I'm so LUCKY to have a charming friend like Joan

This is a picture of what friendship looks like.

I have many wonderful qualities. When I think of some, I will be sure to share them with you. "Friendship" is not my strongest skill. I notoriously forget birthdays, stop in for visits without calling first, mooch like nobody's business and interrupt CONSTANTLY. Let's just say I'm a better talker than a listener.

My friend, Joan, on the other hand, is the epitome of true friendship. Not only has she put up with my obnoxious shenanigans for almost thirty years, she graciously took on the role of beloved aunt to my two girls, weaseling her way into my and Brad's Wills for "just-in-case" guardianship. "If you ever die, Amy," she  would threaten, "I will KILL you!"

She has been known to, Shoemaker's Elves-style, sneak over to husk several bushels of corn as three out of the four members of the Mosiman Family begrudgingly prepared ourselves for Brad's favorite family activity: Freezing corn. "We can buy a bag of frozen corn from the store for 99 cents," we'd say but our complaints fell on deaf "ears."

Despite knowing that there was more-than-a-good-chance that she could be arrested, Joan has taken part in some of our more idiotic adventures. When we decided to test a watermelon's buoyancy in a cinematically BIG way, Joan was willing to be the one to sneak past the "DANGER:  STAY AWAY FROM RIVERBED" sign to fling our melon into the raging rapids. We also learned how quickly Joan could move when a warning whistle blew! She cheered louder than the rest of us when our melon survived the rapids but exploded upon impact when it hit the massive waterfall.

Speaking of exploding, Joan did not immediately terminate our friendship when we inadvertently canoed her end of the vessel into a bloated beaver carcass, nor did she storm off when we set up her tent so that she was sleeping on a fork. She has helped pluck puke from my daughter's hair on a road trip, listened to the same story tape fifty-ka-zillion times on our many travels ("It's a good game...a very good game."), let me dress her like a Pilgrim, and never judges me for any of the bad decisions I make.

And then, two days ago, she appears at my house with a large, gallon-sized bag filled with Lucky Charms marshmallows.  My dream come true. For years, I have joked that my goal in life is to sort through a box of Lucky Charms, discard all those pesky cereal bits and gather up the rainbow of pink hearts, yellow moons, green clovers, blue diamonds (and purple horseshoes) but, of course I was too lazy to actually do it. My friend did it for me.