birthday gift from days of yore

With the recent surge of, ahem, older people signing on to facebook, I was pleasantly surprised a while ago when one of my very best high school friend's mother requested to be my friend. I was part of a very exclusive, 10 member friend group. Go me!

Upon telling this to Nate, I had one of those random memories - and it coincides with my recent 27th birthday. I was thinking about how 10 years ago I was about to start my senior year of high school (10 year reunion is coming up next spring!) and where I was/who I was with for that 17th birthday. After a week of sailing on a rented Hinckley yacht out of Southwest Harbor, Maine with my dad, step-mom and step-bro, Ly (pronounced Lee, now Dr. Ly) and her mom picked me up and brought me back to their "farm" in Monroe, ME to spend a week with them. Ly and I spent that week sailing her laser (maybe it was a sunfish) on their pond, watching the PBS civil war series on video and making a whole years worth of Martha Stewart projects (I remember a gingerbread house, some meringues that wouldn't bake due to the humidity, and my favorite: a jack-o-lantern carved from a watermelon).

At the end of the week it was my birthday - a very small, understated affair. The one present I remember getting was this dear little beanie baby, Slippery the Seal, from Ly's mom. I'm sure Ly gave me some great gifts too, but as our tradition was to give each other a shoe-box full of small gifts, mostly things we didn't want anymore, and usually some reject gift I had given her on her last birthday, they were not as memorable. Sorry, Ly!

Anyway, here he is: Slippery, celebrating his 10th birthday (plus a few days).