A Night in the Gallery

While on the shopping road trip, I spent the night with my friend. That is not her. We have been good friends since college. We lived in the same dorm for 2 years, then in the same house for a few years, and in the same town for a lot of years. We don't anymore, so I spent the night with her after the scout trip for THE dress with the Lovely Bride, a saga that is detailed around here somewhere. That was a hot and exhilirating day, and I was glad to end with ....MORE SHOPPING! We love to shop. That, we share. There is no shortage of ways in which we differ. Lets' start...

....with these Clinique cosmetic bags. We got them at the same time, probably 2 or 3 years ago. Hers, the yellow one, is pristine. Mine, the green one....well the lining is hanging out, for starters. She just painted her house inside. Everything is white, "like a GALLERY." Consider that statement carefully..."like a GALLERY." Very revealing.She LOVES things with these teeny, tiny patterns, and lots of colors. Looks like those medical tests where the brain shows up in all those colors, and someone has to figure out what those patterns and colors means. Brain tumor or not? Art object or not? It makes me dizzy. She also likes some flat out weird stuff. This guy is hanging in her den. I slept on the couch there. With this gentleman looking at me. A brass lobster. Seriously? What might one do with a brass lobster? She has a whole HOUSE FULL of this.... overstimulating, yet weirdly cool stuff. She is a photographer. She has a shole SHELF full of old cameras. N.B. (Latin for 'not bulls*#%) ..none of these work. Lucky for her...clients, we can call them...she has some that DO work.She loves books. I love books too, but I don't buy every last book I think I might like to look at someday. She does. She has books on shelves and piles of books. OMG, I spy something with teeny, tiny DOTS on top of that stack. I've heard that she has a computerized catalog of her books. In theory, she knows what she has and which shelf it is on. Not sure if she knows what is in the piles. I have taken books off those shelves and brought them home, and she has never noticed. I have also found several copies of the same book in her house. Needless to say, those went home with me too. Then, I just bring them back when I am done reading. It's sort of like a bookstore. Only no one knows what's left 'the store' We might say she SHARES with me.

She gets a TON of catalogs in the mail. She shares those with me too. This is this week's stack. Wait, maybe it's one day's stack. When I left, I took a bunch of those catalogs. I am not sure she is aware of that. There are plenty more of those coming. You should see this place at Christmas. She has a specific basket for Christmas catalogs. It probably has little dots all over it.

Of all the things she shares with us, this guy has to be the most amazing. She has shared him with us since he was born. I have called him my middle child, my extra child, my fifth, my BONUS child. He's one of us.

Here he is with Young Son watching Pretty Pretty Princess play lax. He must have eyes in the back of his head, because 'the action' (oxymoronic, I know) is behind him.Big D, by some bizarre and convoluted series of events, named this street after him, in his own home town. Long ago. And I ran into it this week.
This hangs on a door knob in her house . . . I gave it to her....when she got married. It was not for the child, it was for the husband. (Ooooh, wash my mouth out, that was not nice to say!) I'm not sure how effective it is. Maybe the scary mask with acne would have worked better.

All I know, it's never hanging on the door knob for me. Because she is my friend. Which is why she is standing in these magnolia leaves. Another story for another day.