Reminders of MoRay

One of my favorite people in the whole wide world is Maureen. I met her on my first day of college and six weeks later we moved in together, as both our original roommates were terrible. We spent all four years of college living together. She's this amazing person. She's hilarious, smart, gorgeous, and just little buzzing ball of energy. To this day I think if there's ever a time when I really, truly need a laugh, or a kind word, or someone who just absolutely gets me I know I can turn to Maureen. In short - she's the bomb.

One thing that really sucks is that she lives far away now and I don't get to see her very much. (I need to start thinking up reasons to go to Iowa more often...) Thankfully, I have several small reminders of her around the house. Sometimes the reminders are little things. I've never had any personalized things because my name is spelled weirdly. Once and awhile I come across a Caitlin (with the second i, which is not how I spell my name) but that's as close as I get. It must have been two months or so into our freshman year that Maureen went off the the Mall of America to go on a scavenger hunt (looking back on it, that really is a great place for a scavenger hunt). I couldn't go for reasons I'd rather not discuss (because he really was such a tremendous tool) and Maureen came back with a little, tiny bag (I think it was supposed to be for candy or something) that said Caitlin on it. She has taken a sharpie and crossed out the i and written a y in for me. That still makes me laugh.

Maureen and I used to collect our quotes. It started the night we moved in together and, while sitting on the floor unpacking something, she asked me "what's that song, by that girl, with the music?" I swear to god, she's not a ditz at all. She almost immediately laughed at herself and said something to the effect of "I could vague that up for you a little if that would make it easier." Over the summer my parents sent me home with a box full of my, for lack of a better word, crap because they were tired of it taking up room in their house and wanted it to take up room in my apartment instead. It really was an entirely random box of stuff ranging from 9th grade to my senior year of college; very little of which actually meant anything to me and most of it ended up taking up space in the garbage and recycling. Alas. However, on the back of a postcard of a sculpture that's in the permanent collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts was a post-it. It read "Alright! Let's pit ya & stick ya with a pimento!" Maureen has an olive complexion that almost always looks lovely. Except for when she wears varying shades of green. This particular quote came from describing a green sweater she had tried on while shopping that day. I'm not even joking - finding that post-it made my week. It's probably made two of my weeks, but that sounds weird... anyway. I kept that post-it and put it on my bookshelf so I see it every so often on my to and from bed and every time it catches my eye, I laugh a little bit. Because that's how freaking awesome Maureen is.

Sometimes the reminders are a bit bigger. That's another really great thing about Maureen (and a really kind of shallow thing about me): she gives great gifts. She always really understood my style and could root out these super cool things that I absolutely love.

A few inches over from the post-it is my favorite candle holder. Maureen gave it to me for Christmas one year, though I don't remember which one. It's deep purple and has a leafy pattern created by the difference between regular and frosted glass. It's doubly good because I dig it whether there's a candle lit in it or not. In fact, since we weren't allowed to have candles in on-campus housing this started out being the holder for my bottle caps, which then developed into the giant jar that now exists.