Of all my peeps, Dore is one that I have gone to there and back with. She is one of the small handful of people I met when I very first moved up here, and the fact that she stuck with me through the better part of my 20s (a decade only scarcely less agonizing than my teens) says volumes. She likes tequila almost as much as I do, and she is the only person I know who considers rearranging her furniture as a recreational activity. We have gone through living alone and single, through dating and marriage, and in the 11 years that we have been friends she has managed to move away (Aptos) and come back, and away (San Carlos) and come back, and away (Monterey) and come back. She has officially landed herself on U-Haul’s wall of fame.

Although I am horrible when it comes to keeping in touch, we have always managed to stay in contact, and nowadays, somehow manage to talk on the phone at least twice a week. We often joke that our personalities are supremely opposite, yet it is purely incidental to our friendship – like after our house was burglarized and I became a paranoid lunatic, and she was quick to point out that I had upset the natural order of things by assuming her role. We are good that way together.

Friends like Dore come along very few times in a lifetime, and the amount of dirt we have on each other is enough to ensure that the friendship will last an eternity. That, and the fact that she actually volunteers to spend time with my children makes me want to weep with gratitude.