She's SO sweet that my mom even likes her tattoo...if it were on me, things would get ugly

I have now been up the whole night and I know I'm gonna pay for it later, but I TRIED, really I did.

I went to bed with Mr. Blogger at about 12:30 and proceeded to read, and then toss and turn for HOURS. I feel very restless and my mind won't relax. I feel like there's so much to be done, but not in a stressed-out bad way.

I may even break into "Something's Coming" soon, so watch out (my Mother is SOOOO going to be the only person to get that reference).

So I figured it was better to just get up and do something productive instead. And may I first say, most importantly, and above all else that may be said for the day...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KONA GIRL!!!

You don't look a day over 21...really! (Hey, if I don't then you don't.)

There are so many, many, MANY stories to tell about KG and me, and how we've always been the bestest of buds. I'll try to tell the least embarrassing, but I can't make any promises.

I know I've mentioned it before, but it can't be stressed strongly enough that KG and I were UNBELIEVABLY good girls growing up. Seriously, we did NOTHING wrong. It's sickening how sweet we were. But that was the norm for our group of friends. Especially in high school.

For our senior year, I had the brilliant idea for all us gals to buy a small ad in the back of the yearbook (I was the Activities Editor so really, I was just helping out the Advertising Editor). Everybody liked it so we decided to take a picture of all (I think) sixteen of us...arms around each other, smiling brightly under a tree. I even got one of the professional photogs we had doing some portraits that day to take it. Ok, he was really really cute and I wanted to spend more time with him. But it was just a win-win situation if you ask me.

When we got the proofs back, TO A PERSON, it was the best picture any of us had taken. It was literally the type of group shot where no one has their eyes closed, everyone's smiling and everyone's got their own individual look and pose, but it all just WORKS. Everyone looked just...radiant.

After much research, I captioned it "Friendship is a Sheltering Tree...Samuel Taylor Coleridge". Oh how the little soon-off-to-be-an-English-Major in me loved that.

(Come to find out, the following year when I happened to go visit my old Journalism teacher to tell her how The Big Important College Girl was doing, I saw that year's yearbook proofs and about TEN different groups of friends had bought similar ads. We had started a trend and didn't even know it.)

I should tell you first though, about what amazingly promising girls these were. OK, our group had lots of cheerleaders in it...let's just get that out of the way...but we also had the smartest, most talented, most involved, most interesting girls in the school as our friends. And, Mom back me up here 'cause I'm losing my audience, who are currently tuning out the egomaniac monster I seem to have become.

We were all very close. And always so proud of each other's accomplishments. Competitive as hell, sure, but also proud. But none were as close as me and the KG.

KG was the kind of friend who would tell you how the guy you had a mad unrequited crush on through all of high school (eh...now he's not even HALF as cute as Mr. Blogger) was SOOO into you. It was sooo obvious. He was just a jerk who didn't know what to do about his feelings. And when he went to the Prom with someone else, well, he was sooo stupid. And his date was sooo stupid ('cause of course she wasn't anywhere NEAR the caliber girl you were). And your date was sooo much hotter than The Crush anyway. And it's sooo his loss.

She could make you feel better about ANYTHING...even something as soul destroying as that. And when Mike Otsuka tried to take over MY Editor-in-Chief position on the school newspaper, well, he just better BACK OFF. KG was going to tell him a thing or two!

We would have sleepovers (yes, sleepovers at 17...THAT'S how sheltered we were) and talk of course about boys (oh how the OP Boy broke her heart), but also our hopes, fears, dreams...all those cliche things that really ring true with best girlfriends.

She was brilliant and vibrant and sunny and lovely to EVERYONE. She was smart and popular and cute and had so many boys after her, but she was as kind to the smartest guy in her Pre-Calc class as she was to the Varsity basketball player after the game. She surfed every morning before school and yet, was the cutest little preppy dresser you ever saw when she was done.

Today...oh so many years later, Kona Girl is all those things and more. She's an amazing wife and a mom to THREE boys (or Testosterone Central, as she is prone to call her home) and both of us can't get over how her oldest is actually now OLDER than we were when we met. She is still the kindest person I know. And she is still my Best Friend.

So, Miss Kona Girl, on this special day, I have picked you a batch of Plumerias and wish for you...LOVE. In all its abundant forms and mysterious turns. In all its toe tingling excitement and heart-stopping, chance-taking ways...LOVE is what you are.

And LOVE is what you deserve.