Boss Lady.

Oh Dear Friend, tonight R and I went out to dinner with the Boss Lady. She's not really our boss lady anymore, at least not technically, but she'll always be THE Boss Lady. It was fantastic. The best dinner ever. For a lot of reasons, really. But mostly because I miss her. And I'm glad she misses us back.

Whatever Boss Lady may be to everyone else, and whatever she may think she is to us, in my mind she'll always be my Other Mother. I never had a mom, not in any real sense of the word, but for five long years Boss Lady watched over me every day, for eight long, long hours. She scolded me when I was bad. Corrected me when I was wrong. Equipped me to do all kinds of things I didn't think that I would ever be able to do. She put up with my, at times unreasonable tantrums, saw me through the worst of my crazy. And after I tried (and failed...miserably) to kill myself, when no one else (except my dad) would even return my phone calls, she showed up at the ICU to make sure I was okay.

I don't know what she thinks about all this, or why she's taken care of me the way that she has, and really, I don't care. She did. And I'm a better person for having known her. Every day. I like the Boss Lady because she makes me better than I am. Even if she doesn't know it.

Boss Lady is my favorite.

I wish you had gotten a chance to meet her before you moved away...I don't know how exactly we would have accomplished that, but that's beside the point. She's been such a huge influence on Goose and I, without her ever really knowing it. When we get stuck, particularly when one of us is having issues at work, or with someone else, we try to figure out what Boss Lady would tell us to do. Plus, she plays the accordion. That in and of itself makes her pretty dang cool in my book.


Oh, and she secretly rocked out to Lady Gaga in the mornings. :)