Happy Birthday Tricia!

This picture has been waiting on my dining room table to be scanned for over a month. I finally did it just under the wire. I love our smiles. I love our matching Oreo cookie necklaces. I love Tricia's cast. We have literally been friends for 30 years.

We grew up in a neighborhood that would have put Mr. Rogers to shame. Everyone knows each other. The same people that lived there when we were kids...still live there. I can walk down the wooded street to Tricia's parents house and still remember the names of the families in each house. I could drive there and know which way to bob and weave my car to avoid pot holes. I could do all this blindfolded.

I slept at Tricia's house almost every weekend growing up. Hers is the only house other then my own and my parents, that I could walk in and know exactly where the snack drawer is. We spent countless Saturday mornings reluctantly weeding her parents bee infested garden. (her Dad is a beekeeper) We spent hours in the woods surrounding her house making forts and "exploring". We would be knee deep in mud, following a stream to nowhere and hear her dad yell from the house TRRRIICCCIIIAAA!" just checking on us. We would book back to show our muddy shoes and right back to the woods we would go. She would double dog dare me to cross the log which linked the two ends of the dam of the lake by her house. It had a 50 foot drop to the bottom. Okay, I'm lying it had like a 10 foot drop, but it felt like 50 feet. I always crossed it shimmying on my bottom. She always crossed it running.

We were inseparable as kids. Now being wives and mothers we do not get together nearly as much as we would like to. If we are lucky we text each other once a month. When we do get a chance to talk it is as if not a day has past since the last conversation. She is still my best friend. She is a friend that I know I could call in crisis in the middle of the night, no questions asked.

Thanks for all the laughs Trish. I could not have shared them with a better partner.