Sarah

As her prize for winning my Guess the Blister contest, Sarah gets a whole post dedicated to her. There are two Sarahs that read this blog (to my knowledge). For the sake of clarity, this Sarah shall be called Canadian Sarah whenever there is need for distinction.

Canadian Sarah has been my friend since we were like eight years old. She was friends with some twins who lived near the park that my sister was friends with, but I really got to know Sarah when we were in swimming lessons together. We were both really slow showerers, so I guess we became friends through years of always being the last two people to leave the changing rooms.

I was going to post some childhood photos of Sarah and I, but luckily for her, my photo albums are still packed away in the garage. I have a great one of her dressed like a man at a murder mystery party I hosted one year for my birthday (in all fairness, I was dressed as a man for that party, too). Sarah ended up being the murderer! Bad Sarah!

Sarah loves horses and guinea pigs. For as long as I have known her, Sarah has owned guinea pigs. She is a much better guinea pig owner than I am. The two guinea pigs that I have owned both died young (although one was a runt, and I still believe the other was murdered). Sarah loves her piggies and they usually don't die young of mysterious causes, like mine. Sarah has always been a horseback rider, too. She even competes in horse shows at county fairs and stuff. Or she buys blue ribbons for herself and pretends she does, who knows. Sarah owned a horse of her own, once, but he died. That was a very sad time. I hope Sarah gets another horse someday, because that horse made her very happy.

Sarah and I didn't go to elementary school together, so she was always the only non-school friend at my sleep-overs. But she never seemed to mind; Sarah is very easy-going. We went to the same high school, though, and it was so great to be able to see each other all the time! We even scheduled our spares at the same time so we could hang out when we didn't have class. We had a standing date every time our period one spare fell first thing in the morning to go to Rockwell's for their $2.99 quick breakfast. Those were good times.

Sarah and I were always doing silly things together. One time, we sat in the lobby of our high school and did bad renditions of Christmas carols on the kazoo so that we could raise enough money to buy Skittles. Eventually, people gave us money to shut up, and we bought Skittles and Sun Chips with our earnings. Sarah and I invented the "Slurpee Blizzard", which is a 7-11 Slurpee filled with penny candies. We used to buy them and then go play hide and seek in the park on summer nights. We also invented CD roulette, a game in which we would play a CD on random and each pick a favorite track number. Whoever's song came up first would win. This game passed many a long afternoon waiting for our school bus after a morning exam.

Sarah and I went to my church youth group together, and after youth group was over, we went to youth night at the community centre where I worked (the Firehall). Church youth group was fun, and we did invent amazing cookies there one night (with chocolate syrup and espresso powder in them), but there were more cute boys at the Firehall. Sarah had a car, and we would go driving and do silly things with our Firehall friends until very late on Friday nights. The night we made the wake-up cookies, I seem to recall driving all around the city trying to regain possession of the Brown Cow chocolate syrup. I wonder if Rob still has it?

I went away to college, and Sarah stayed in Ottawa for college, so I didn't get to see her as much anymore. But it always seemed like we could pick right back up where we left off whenever I came home to visit. Around this time, we also discovered that we both liked to go dancing. So, whenever I was in Ottawa to visit, we would go dancing. Going dancing with Sarah came to be one of the things I looked the most forward to about going home on school breaks.

This summer, Sarah and I spent a lot of time together, because we both happened to be in Ottawa at the same time. It was great. I introduced Sarah to Lost and fondue and home-made kettle corn, and to this day an episode of Lost just seems incomplete without Sarah and kettle corn. We went camping this summer, just the two of us, and had an amazing time reading and swimming and just relaxing together. It was so nice having Sarah around again, and I was sad when she had to go back to Guelph.

I am really looking forward to Sarah coming to visit in May. We're going to go to New York City, and meet up with another high school friend who is working on her Ph.D. in NYC, and who was often a co-conspirator in our silliness back in the day. I'm looking forward to seeing Elsa again - I don't think I've really seen her since my wedding. I hope that, while Sarah is visiting, someone from Philadelphia meets her and says, "Wow, this person would be perfect to work at my environmental research facility, and I will pay her the big money to come down here and work for me." Hey, it could happen, right?

I have a lot of pictures of Sarah and I hugging. Especially from our days of going out dancing, when we would get all dressed up and then take the obligatory all-dressed-up-with-some-place-to-go-like-paris-and-nicole-before-the-falling-out picture. But don't be fooled, we only hug when someone has a camera on us. It's funny, though, because whenever I picture Sarah, I picture us all dressed up and sparkling and hugging. It's the position we instinctively take whenever someone says, "Cheese!"

I love you, Sarah! Congratulations on guessing beans!