my other two thirds

You've heard me prattle on at length about how much I adore Portland and the people in it and I thank you for that. In reality, I've held back. So count your blessings folks. You have no idea how loquacious I can be (and if you do, I am genuinely sorry). 

But the time has come, the Walrus said, to remind you all of something Portland does not have: my other two-thirds.

Brigette and I met the second semester of freshman year at Pepperdine. We were the two non-theater majors working in the Scene Shop (the scenic construction and installation heart and soul of Smothers Theater) and got plugged into working on the haphazard jalopy for The Grapes of Wrath. I still have visions of our leading men and women falling through/off that thing due to our shoddy pneumatic stapling job. Anyway, somewhere between air-powered adhesion and John Steinbeck, we realized we were both set to spend the following semester in London. 

Long story short, that was the beginning of what would become the saga of us being "Heterosexual Life Partners". Almost six years later, we've been through just about everything together. We've traveled Europe, Mexico & America; we've had the ups & downs of relationships; we've eaten too much cheese, drank too much wine, bought too many clothes, watched too many Christmas movies (no such thing), played in too many IKEAs, made too many people nervous about whether we're going to fall up a flight of stairs (we're both guilty of that) and had too many smoke detectors sound off at too many attempted cooking feats. She is my sister, my best friend and the only person in the world who understands what it means to watch 101 Dalmatians on the 101. 

As for Blake, he is my boyo. Our Wonderboy. We met in Intro To Creative Writing in 2006 just as Brig and I returned from our first adventure in London. He was the six-foot-something freshman from Texas who looked like he'd just fallen out of the Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly and while it would be another  few months before we moved on from Instant Messaging about Disney and literature to hanging out in his dorm room watching Star Wars and James Bond movies, that was the humble beginning. And once he and my mom met and she all but formally adopted him, that was it - best friend, big little brother, co-runner-around-Boboli-Gardens-in-the-rain, only-person-who-would-make-me-a-birthday-Frankencake-and-cut-it-with-a-butcher-knife, "...but by God, there'll be dancing!", one of the loves of my life. 

To shorten this long story, it was somewhere between Brig's and my junior year and now that the three of us clicked and became unconditional friends. There are nooo boundaries (for better or for worse, ha) and while I'm positive that we've raised more than a few eyebrows from the people trying to figure us out, we rarely care. It's more fun that way. 

These two people are the other two-thirds of my heart and for all the things I don't miss about Los Angeles, I miss them infinite times more. When we were in college, it was easy to run through our apartment complex and meet in the middle. To crash in Blake's bed when we didn't feel like walking the extra few hundred feet to our apartment. To pound on Blake's door in the middle of the night, Brig and me with hoodies and wellies on, ready to drag him out to puddle-jump in the rain.  To fly down PCH, blasting "Dark Blue"and singing at the top of our lungs. 

It's harder now. We're over a thousand mile apart. The occasional video chat isn't enough! I miss them like I'm missing a piece of my heart. But remember what I said earlier? This is an unconditional friendship. The pictures of them all around my apartment make me smile on even the crummiest day. 

This love isn't going anywhere. 

 (photos of our adventures over the years)