Lauren

Well, I was given strict orders not to write anything sappy or pity-like about my sister. But, seeing that she's in Taiwan, and I'm not, I'm gonna do it anyway. Heck, even if she were here, she's a lot smaller than me, and will readily admit that I can kick her butt any day.

You can't really sum up Lauren in a sentence. You can't really do it in a paragraph either. So, I'm including pictures. We are almost exact opposites, save for a few important issues.

Lauren is an Aquarius. I don't really know what that means, but she does. She can tell you the personality of any zodiac. She can list their likes, dislikes, future ailments, lucky numbers, and the people they are most compatible with. I cannot.

Lauren and I fought everyday of our lives- brutally. She tried to call the police on me, one time when I was babysitting her. I unplugged all of the phones. Mom would have killed me if she came home to see the cops. We never fight anymore.

Lauren has been to a thousand places. She has a million more to travel before she's content. I like my house on the farm. She is eclectic, and dresses as such. I am a minimalist and like The Gap's simplicity.

What do we have in common? Being democrats, (although she wept for a month when Bush won, when I just accepted our doomed fates and moved on) understanding and learning Buddhist ideas, and our love for Target, Starbucks, and Borders. We both love to buy stupid crap- lawn gnomes, purple/red hair dye, tiny ceramic cats. We both know how to thoroughly embarrass ourselves in public. She likes to take a drunken run into bathroom walls at comedy shows, where I enjoy taking a sober run into dressing room mirrors. We commonly call each other by our full names- backwards. It never sounds weird to us, only to others. We invented a dance, along with our older brother, called the skiddiyaki. It takes a lot of talent to do.

She is ridiculous, and I love that. She's my best friend apart from Mark. I value her friendship, love, encouragement, and character more than she will ever know.

I love you, Lauren.