This is Rachel

Rachel sent me this photo today and I liked it, so I thought I'd post it here. She is one of the many friends with whom I will party hard at the wedding on Saturday.

Rachel and I lived together with her two daughters and my three sons after I left my husband. It was a regular lesbian Brady Bunch. Everyone joked that we must be lesbians, because that is what they wanted us to be. We both had long blonde hair then, and wore the same size and shared clothes.

We would just sit there and smile like a pair of cheshire cats.

Actually, last year when my hair was shorter and redder, this could very well have been a picture of me. While we were getting ready for work in the morning (both graduate teachers with 7:30 classes), Rachel would say to me, "Do I look like a painted whore?" Neither of us remembers what I would say. And we would both laugh.

When we were strutting to class in our mini skirts and pumps, swishing our long hair, I felt like a million bucks. I was the newly separated hottie in a very small town with little selection, the flavah of the month.

It was a very exciting time.