this weekend i will be seeing my bestest friend a. she will be in canada for a few weeks for work, so this weekend i will be going to toronto to be with probably the only person who i can be me around.

i first met a, in my first year of my phd. she was working in the lab next door to mine. the woodbridge festival was happening that weekend and she invited me along. the day was a ball. it had rained pretty hard the week before, and they had all the cars park in a sheep paddock. so as is known to happen, while trying to park the car, it became bogged. us five girls got out of the car, laughed and tried to push the car out. yeah right, we weren�t going to get mud all over ourselves. we had seen some fire trucks around and hoped that some hunky firemen would come to our rescue. instead old, overweight cfa volunteer men in their very sexy orange jump suits came and helped us out, well they helped out a, the rest of us stood back and hoped that these men didn�t have a heart attack unbogging a�s car. one thing i distinctly remember about that day, besides the bogged car episode, is that i should have washed my ears out a bit better that day. i kept hearing things. someone would say �oh let�s check out the peach schnapps stand� and i would hear �oh i want to lick your left ear�. all day this continued and as is my way, i�d repeat what i thought i�d heard. i think they all thought i�d found a patch of magic mushrooms that i didn�t tell them about. a thought i was hilarious (i will always fall in love with someone that thinks i am hilarious). so that day probably marked the start of our friendship.

the connection i felt with a, was instant. it was like i knew this person my whole life. but there was more to it, i wanted to be her. she is extremely witty and quick, a great practical thinker, and lateral at the same time. she�s smart as hell, strong, independent and has lived through an amazing number of things that just seemed so out of this world to my sheltered, insular life. her intuition is akin to the old, blind, european village woman who reads tea leaves who knows that gino is on his way to her with a limp the day before he apperars. her gut feeling is always right, uncannily so. whenever i just needed to have someone around me, not necessarily for a conversation but just to have a body in the same space as me, she�d make her boyfriend at the time, now her husband, come and pick me up and take me to their place. she is wise beyond her years, people i respected, respected her. it was great to watch her interact with people, and people with her. she gave me a place to live when i was homeless, she offered no bullshit practical advice, she introduced me to great music and books, she offered different ways of thinking of things. she�s original, talented, arty, crafty, unique. she can laugh about any situation no matter how dire. she hasn�t had the easiest of lives, but you would never know it. she doesn�t whine.

while i was still in hobart, she moved to canberra. i thought my world had caved in. what was my life without daily contact with a? i feared that the geographical distance between us would unravel our bond. it didn�t. i�ve probably spent more time away from her now, than with her and our friendship is just as strong, if not stronger. my mum loves her, my dad probably gave her the greatest compliment he could ever give �she�s really quick isn�t she?�.

she now has a baby, works in a top government job, has a house, a mortgage, a life very different to mine, yet our friendship continues and stays strong. so this weekend, we will try and cram in as much of each other than we can in 2 and a half days. we will smoke and drink too much. we will laugh at stupid things. we will try and catch up on all those things that email and phone conversations can�t capture. we will just enjoy being in the same space together. if i was attracted to girls i would have made a move on her a long time ago.

i love her. she�s my bestest friend.