Three Weeks Ago Today...

America's Next Top Models

While in NYC, Heather and I decided to do an impromptu photo shoot in our hotel room to showoff our new threads. Having watched every season of America's Next Top Model, I knew we had to focus on our body angles and smiling with our eyes.

And now, our portfolio.

Transformation

I realized while we were on the plane to New York City for our No Nonsense Between Friends trip that Heather and I started our friendship on a plane. She had a bag of O'Boises potato chips on a flight back to Louisville after our 5th grade day trip to Washington, D.C., and she offered them to me not knowing that I had/have a chip addiction. As I looked at her this time, 20+ years later, I felt a whole new gratitude for her... and it had little to do with the mommy snacks I knew she had in her bag.
Our trip to NYC was incredible. From the moment we walked into our hotel room and discovered a gift basket that put the Easter Bunny to serious shame, the trip just got better and better.

We met with a stylist, were allowed to pick something from his suggestions rack, and then went to eat some of the best pasta I've ever eaten. Then we slept above Times Square in a swanky hotel room and woke up to a view of the Hudson River and a day filled with shopping, with trying on beautiful things without the slightest regard for the attached price tags. We dropped hundreds of dollars without a thought and came to adore the women who fit you for bras at Macy's. Then it was off to another extraordinary dinner, this time sushi that literally melted in your mouth, followed by Mamma Mia on Broadway. Sunday was just more of the same upward trajectory. We donned our new threads, headed to a salon and were treated to a facial and a hair experience unlike any either of us has ever had.
Did you know that lurking under this mass of confused waves and supernatural frizz there is supermodel hair? It was too beautiful to be mine, but there it was attached to my head.
We had our makeup done to complete our new looks, and I can't really describe how this whole makeover experience affected me. I haven't felt this good about myself ever. And I haven't seen Heather treating herself so well our entire lives.

I think that's what's most precious about this whole experience. Seeing someone I love dearly reconnect with who she is, beyond who she is to other people, was the best gift of all. I'm so grateful I was able to play some small part in getting her to that place and that I got to see it happen.

Our trip just kept getting better and better and better, and when it finally hit me how wonderfully lucky I am to have won this, how incomprehensibly blessed I am to have such an astounding friendship with someone who is so extraordinary, how delicious my life is, well, when all those realizations finally settled on me during the stillness of a carriage ride through Central Park, I cried. And I have never in my life been more grateful to have Heather at my side than I was in that moment.

Trouble Makers Have More Fun

You know you're entirely too close to someone when they're farts are familiar to you. That's the way it is with Heather. I have been smelling this girl's colon for my entire life. And even though I know she comes with squirty toots that you can taste if you're in an enclosed space, I still would have her visit every single day if I could.

[In a complete coincidence, Mack just farted as I wrote this and then broke out with, "I'm bringing Heather back..." to the tune of Sexy Back. He gets it.]

That girl makes me laugh til I drool every time. She is a trouble magnet, and potentially regrettable things happen when she's around... not bad things, just potentially oopsie ones. Like this:
The first night she got here, we went out with my friend Gio, who shares my birthday and my delight in taking innocent yet incriminating photos that would be completely inappropriate without the forgiveness of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He was so much fun he drunk texted my mom, tinged Heather and my Facebook statuses/stati with naughtiness, and got to hold our purses the 11 times we peed in the alley.
He also got to take the above reference innocent yet incriminating photos.
On Saturday we woke up, went to breakfast at my favorite diner, and then headed to Abalone Cove to see if the tide pools my neighbor told me about actually existed. When Jen visited last year, we hiked around looking for these stinking tide pools and could not find them anywhere. Jen was in a sundress and heeled flipflops and was either going to cry or kill me if I did not get her out of that failed outing immediately. Well, this time, with accurate tide charts in hand, we made it. And it was freaking awesome!
We saw orange starfish, maroon starfish, baby starfish, teenage starfish, adult starfish, sea vaginas, hermit crabs, bright purple sea urchins and tons of birds. Enjoy this slideshow music compilation courtesy of $3 and Animoto.com, which I also love.



We also discovered squirters. Some of you may know squirters as something else, but all we knew was that as we were walking around the tide pools trying not to step on sea urchins, some things would periodically squirt water at us. We channeled our inner scientists and named them after one of Mark Carrothers' old girlfriends. Would you be surprised that it was Heather's idea? Naaah.

Sunday was basically as perfectly lazy as it should have been. We walked up to Venice Beach, laid in the grass, read books, took photos of Sadie playing outside, took medicine for our aching calves, went to sushi for dinner, and vegged like the champion vacationers we are.

She left on Monday morning, and even with daylight savings time, it's been a little less sunny without Heather's spontaneity and easy laugh. She is good for the soul. And the devil inside.