The Sun at $49.99

I finished my daily allotment of rows on my sky scarf four days ahead of time today because we're going to Phoenix tomorrow and I don't want to schlepp this bulky boxed project with me. And I knitted the future four days all in yellow because that's what the sky is expected to be like in Arizona with an accompanying temperature near 80 degrees. So the sun will shine on my life for the next few days and not only from the sky but from the smiling face of my good, good friend Cheryl and her good guy husband, Irvin.

I've known Cheryl since I was in the seventh grade. That was in the year 1959 which was a very long time ago. She is now my oldest friend on earth. She is one of the few left who can remember any of the specifics about my own childhood so I stand secretly in a selfish kind of awe of her. She's one of my power figures. When we were in junior high, she was one of those girls who just knew everything and everyone including the most amazing facts and stories about the cheerleaders and the yell kings. In high school, she could handle her cigarette the way Tippi Hedren did in the movie "The Birds" when she was calmly sitting on the bench in the school yard with the weird birds beginning to fill her background. In fact, Cheryl recited the whole plot of that movie to all of us at one of Karen's famous slumber parties that my parents actually let me attend. We were so scared by her realistic interpretation that we couldn't go to sleep but I was immensely grateful for her narrative because I knew I would never be allowed to see such a movie. There was nothing uplifting about it, according to my mother.

And then, believe or not, Cheryl and Irvin got married a year after we graduated from high school when I was still struggling with Shakespeare and wondering how I would ever pass my math requirement and desperately shopping for a husband of my own. The two of them are still happily married today and living in the perpetual warmth of Arizona. They come home to Oregon only when the heat is absolutely unbearable in that part of the country. They spend part of their summer at the Oregon Coast and we visit with them there. But now I am excited to go see my friend who understands more about me than anyone on earth except maybe for my sister. And for that reason, she is one of my best people. And, wow, did she ever look good in those short, short pleated Pendleton skirts and matching sweaters that we wore in the old days!