six months since you've gotten to see so and so, and don't have a free weekend for at least another few weeks, and how the hell did you go from seeing each other on a weekly basis to a twice a year basis (if you're lucky)? 

Of course, the one thing that distance forces us to do is really appreciate the time we do get to spend with our long-lost friends and family.  Even the most mundane evenings become great memories simply because they aren't going to happen every day.....at least not with certain people.

Sometimes, I guess it just gets frustrating.  Instant gratification is a hard desire to overcome, so it would be nice to always be able to see the people we want to see, right when we want to see them.  And as life continues to go on, as we start to venture into the worlds of parenthood and becoming professional movers and shakers, we want to be able to experience these things with the people in our lives who mean the most to us.  And it's during these times that we wish distance wasn't a factor.