  Sleep-deprived - not the ideal way to start off a week, but on the other hand, there are events and people worth staying up late for. Yesterday we spent the whole day with friends from Bangkok - it was the first time we'd seen them since we'd left all those years ago. Time rolled back and compressed, and it was as if the twelve years in between had never happened. Our mothers congregated around the kitchen and the dining table, as they'd used to, and we hung around long enough to eat before taking off to AL's room to catch up. There were five of us - AD and AL, brothers; KD and his little brother L, who had been a baby when we last saw him and is now 11; and urlLink freakchild and me. We finally found out how old AD really was - he had always been everybody's big brother, and in the blindly adoring way of children, we'd always thought he was eons older. Apparently he's only three years older than I am, and I was stunned. Wow, I marvelled as he grinned and our mothers laughed.
We always thought you were like ten years older and six feet tall, you know? All those years later he was still the consummate big brother, alternately comforting and wise; sitting at the head of the table, he chatted with our moms about the various adjustment problems we'd all gone through while the rest of us snuck off to AL's room with a glass of wine to do our own bitching.
I feel so safe when I'm with them, like I'm eight years old again and squabbling with the boys and AD is patrolling the area protectively, yelling at us for the millionth time not to run by the pool. Sometimes in Manila I am struck by moments of panic or terror, when I feel like I'm stranded in the middle of a stormy ocean and I have no lifevest and I don't know how to swim and I don't know where to go or how to get out of there. With these people, though, and a few of my friends, it's as if I've got a killer lifevest on and a strong cord that tethers me to safety, and I feel perfectly free to leap out even in the middle of a typhoon. Of course, urlLink G would probably say that normal people wouldn't leap out in the middle of a typhoon even if they were CHAINED to a secure place, and she may have a point.
- - - I'm getting the car after all, despite all my wibbling. My mom will pick it up Wednesday afternoon and I'll bring it in to work on Thursday, just because. Sparkly red car and a wild happy rei driving it around! Ph34r m3, f00lz. Speaking of wild happy rei, solemate messaged my phone yesterday to let me know that there's a tentative date set for her wedding - January 2006 - and that I'M GOING TO BE HER MAID OF HONOR!!! No, of course it's not going to be a normal wedding. With solemate as the bride and her sister as the organizer and me as the maid of honor and M and V as bridesmaids ... this is going to be fun . 
