The Misfits

(Those of you dying to see Baby Girl, click here for a post which required I use pictures to be able to adequately explain my venture into mobile baby territory).

I met Jane when I was a senior in college. She, a year older (and, she would add "wiser," to which I will concede in areas of somehow knowing the title and author of ever book she's ever read, where to find all of the Sonics on I-95 and how to keep Boris, her now-deceased ancient heap o' metal running for years beyond his prime), was a freshman.

I was a PR major - a transfer from another college with a bad case of senioritis, fresh off my year of "living large" in the DC area and not quite willing to settle down in Happy Valley. She was a twentysomething Freshman with several years of business experience under her belt.

We both lived with relatives in The Tree Streets, a few blocks apart. We met at church, seemingly the only two people who weren't raised in Happy Valley nor were living at home. We were, for lack of better terminology, The Misfits.

We went to the 50-cent movies on Tuesday nights and watched every ridiculous teen movie made that year (It was the year that inspired the parody Not Another Teen Movie). We found every semi-decent restaurant in Happy Valley (which, at the time, was a list that had fewer options than fingers to count them on). When she moved into the Cat Lady's basement, I mourned the fate of having one's house smell like feline urine. When she went to visit her family in California, she introduced me to Trader Joe's - and all its goodness - chocolate cookies, tortellini and a sparkling fruit beverage I haven't had in nearly a decade. I dragged her home one weekend to experience the true Great Outdoors in the southern part of the state.

I graduated and fled East. She, needing a major that didn't involve calculus, chose mine. We compared notes. She came to visit my beach-side home (Beach-side as in "apartment near the beach" not "home ON the beach") and was the recipient of my infamous "DC in less than 24 hours" tour, including a wild drive-by of the White House.

Several years later, she called "Know of a place to live? I'm moving to DC." I called Himself who said, "We have a second master suite we can't afford." And we became roommates in an odd set of circumstances.

Together we've explored shared passions for road trips, free tickets to anything that might be remotely labeled "cultured", used book sales, the McLean Community Flea Market, Bilbo Baggins, breakfast at Eastern Market, Sonic Strawberry Limeades, Restaurant Week, Law & Order anything, Project Runway, and finding obscure things to do in DC - like the White House garden tour.

Jane learned that Himself and I would work for food - and we greedily ate up her offers to pay us in Chipotle, Bilbo Baggins and Thai takeout to clean her bathroom, detail her car, help her replace Boris (aforementioned heap o' metal) and more. She and Himself delighted in teasing me about things about which I had no idea (usually involving things I really did not end up wanting to know. She endeared herself to Son for life - aiding and abetting his love for all things McDonalds.

I left her double-stuffed Chocolate oreos alone (except while pregnant) and she remained apathetic about my shrimp obsession, leaving more of our individual loves for both of us.

She loves the One True Grocery at least as much as I do, and frequently now rubs it in that she lives very near it, while I live thousands of miles away.

We talked business strategy and swapped managerial horror stories (we shared not only the same degree from the same university, but a shared dabbling in real estate at one point) and collectively drove Himself up the wall. In turn, Himself loved Jane for mellowing me out, satisfying my need to feel cultured (Himself would rather stick needles in his eyes than attend a symphony) and for keeping me from whining about not having any friends (which I now do with alarming regularity).

Jane makes excellent stuffed tomatoes and salsa bread and can cook a full turkey in no time at all. She can recite (nearly from memory) anything written in The Washington Post on any given day and can navigate Georgetown with her eyes shut. "Mileage" has no meaning to her, happily driving Boris' replacement on a whim to visit Mickey Mouse, the Statue of Liberty (twice), Savannah's lush gardens and historical sites, the beaches of North Carolina and dozens of other places up and down the Eastern seaboard. If you had gas money, Jane had transportation.

Even through all of our adventures - we remained The Misfits. Passionately opinionated, ridiculously perfectionist in all things business - we were short and tall, single and married, broke and more broke, the nearly youngest of 9 and the oldest of 4, a night owl and a morning person, a devoted fan of sci-fi and a fan of biographies/nonfiction narratives. One of those friends who hold at least a few embarrassing stories as aces up her sleeve.

Today, Jane is officially OLD.

Happy Birthday! I miss you.