everyone should have one

Everyone needs that go-to person in their life. You know her. She's the friend you trust to give you the brutally honest truth about your hair, your shoes, your boyfriend, and the paint color you chose for your master bathroom. The one (or maybe two) to whom you confide your deepest darkest secrets. She laughs with you, cries with you, drinks with you, brings you chocolate, AND helps you hide the bodies.

JT, my dear, dear friend in Omaha, is that person for me. She's also the person I most desperately wish had a blog. It would be stylish and brilliant, with a backdrop of Burberry plaid, and just a touch of bitter sarcasm. 

I'll try to help you get to know her better, but she is difficult to sum up without a 2-3 hour conversation. Here are just a few snippets:

• She flew to Pittsburgh when we were renovating the house to help me choose paint colors and tile. Her visit was a mere 47 hours but her suitcase was still over the 50 pound weight limit. She likes to have choices. It was December, after all. Coats and boots are heavy. We chose every paint color and every bit of tile I needed. And a few rugs. And let's not forget about the marathon lamp selection session when we looked at about eleventy-seven thousand chandeliers and pendant lights on the web, until our eyeballs nearly fell out. In the shopping olympics, I can only hope to be a silver medalist. JT would get the gold every time.
• I think her favorite color is black watch.
• You can find her at a dog show or horse show most weekends. She will undoubtedly be wearing lipstick, even if the dog show is really a tracking trial in the rain. The lipstick will probably match her wellies. And if she's not with dogs or horses, she's organizing a benefit for the opera or a debutante ball or being a museum docent.
• She has been in a building struck by a tornado. This is important because we were together at a dog show when tornado sirens went off. I knew to follow her and she would keep me, and my dog, safe. My confidence was not misplaced.
• She recently helped me choose the right shade of foundation entirely over iChat. And her selection was dead-on.
• She claims to have children, though I have never met them. If they are anything like her, or her husband, I will like them a lot. I am a little sad that her daughter is too old for Oliver to marry someday.
• And speaking of her husband, I used to dream of him having a younger brother and clone, usually on days when I was ready to dump all of CDs stuff on the sidewalk because he wouldn't tell his family about me, or when I was sure he was never going to marry me.

In short, since the day we met (when her dog got a tad snarky at mine at a national specialty!), I have wanted to be JT when I grow up.

In this (currently fictional) blog of my dreams, one of the features should be me asking a stupid color/decorating/design question, that maybe isn't so stupid as I think, and her answering it with her usual panache. I'd send in a picture of my fireplace with the pinkish marble and a giant crack and she'd tell me what to do with it. Or I would ask what color J. Crew cardigan I need most and she would discuss at length the wardrobe possibilities of navy blue.

So, JT, and I know you're reading, go get yourself a blog! I want to know what the women of Omaha are having for brunch, what the horse show crowd is fretting over, and what color wellies I should buy.