The Awesomest Thing I Have Seen In a While

I was recently lucky enough to get a free pass weekend from the family. They gave me use of the 'good' car and I took myself on a little road trip to see my best friend from high school. It was a four hour-ish drive. (If you factor in the occasionally zoom down the highway at 80MPH for which I practiced a variation of the Hagar defense – I am sorry officer. But I just can't drive 65.)* Plus, I was super excited to see my friend.

She is one of those people who just wrap you into their lives and even though I had not seen her in over a year, it was as though it were 1978 all over again. Of course, that doesn't mean I still wasn't nervous. I stressed for weeks that we wouldn't have anything in common. Except that we have nearly everything in common. We both have two kids who are all within two years of one another -graduating college, looking for first jobs, dating. We all own boats – her a fancy power boat, me a laid back sailboat. (which is a weird metaphor for our personalities. She zooms around at 300Hp, jumping waves and leaving a wake a mile wide. Me, I drift here and there with the wind. And we both have husbands. Which leads me to:

THE AWESOMEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN A WHILE,

mostly because it is not in my house!

It has been suggested that we have an 'odd' collection of decorative items in our house...three foot wooden otter, papier-mâché shrunken head, zombie finger puppets... But nothing prepared me for:

THE AWESOMEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN A WHILE

mostly because it is not in my house!

This is why you never leave a husband unattended.

Yes, this is an aquarium diorama. Yes, it is in the stairwell of my High School best friend's basement. Yes, her husband put it there. (While she was out of the house.)** Several, but not all of the fish were caught by him and his buddies. The turtles and frog were mail order. Every time I walked past the stairwell I had to stop and study it. And I always saw something different. And this could only happen because her husband is so amazingly handy and had spare time after putting in their beautiful new floors and re-doing the kitchen.

But now that I think about it, I did not see any tiny Barbie scuba divers floating around in Jacques Cousteau mode.

Looks like that thank-you gift will be going in the mail today...

*No tickets were issued in the driving. And in my defense, I had no intention of going that fast, I blame it on McD's  lattes and those little licorice bites.

**Did I really need to clarify that she was out of the house when this was installed?