pussy willow= friends forever.

this guest blog is by my dear friend, kara.
kara is hilarious and has a little book review blog.  i refer to it constantly and basically read everything she tells me to.  you probably should to.

i can't tell you too much about how kara and i know each other, because she does that in her blog.  but i can tell you that we met at extremely awkward and innocent times in our lives.
times when i was mostly obsessed with color coordinating my braces rubber bands with the holidays and pretending i lived in colonial times. doesn't everyone go through that phase? no?

i can also tell you that kara's blog contains one of the most embarrassing stories of my childhood.  it will leave you cracking up laughing, and probably no one will ever look at me the same way.  it's worth it. 

although the jury is still out on whether or not i actually grew out of my awkward phase, kara clearly did:

yeah, she's kind of a babe.

thanks, kara!


I have been trying to think of something clever to write here on Meg’s blog for a while… And I am coming up blank in many ways. 

So here I am about to tell you the most amazing story of how Meg and I know each other and have known each other for something close to twenty years.  I kid you not. 

I grew up in a cute little neighborhood full of people that, in my kid mind, were ancient (looking back now I think they were all my parents age or just a bit older… now look at who’s the old person?!).  This gave me very few neighbors to run down the street to play with.  There were a few of course; my closest in age friend though was a boy that lived down the street that was so accident prone he spent a majority of his time in the hospital.  I think the year I met Meg, he had been hit by a car twice (while riding his bike down the street outside his own house, by the SAME OLD MAN BOTH TIMES!!!) and was in the hospital the week of Thanksgiving, leaving me with time to kill, or stalk.  Both work in this situation since I think I spied a blond little girl playing at a neighbors one day and went up and introduced myself and started hanging around her constantly…

Meg, on the other hand lived in Maryland and came to visit her Aunt and Uncle who lived down the street from me.  (Who, oddly enough, I referred to as Aunt Becky and Uncle Joel as well even though they were just family friends.)  The only time I saw Meg was at Thanksgiving when her whole family got together.  The Gurley’s house would be packed full of their family, and very very busy, yet my sister and I found a way to sneak in and hang out with Megan and Mandy every chance we got.  And vice versa.  We played all sorts of games, imagined tons of scenarios and even thumbed through a Victoria Secret catalog that we found and were fascinated by.  I think at one point we “practiced” drama by standing on a couch yelling, “I am melting!” like the witch from Wizard of Oz and criticized each other on how we acted… and played school and runaways and house and even played “vet” on their dog Willy one too many times.  Man, good times. (was Willy your dog Meg or your cousins?)

It was always a sad day when the holidays came to an end and Meg’s family drove away.  But we vowed to be best of friends always, so we established a way to stay in touch.  We became pen pals, and wrote to each other constantly.  I actually have a box in storage at my parents house, chock full of letters saved from Meg. I really need to find those and some of the awesome pictures I am sure I have as well…

The best part of this story? The funny part, you ask? It’s that we established code names for each other based on a plant we found together while walking the neighborhood.  It was a PussyWillow bud. (although now that I look it up…it might have been a different plant, we just didn’t know any better.) 

For at least a year I referred to Meg as Pussy Isaac. 
And she called me Willow Johnson. 
(pretty cool name for me but I bet you didn’t read that first one without giggling.) 

We even addressed our envelopes with these names.  Ah childhood innocence!  My mom finally caught on and put a stop to it with a firm explanation of what some people use the word, “pussy” for. 
Oh. 
My. 
Gosh. 
Are you kidding me?! (I can’t stop laughing while writing this!) In shock and horror, I quickly changed Meg's code name to Puffy (That’s a terrible nickname! What was I thinking?! I am so sorry Meg!!!) and had to explain to her why I'd made the subtle change to her nickname.  

The part that makes me laugh so hard is; can you imagine the postal workers handling our letters?!  If it was me, I would have died laughing every time.  Here comes these letters covered in stickers and elementary school aged handwriting, either addressed to or from a Pussy Isaac!!!  It’s just too much.
 
This one’s for you, Dearest Pussy Isaac… You have been such a fun friend.  I am so glad we still know each other and can play pen pals via facebook and blogging now!  I adore this blog of yours and someday soon I may write you a blog that doesn’t involve the word Pussy.