Kiss Me, I'm Thai-rish

Twenty dollars' worth of pennies is heavy. I know because I cleaned the bank out Friday at closing time. I needed leprechaun gold.

RE still hasn't counted it, but the jar weighs 8.2 lbs and is only $12.50. I hid the other $7.50 in the bottom of the coat closet. Had I not been down to the wire I would have liked to have done something heinous like soak the pennies in toilet bowl cleaner until they shined like the top of the Chrysler Building. (Miss Hannigan!)

The luckiest thing about this lucky holiday was that I got to have dinner with three of my BYU "Crown Apartment Roommates" and their families. Well, that was the second luckiest thing. The first luckiest was that one of the roommates married a guy that can cook any Thai food you can dream of. (Crown Apartments: all the luxury $196/month could buy including bleach-stained tiger shag carpet, peeling vinyl kitchen floors, one shower that worked, one that took 45 minutes to drain and enough outlets for six hairdryers to run at the same time. It's all good because I never would have met my future husband unless I'd chosen to live in that filth hole.)

My stomach enjoyed stretching to maximum capacity with coconut soup, pineapple curry, basil chicken, beef salad, Thai apple salad, pomelo salad, sticky rice, stir fry, pad Thai, grilled beef and chicken skewers with the most SHAZAM peanut sauce mankind ever produced, egg rolls, spicy cucumber relish, spring rolls and chocolate chip cookie pie. (Last item not Thai. Enjoyed nonetheless.) Whenever I eat food like this I am appreciative of all the cultures in the world and what they can do with local ingredients. Thailand: way to make the most of what you've got...like barrels of rotting fish.  Industrious, yes. Miraculous, yes. Gross when I think about it or smell the fish sauce bottle too closely? Yes. But we all know fish sauce is what makes Thai food great.

I digress. Back to the roommates. I love them. I haven't seen one of them for over a decade. They are all strong and secure women. Secure people are generally more fun to hang out with than insecure people. I can't remember how I was when I lived with them, but I'm guessing I was selfish, immature and that I was still writing my initials on my food.  I have changed a lot in 15 years. I'm sure they have, too, but I remember them as perfect roommates. Suzette was the politically-charged writer that left grammatically correct phone messages in her noteworthy handwriting and removed eye make-up with Vaseline. Mary was the sweet, mellow biologist that never lost her temper or her grace, and Heather was My Other Half for two years of my single college life.

Heather and I roomed together on cheap mattresses that teetered on cinder blocks. She would play "Someone Like You" from Jekyll & Hyde for us to fall asleep to, she introduced me to Toffifay candy (it aggravated me to no end that she could suck on one for an hour and not just chew it), she would roundbrush my hair just like the professionals at Von Curtis before my dates, she hung Van Gogh's Irises on our wall, she ate Crisco on a spatula (don't judge her...it stems from her days as a cake decorator), she left me dozens of notes on my bed after she'd make it, she always let me borrow her Eddie Bauer sweater and I always loaned her my cream J. Crew tee, and...most of all...she introduced me to narcolepsy. I have never met someone as narcoleptic as Heather. (She said it has come in very handy as a mother of five with a husband who is deployed from time to time.) Heather is pure goodness wrapped in sun-kissed freckles, easy laughter and cheekbones.

What I am trying to say is that it was really nice to overload on sodium with women who were lifechangers for me. I'm lucky, and it's always nice to realize one is lucky on St. Patrick's Day.