41 things I love about my best friend

Every time I start thinking about the intro to this post, I find myself whistling the theme song to the Courtship of Eddie's Father. ("People let me tell you about my best friend...") It's not such a bad thing to have stuck in your head. I'm a fan of Harry Nilsson's after all (at least since Kevin put him on my ipod), but I do find it somewhat disturbing when it segues into the Golden Girls theme... In any event, we're quite a pair, me and my best friend, Jules. I met her when I was just eighteen, so next year I will have known her half my life. Six years my senior, she was the first "adult" I'd ever known socially and in so many ways she taught me how to be grown up. We also have the luxury not only of being friends, but being relatives as we were dating (and now have married) brothers.

So here you have 41 reasons why I love Jules:

1. She collects eclectic art. She has a can of military issue water.
   
2. She has a green thumb, though she doesn't always use it. We used to enjoy killing orchids together.
   
3. She's thrifty. She can live off eggs and tortillas. Unfortunately, this month I have forced her to do just that by "helping" her set up all her bills to auto-pay. Not a big deal, except I set them up to pay all on the same day, which seemed, at the time, to be very very far away...
   
4. She's also a generous tipper and knows her way around a five star restaurant. In fact, I'm certain she could run one if she wanted to. She got me into waitressing (a blessing and a curse) and so I'm sure my Dad resents her just a tiny bit every time he has to tip 20%.
5. She's raised two phenomenal children, my nieces Zoe and Sadie. It hasn't always been easy, as Jules' world seems plagued by minor inconveniences punctuated by the occasional catastrophe, but she's made sure it's always been fun.
   
6. She introduced me to food. Mexican food. Ethiopian. Thai. Herbal tea. Artichokes. Soyrizo. We could have skipped Carpaccio, though. I should have been suspicious when she wouldn't tell me what is was until after I tried it.
   
7. She wanted to introduce me to my husband, Erik, but she waited until we naturally crossed paths. She knew we'd either love each other or hate each other. She was so right. I'm glad she waited, though, as I was a regular wreck when she and I first knew each other.
   
8. She encouraged me to go to him, when she was 9 months pregnant, though it would mean missing Zoe's birth. Erik and I now call that time our Summer of Love.
9. She loves to read. She introduced me to Charles Bukowski and tawdry science fiction.
   
10. She loves horses. She rediscovered her passion during her (successful) battle against breast cancer. Much as she may sometimes feel guilty for the expense of her herd, I know that Fannie, Roux, and Tuffy saved her life.
    

11. She's spontaneous and sort of silly. She once sent Erik to pick up take out from Max's Opera Cafe in SF with a handwritten note that started, "Please, I am deaf..." We laughed as we watched from the car and noticed that he applauded along with the other customers when the waitress stopped singing. (Erik defended his actions, saying it's only polite to clap when everyone else is clapping....) We laughed even harder when he returned and explained that our sandwiches were on white bread because the waiter, after asking about our unwritten bread preference and remembering Erik was allegedly deaf, sized him up and declared, "White bread. You look like you like white bread." I'm sure this is an appalling politically incorrect story, but it's a family favorite that always makes me smile.
    
12. Until very recently, she owned her own dive bar in SF. Sadie's Flying Elephant was the place to be. She even let me tend bar once, for the first 15 minutes of happy hour. I was a mess - serving frothy beers in soapy glasses and making change out of my pocket after I got the register stuck shut. It isn't as easy as it looks.
    
13. She knows the value of a good Twilight Zone marathon. She was once scolded when caught tuning in at her job at a Sports Bar. (After the manager changed the channel, all her once happy customers left...) She still doesn't have Tivo so she has to enjoy Twilight Zone marathons the old fashioned way, through a haze of sleep deprivation.
    
14. She sings beautifully. She can even sing opera. She's passed the gift on to her girls.
    
15. She's very skittish around ticks. Everyone should be disturbed by some sort of parasite.
    
16. She never has a pen. Ever. And if she has one, it doesn't work.
17. She found Grandpa's bell. It wasn't easy to locate such a tiny trinket in her vast collection of miscellanea. It means so much to Erik to be reunited with this piece of his past and it means possibly even more to me that she went out of her way to find it.
    
18. She's not grossed out by the maggot pitcher. It's a very long story that begins with a dying dog and ends with nearly three years of benign neglect. I love that when I was finally able to speak the unspeakable that she laughed it off and scolded me for being so serious and dorky.
    
19. She's forgiving, about more than just the maggot pitcher and my obsessive hunt for Grandpa's bell. She doesn't make room in her life for grudges and I could learn a lot from that.
    
20. She can cook. Though can she make tortillas seem gourmet, she struggles to follow directions on a package of Noodle Roni. She has to go with her instincts in the kitchen. She also never used to own a microwave, until I bought one as a cancer present. (A very selfish act, as I wanted to have one at my disposal.) I was surprised when, post cancer, they chose to replace the microwave after Zoe burned it down.
    
21. She stopped smoking. A number of times. In fact, the first time I met her she explained that she had quit smoking. I was a bit confused, as she was lighting up at the time. She explained that it didn't count because it wasn't her brand. Most recently, she quit for good. I never fell for tobacco, but I know it isn't easy to give up a bad habit. I am so grateful she went through the hassle as I imagine it will buy us more years to be old ladies together.
    
22. She attracts great friends, if I do say so myself. Seriously, the fact that she had not one, but two dedicated caretakers during her breast cancer battle speaks volumes about her value.
    
23. She dreams. In her dreams sometimes she's a waitress living in a dusty small town, driving a pick up truck with a horse trailer. She lives there alone with her horse(s) and owns a small black and white TV. I'm not even sure they even make black and white TV's anymore, but I love that it is part of her fantasy.
    
24. She let me use her fake ID until I was 21. We rarely got carded when we drank together. In fact, I don't think I ever had the occasion to use it. Still, as a practicing bartender she made sure I had my facts straight. I knew "my" middle name, address, even my sign. I remember being present when she quizzed another adventurous attempted underage drinker in her own bar years later. The girl failed to answer correctly and I razzed her for not being properly prepared.
    
25. She used to let me use her washer and dryer. Anyone whose been to college knows how much that can mean to a person.
    
26. She's a terrible speller. It even says so on her resume.
27. She also has horrible handwriting. As I do. When we used to share notes she'd always have to ask me if that was a "u" or a "v."
28. She's extremely bright. She gives herself no credit for it because she used to ditch high school, but she's the smartest person I know.
    
29. She coined the phrase "penis work." It's a phrase I use often. I last used it two days ago to explain to Erik why I had left a half eaten bird in the bathroom overnight. Cleaning up half eaten dead things is, in my opinion, the epitome of penis work.
    
30. She often gets mistaken for a lesbian. It could be that she lives in the Bay Area but we think there's something more to it than that. A friend of hers recently told her she "presents herself like a lesbian." Whatever that means. I do remember one time, catching a cab outside the Kabuki Hot Springs, when our Islamic cab driver accused us of being homosexual. We tried to explain that we were actually sisters-in-law but he totally didn't believe us. It only got disturbing when he started quoting the Koran and forgiving us our wickedness.
    
31. Her favorite movie is Dodgeball. Not my flavor, I must say, but I love imagining her cracking up. "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball..."
    
32. She often has fruit in her purse, in her car, or on her person. It isn't always edible.
    
33. She keeps birds. She especially loved Curry, that fearsome, foul fowl I dreaded so much. I love that she accused me of starting the conflict with the toe biting demon. I also love that in some fundamental way she must be right. I mean, ducks only do what ducks do. She made indoor duck keeping look fun. I especially enjoyed watching the two of them race down the hallway, the sound of webbed feet flapping and Jules' giggling was priceless.
    



34. She gets pregnant whenever her fish die. She no longer keeps fish.
35. She's optimistic. She always assumes the best of people even when they don't deserve it. She's actually sad to see her ghetto neighborhood being gentrified. I look it as a good thing (my car hasn't been broken into in a while), but she feels for the people who are being driven out.
    
36. She's adopted. She looks just like her birth mom. Their hands are identical, just differently weathered.
    
37. She's afraid of hospitals. Yet she was a trooper during childbirth, and especially during chemo.
    
38. She loves the Simpsons. She thinks of herself as Homer but she's far too competent to be Homer.
39. She never answers her phone. Most of the time it's accidental, the phone is distant or buried. But I have also trained her to screen her calls on purpose. In my world, it just isn't mandatory to be available. Unfortunately, she's accepted my lesson with gusto. Now I never get anything but her voice mail.
    
40. She's nicer than me. But then most of my friends are.
41. She's shorter than me. I don't even think I like that in a friend. It makes me feel gigantic at a mere 5'4". Luckily (or unfortunately), our bodies seem to have a pact to remain close in size. I have gained sympathy pregnancy weight, sympathy chemo weight, and, during the years lost to the maggot pitcher, she gained sympathy restless-inland-dweller weight. One of these days we've vowed to scale down together. I'm pretty sure at this point that it's the only way.

I once told Jules she'd always be 26 to me. This makes her the same age as my brother, Kevin, and younger, now, than me. I knew I couldn't keep this list down to 26, however, as it was woefully short in Kevin's case. Already I have kicked myself for things I forgot to love about him, like the way Kevin and I used to do a "tea dance" (a modification of the twist) to encourage the water to boil faster. And so, Jules, forgive me for acknowledging that time really has passed and have yourself a happy birthday.