The Magoos are back in town

I'm up regrettably early today. I'm exhausted but I can't sleep. Too much adrenaline, and I keep thinking over and over "The Magoos are here!" The Magoos are here!"

The Magoos are my two best friends Emily and Anna. Well, and me - I am also a magoo, but I am always here. Magoo is a sort of catchall term of endearment/insult that we have for each other. I'm not sure how it came about. . .I blame Anna, since most of our more esoteric slang comes from Anna. All I know is that one day I was just Megan and then a little bit later I was being paged to the front of a Rite Aid with the message "Megerson Magoo, please come to the front of the store. Your party is waiting" being blared over the store's loudspeaker.

Emily and Anna are sisters, and they refer to me as their sister as well (just to make things easier when talking to their friends - they both have other best friends, but I am something more - a sister). I even lived with them and their mom off and on as a young adult.

Emily is a hilarious but angsty painter with a mouth like a sailor, an ambition to become a gay icon, and a day job selling French Country furniture to rich old ladies. We met because we shared a locker in the 6th grade and we never looked back.

Anna is three years younger, and when I first met her, she was the bratty kid sister - always trying to get us in trouble, telling us that she hated us, and dominating the TV every afternoon by watching marathons of Who's The Boss and Full House in her underpants. She's 28 now and a musician (in a successful band in San Francisco) and a florist and an all around amazing human being, but Emily and I still like to remind her of her Who's The Boss past when the opportunity arises. Or when we MAKE the opportunity arise.



Last time the three of us were together, Emily was complaining of the difficulties of being 30 and trying to find people to date. "I only meet people who are really young and single or much older and divorced. Everyone our age is either in a relationship or, you know," grasping for the right words "pre-divorced."

Anna and I looked at each other in confusion. "Pre-divorce? What do you mean by pre-divorce?"

"Oh, you know. . . " Emily tried to explain. "Like X and Y [a couple we know]."

"Do you mean married?" asked Anna incredulously.

"Oh, yeah, married. That's what I meant. I just couldn't think of the right word for it."

Upon realizing that Emily was so jaded that in her mind marriages were just pre-divorces, we decided to omit the words "wedding" and "marriage" from our vocabulary when we talk to her. So Emily and Anna are spending the night at my house today because they are in town for Katie S's pre-divorce. I am spending the day doing the flowers for a pre-divorce of my own (you know, my couple is so lovely I really do feel guilty calling it that). I will return home tonight exhausted and achey with chapped, ragged florist monkey paws, but thoroughly ready for some Magoo time.