this is the time
July 30, 2002, 12:26pm

The boys are out at work, and I'm sitting alone at the computer. I'm leaving in two days to go back home after my summer spent with my two best friends from college...well, to be more accurate, one guy I've known since middle school and the guy who is the standard by which all others shall be judged.

This is the way things work around here: Dave takes out the trash, does the dishes, provides the computer, compulsively straightens action figures, and talks about things I don't particularly understand but don't mind hearing about.

Mike spends money on dvds and new pimp bed sheets and beer but not bills, provides the movies, beer, and often pizza or Bubba's, launches into tirades about media bias and what-is-the-world-coming-to, worships the Daily Show, and gets grumpy when he's been gone all day.

I lie on the couch and take it all in; I drink all the water in the Brita filter, leave my room a mess but clean the bathroom sink and the living room, make potholders for the quilt, host lavish parties at my parents' house on weekends, eat pint after pint of Ben & Jerry's and complain about how I planned to exercise but can't because of the feet. I secretly wait for the things left unsaid between all of us...the final closure to what undoubtedly is our last summer as the three of us: the original Sugarbabies.

The three of us sit on the kitchen floor or the patio and talk about then. We drink beer and smoke cigarettes and laugh or sigh; we do not tread on the tough stuff, but we've all survived in some capacity. I grudgingly admit that although it hasn't turned out to be what I thought it would be as far as a partying, raucous summer, this summer has been beautiful.