It is tough to maintain adult relationships when your kids are little, particularly as a single parent. Your diary reminded me of how lonely I sometimes felt when I first moved to SF with my dd and without a partner. I relied on family for a good 3 years and any friend relationships were conducted at work. It is very hard with little kids.

Over the years and as dd has gotten more independent my time with girlfriends and  some men friends has grown substantially.  I have girl friends who have much younger kids than dd as well.  Here are some ways in which we keep contact:

1. We formed a Mah Joong group!  None of us knew a thing about the game,but my friend introduced me to her Chinese friend who has played since a kid.  So she taught us the game and 4 of us get together once a month.  We spend the first 2 hours eating as we all bring food and then we stay up till 1 am playing and yakking.  Great fun.  Reminds me of my grandmother's Bridge Club..which btw I hear is coming back!

2. One friend and I took a 2 month  (once a week) meditation class together.

3.  Another friend and I make sure we get together for dinner at least every couple of months

4.  Several girlfriends who I used to work at same company with have lunch together regularly.

5.  And a couple of friends are from east coast. Many of us travel on business so when we travel to one anther's cities...we make sure to at least have a drink together.

One way I keep close contact with friends is through regular email coorespondence which helps keep the relationship live and fresh.
It gets easier as you get older. And I found it really works to invite around an activity.

Love that picture of you and Erika.  That looked like a fun night out.  May you have many more :)

the gratification that comes with going out with the girls diminishes next to our myraid of other jobs; sometimes it just feels exhausting to even contemplate a night out. I'm sure it gets better.

Most of my own girlfriends are scattered across the country, but many of them are in Austin, which is one of the things I'm looking forward to in this move (3 weeks and counting!). Being stranded for so long, I can't even imagine what it will mean to have good friends nearby, the kind of friends who will just drop in on a whim. I can't wait!

I've always had good female friends, but it dwindles more and more.  It makes me so sad, because I love having girlfriends.  I never laugh more.  I think I've had so many female friend relationships and breakups that I have some serious trust issues.

However, I have a couple of good female friends.  It's hard to get together, but I think a little easier because one has grown children and the other doesn't have kids yet.  They're both understanding of my situation, and I understand theirs, too.  We try to go out the first Friday of every month, but it's only happened once so far.

By the way, Erika, when you said you'd heard Ashley Judd, I didn't see it, because as you pointed out, she's, um...white.  But in that picture I totally see it.  Lucky woman--I love Ashley Judd.

have dinner with other couples who have children our children can play with every few weeks or so, and that helps a lot.  I have friends who do girls' nights out but we don't do it very often.

Dinner with other families where both kids and adults can have fun works out well for us.

All my closest friends live hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, so I only see them a few times a year. Since moving to Orange County, I have not made a single close female friend at my new job. Everyone is friendly enough, but most are either single, childless, or have much older kids. So our social schedules don't jibe well.

The bright side is that we're now close to family so we spend lots of social time with relatives. Gloria is the sister I never had, and we're always doing fun stuff together. I have also reconnected with old friends from high school and middle school, so spending time with them and their kids is a treat.

I guess I think having female friends and "Girls Night Out" is important only if you feel a need for it. My life feels very full with my husband, kid and extended family, so I don't feel a void, really. So having the occasional night out with girlfriends is like a cherry on top of my life sundae. Very sweet!

Wow.  You both look gorgeous.

When I was quite a bit younger (but even into my 30s) I always believed that if a deep friendship formed it would last a lifetime.  I've come to learn that friendships often don't last in the way I thought that they would.  They come and go and differ in intensity  depending on so many factors including stages of life.  Another aspect I didn't realize would happen is the unexpected outcome when everyone's lives become more complex adding children, careers, partners, etc.   I've found now that there are some predictable cycles that run through friendships that can make them seem and feel tremendously important and at other times for whatever reason they can drift into something that feels much less so.  

When my kids were little and my husband traveled a lot, a group of Moms would get together at each other's homes in the evening typically after kids had gone to bed (depending on who could leave their home w/a spouse or partner, or had a babysitter) either for a book club, or during a couple of years we would get together and watch ER, a favorite TV show of all of ours at the time.  That lasted for awhile, and then slowly faded due to lots of individual reasons.  .... but while it lasted it was a lot of fun and companionship for all of us.

I'm finding as my kids (and my friends' kids too) are older and far more self-sufficient, long-ago friendships are popping up again in new ways.  It's fun to reconnect "old" friends, and still have a sense of shared history, even with the holes of time in it.

I think as long as you don't perceive a void of some sort and your relationships whether family, or friends, provides what you desire and need, you're doing great -- if you wanted something different, you sound like you would pursue it.

I just had a girly afternoon out yesterday with a good friend. Lunch, window shopping, coffee and cake, and tons of chat. I felt so relaxed when I came home. It was just wonderful to spend multiple hours doing all that female bonding stuff without having to chop and change to look after (run after) Jess. DH and I try to give each other one weekend day "off" per month, but it doesn't always happen and once you get out of the habit, it's so hard to make time to pick it up again.

Love the photo - you look ferosh!

i get out a lot, actually, due to the nature of deejaying. for instance, this week i gigged wed, thurs, fri, and sat nights. i have friends who come out to support me, but specific girls nights out rarely happen. i do have a standing monday night hang out with "the boys" who are my deejay friends. not the same, but fun. we do tend to get a little too toasted, hah!

thankfully, a couple of my deejay friends are girls and we do a lot of stuff together, working at what we love, geeking out about music.

my closest girlfriends are not able to get out much. my best friend has two kids and works the graveyard shift at the ER on weekends. we talk everyday on the phone, but do not see each other much.

nothing like a girls night out. sometimes, though, since i am out a lot anyway, the only thing i want to do with my time "off" is lay on the couch and watch movies, in the lovely quiet.

I would give my right ARM if my two best friends ever lived nearby again. These two friends are central to my life. I can't imagine my life without them actually - well, I can, and it would be a crying shame if we ever let the friendship fade or blow up. They both just friggin' know me, and I them. (Funny, they've only met a few times, but through me, they know so much about each other!). These are long friendships - 21 and 17 years.

We have had some periods of adjustment, for sure. A big one was when I met my future/now husband after all those years of being single. It was just kind of weird at the beginning, esp. since one of these friends is a guy. We had a series of conversations about how our friendship had to change now that I was really going to marry someone (and he was dating someone at the time) - nobody would be able to stand how exclusive our friendship was and we had to make a shift. Another was during the final stages of the other friend's dissertation; a lot of acute anxiety in there, for a long time. It was tough. Funnily enough, when this friend married and had kids (her oldest is 11), the transition was really smooth. I never had the feeling that we no longer could relate now that she had kids, and she didn't feel that way either. My guy friend is most likely going to marry his current girlfriend, and I will be so happy when he does. (I love her, but given our age difference, 12 years with me, and 19 with my husband, I don't know what she makes of us!). He and my husband have become really good friends also, and he is my son's godfather.

So yeah, friends night out - I WISH.

Girl-wise, usually I'm hanging with my Mom, who's like my best friend, or my little sister, Diana. But I also keep in close contact with my best friends who grew up with me here, and still live here ...E-mail is awesome for those "down-times" when everyone is busy with their husbands and kids. And we often incorporate the kids into our girly-get-togethers, going to a park where the kids can play so we can visit.

I go to a monthly book group with a very great group of women.  A couple of them are friends and the others are just fun to spend an evening with.  The other "group" gatherings I go to are moms I know from DS's preschool.  There are 7 of us and we get together about every other month.  One's husband is in a band so we sometimes watch him play, sometimes we go to a gallery or a concert and then have drinks, sometimes we meet for breakfast.  We have taken long weekends together in the mountains or at the beach, cooking and doing crafts while gabbing and listening to music.  

And sometimes I'm able to meet for coffee or lunch with individual friends.  Everyone else, it's email or the phone.  And I consider it pretty easy to get out because DH will always step up.  The bigger obstacle for me is fatigue.  I hate missing out on stuff just because I'm too danged tired, but I don't bounce back from exhaustion.  We do less as a couple, which I would like to fix if we can.  We are realizing that we need to get better at entertaining so we can see more of people.