Jersey Girls

Meagan and me at a party last year.

I always go back to New Jersey to get my hair done.

Back in the day, my old roommate Meagan used to watch me come home from a weekend in Jersey with pretty hair. Longing for some pampering herself, she started coming to Jersey with me to get her hair done, too.

This has been going on for about four years, every eight weeks. Seriously.


This is Meagan getting her hair done last year. As you can tell, she was really happy I took this picture.

I love the Jersey hair weekends. Since we are no longer roommates, Meagan and I use them to catch up and stay connected. We generally meet up at Penn Station with so much to say to each other that we talk until we're exhausted.

All of our weekends are virtually all the same. We come in either Friday night or Saturday morning. We get our hair done, which can take from two hours to four, depending on who's getting what done. We enjoy some retail therapy suburban style--either by heading to Short Hills Mall or Target or both. We'll continue the suburban tradition by having dinner at Chili's and then sleep over my mom's house and enjoy a leisurely breakfast with her before heading back to the city.

Jersey weekends in the summer are the most special for me because my mom will usually host a barbecue for us, and often times, she will invite Pete and Jen who bring along the grandkids. I love my mom's barbecues because not only do we get to eat amazing homemade food, but we get to sit in her lovely outdoor patio surrounded by colorful, fragrant flowers (I will have one of these one day, I swear!). Some of my favorite memories of summer is sitting on that porch until the sun goes down, the cool of a summer night, the satisfaction of a good meal and my favorite people around me.

This past weekend, we had a barbecue made even better because my sister Annette came (and brought along her friend Sandy) which never happens. She just lives too far away to come by to mom's all that often. Pete, Jen and the grandkids came. It's the first time I have seen Pete since his bike ride across the country and so it was great to see him. Even though it's just family (yes, Meagan is now family), my mom went crazy as usual: seafood salad, steak, grilled chicken, piergoi, salad, grilled zucchini, corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes for dinner and fruit salad, brownies, ice cream for dessert. My sister also brought a banana pudding. So good, so much fun, so makes me want the summer to never end.

Can't Jersey weekends last all week?