JennySays...: Happy Thanksgiving, Meredith

A November 2nd birthday isn’t normally a problem unless there’s a presidential election.

Because then your friends can’t paint a boat on the side of the road near the beach with “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and your name, because other people will paint an Obama logo over it.

My twin sister Joy and I found ourselves in this very predicament exactly five years ago today at the paint store.

Why today??? Because today is our best friend Meredith’s birthday!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEREDITH!!!!

(It’s also the same day where every four years, Americans elect a leader)

No matter!!! We formed a new plan to honor our dear friend, one that was hilarious and one Meredith would appreciate because she appreciates hilarious things.

...We waited until Thanksgiving and painted the boat, “Happy Thanksgiving, Meredith!”

SURPRISE!!!

Hahahahaha it's glorious!!!

We painted it like a New Orleans poboy and it stayed on the boat for nearly a week before being painted over.

Probably my best artwork to date.

Anyway.

Did you know there’s no Webster dictionary definition for “best friend?”

Yes they have “best,” and they have “friend,” but not them together.

Such an injustice. People who have a best friend know it’s way stronger than just plain old "friend."

It’s why in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris threatened Cameron with, “You can just go find yourself a new best friend!” when he refused to come pick him up.

Best friend.

Way more legit.

Meredith is my best friend. I tell her all the time.

I even have a song for us and send her photos of my ipod when it plays because ~~I'm a dork~~ that's how much I love her.

The song is Best Friend by Queen because that song describes in lyric form how I feel about our friendship.

Meredith and I knew each other from growing up in New Orleans.

We went to different all-girls Catholic high schools, but met when we did homework with the same cool kids at a coffee shop after school.

Now, I don’t like to use the word fate, but the way Meredith and I reconnected after college was pretty serendipitous.

I had gone away to school in South Carolina and still lived there after I graduated, and it happened to be the same city where Meredith got into medical school.

She and I hadn’t seen each other in at least eight years, and we didn’t know that the other was living in the city.

But Meredith saw me one day, recognized me through a picture window at a bar on the beach playing pool with my roommate one night.

“I know her!” Meredith said she told her classmate, and ran inside.

And the rest is thick-as-thieves, beaching, camping, road tripping, roommates, Mardi Gras, friends-for-life history.

Life with Meredith is always fun, always an adventure, the attitude that you only live once so enjoy every second.

...While wearing costumes.

...And cracking up laughing.

We lived together in South Carolina and Meredith, my twin sister, Joy, and I were dubbed triplets by the foreigners who ran the liquor store, and we fully embraced that - three short blondes running around town.

When Meredith graduated she moved back to New Orleans and I followed suit a year later.

It was rough, my move back to New Orleans, and I fully credit Meredith with helping me get through the difficult time I had adjusting to my New Orleans life.

I was literally in the winter of my discontent when I moved back with a terrible job and terrible relationship and for months the only happiness came from going over to Meredith’s apartment every day after work to have a glass of wine and a walk around the neighborhood.

Really, her middle name should be sunshine.

Meredith is always up for anything, no matter how outlandish my ideas are.

She joined several running clubs with me (to meet fit, athletic guys, fail), she canoe-camped and hiked-camped with me without hesitation.

We did the St. Patrick’s Day underwear run (accidentally flashed people my left boob, fail.)

She was my date for dances and parties and weddings and even crashed an OKStupid date I went on because it was funny.

And he was boring.

We’ve had countless sleepovers, been to countless Mardi Gras parades, Jazz Fests, happy hours, brunches, lunches, dinners, horse bettings at the fairgrounds, and both enjoy the same lifestyle laced with live music.

She also seethes at guys who have wronged me.

I couldn’t ask for a better friend.

I also appreciate her brainy-ness. I regularly read her the “medical mystery” of the week in The New York Times Magazine and clap wildly when she figures out the diagnosis.

When Meredith moved back to the beach in South Carolina this summer, I tried FOUR DIFFERENT TIMES to write a blog about how much I missed her, but couldn’t without crying WAAAAAH I MISS MY FRIEND!!!!

(Crying, which she expressly told me not to do. Meredith never entertained my wallowing.)

I’m absolutely convinced she got a tear drop tattoo on her finger just to use it on me, hahahaha