It Can't Be

It just can't be. It doesn't seem possible that here we are, in Florida, reunited 23 years after we hung out. 23 years. That's a long d*mn time. That's "don't ever say that again" long, according to Sarah, who comes to our Brady Bunch from "Mike's" side.

This is my cousin Heather, whose life took a radically different turn from mine, considering she's a Capital One bigwig making lots of money and I'm, well, a stay-at-home unschooling mom making no money. Same roots, same cornfields, same experiences, wildly different outcomes. Fun, huh?

And that's Kasumi. Kasumi was the Japanese exchange student who stayed with Heather's family when Heather and I were high school sophomores. Kasumi was - and is - a hoot and a half and my memories are filled with all kinds of crazy stories like the time she told me on a ski trip that she was going to kick my *ss if I wasn't quiet so she could get to sleep. Naturally I egged her on, mostly because it was just so darn funny to hear her say, "I mean it, Lorla - I'm going to keek your ahss" over and over in her heavy Japanese accent. Or the time she insisted that scratching off the tops of my mosquito bites would make them stop itching and I actually let her do it and then walked around for 3 days with little bloody wounds that, now that I think about it, didn't itch anymore but looked like hell. Or the time we all went to a lake in northern Wisconsin on vacation together and Heather and I went to bed to find that Kasumi had decorated our pillows by propping them up on end, dressing them in our bras and panties, and placing tampons and maxi pads in various places.

I have many many more stories about Heather as well - hilarious, obnoxious, blackmail-ish stories that I won't tell lest word get out in the corporate world. Let's just say Heather can be loud. And sometimes barked out car windows. That's all I'm gonna say.

It was great fun to catch up today and catch up on each other's lives.

And now back to my favorite Florida activity: holding down that lawn chair.

Tomorrow, I might get a little crazy and hold down a pool raft.