Digs & Spleen

Last week my college roommates, Digs & Spleen (TOTALLY their real names) and I were e-mailing about our annual "Ladieth Reunion."  I'm sure at some point it was pronounced "ladies" but somewhere along our cocktail filled evenings and a few too many cheesy guys in bars, it has morphed into "haaaay ladieTH, haaay!"

Spleen lives in San Diego, Digs lives in San Francisco and I live in Portland.  So where we used to come out of our respective rooms at our little house on 63rd Street and pile on the couch to recount the details of the previous evening, now two of us fly to the other and we pile on the couch and recount the details of the previous few months.

Sometimes I'll be at work when I get their e-mails, or phone calls (occasionally from both of them together--BEST CONFERENCE CALLS EVER) and I have to CONTROL the hysterical laughter and shorthand that make up our conversations.  We call it the "WV" (code for 'work voice' which can also morph into "BV" if Digs is riding on BART) and it SUCKS ... and usually makes everything that much funnier because you can't laugh or discuss old times.  

Like the time I spent the wee morning hours in a Las Vegas hotel pool with a random guy named ... Jim?  Yes.  It was definitely Jim.  Maybe.  After wrapping my hair in a pool towel at 8 a.m. when the sun started coming up and the hotel workers started making an appearance, Jim and I ran, laughing through the lobby leaving little wet foot prints in our wake before we serendipitously bumped into Spleen with HER respective date for the evening.  

After a brief, and surprisingly not awkward (it was Vegas!), introduction, the four of us decided to keep the party going and proceeded together ... on essentially what was a walk of shame double date ... to the breakfast buffet where we ended up seeing the rest of Spleen & my crowd and joining them all for pancakes.  And YES, I was STILL in my towel turban with the guy who's name may or may not have been Jim.  Can we say classy?!  Mmm hmm, I think we CAN!  Don't judge.  Spleen had a HUGE hickey on her neck!  Which I think I kindly pointed out by yelling across the table "Dude, what happened to you?!  Did you fall down and land on your NECK?"

You know, stories like THAT. 

So this past Friday we decided we'll be heading to San Francisco in April for a reunion at Casa de Digs.  And after working out all of the details through a few e-mails everyone signed off for the weekend.

• SSG was heading out for lemon drops.
  
• Digs was off to a cabin in Lake Tahoe.
  
• And Spleen was playing in the kickball finals with her co-ed kickball team, appropriately called the "Sex Kittens."  The GUYS wear pink cat ears.
  

And THAT is why I love those ladieth.  We've known each other for over 15 years and despite having lived in different cities for the last 10, we still miss being a part of each others daily lives.  We can tell the difference between our "grown up" voices and our REAL voices--those that send us screaming into fits of laughter from the stories of our past AND present.

In the words of Spleen ... "can't wait to see you sexy beeee-yooootches!"  Here's to all of the stories that still lie ahead ... like combining our social security checks to hire a cute pool boy for the nursing home.

Love you MORE!

STERS