You’ve Had a Birthday. . .

Have I mentioned Kayla? Once or twice? A week?

Photo blatantly stolen from her blog because I am completely obsessed with that dress. You know, the one she dyed herself.

 I love her. A ridiculous amount.

Our friendship has mostly taken place through the Internet. We have many friends in common and were at BYU at the same time (even lived in the same set of dorms, although different buildings), but never met (I think we may have seen each other briefly one time, but even that I can’t be completely certain about).

Then she commented on my blog after seeing a comment I’d left on Miss Nem’s blog, and we started emailing back and forth approximately fifty times a day while both working desk jobs that left us much free time for such time-wasting.

For instance, she wrote me this gem of a letter, before we’d met in real-life:

So, last night I dreamt that I went to Texas for some work thing and decided to drop by and visit you. And at some point in the conversation you were like, “Ya, I’ll be turning 49 next month.” And I was like, “wow..you um..age..really well.” And I was like, how on earth in all of our blogging and emailing did I NOT know she was that much older than me?? So then I asked how old Bart was and you said he was 32 and I was really impressed that you were all secure about marrying someone so much younger than you.

And then I dreamt that Aaron was a serial killer. The moral of the story is: no more sugar cookies before bed.

How can you not love someone who writes you an email like that?

Now she’s one of my very very very closest friends, despite the fact that we have spent a total of about nine days together in person.

In fact, when we moved to Boston and I didn’t know a soul, the fact that my relationship with Kayla wasn’t going to change (except time zones. . .) was a source of great comfort to me.

We IM about our deep and abiding love for cheese, about Gilmore Girls, about YA books, and how fantastic we think Dave the Laugh is.

It’s her birthday today, so you should definitely go check out her mighty excellent blog and tell her happy birthday.

And then you should gape in wonder at how fantastic she looks day after day.

In fact, many days I look at myself in the mirror and think, “Kayla would not be impressed by this outfit.” And I go change. Then I feel better about myself for not looking like a lazy slob (or at least not quite so much of a lazy slob).