She smells like sunshine.

Beulah came and visited last weekend. She is a teacher, so "spring break" actually means something to her. It was the first instance in as long as I can remember that we got to spend that much time together, just the two of us. We did all sorts of things. Shopped*. Sang. Mixed cocktails**. Made paintings and collages. Ate a swanky dinner at The Dresden***. Cruised the rain-spattered streets of Los Angeles rocking the iPod in the wee hours, from Los Feliz to Santa Monica to Downtown and back home again****. Went on a picnic***** and took a bazillion pictures. It was on our picnic that Beulah and I made special note of our special brand of sisterhood. It's ours alone, and no one can touch it.

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*It was raining at The Grove, and I forgot to bring an umbrella, so I bought us one. One of those push-button ones. And I nearly took Beulah's eye out a few times. But she was a good sport. They did not have my Fekkai texturizing balm at Nordstrom, so we were good little girls and did not buy a single pair of shoes. We shared a sandwich at the Farmer's Market and noticed a cute boy working at the toffee shop. We may have looked over in his direction a few too many times. Conspicuous. No game. But in the end, we had to face the fact that, as cute as he was, he works in a toffee shop. He was quickly forgotten.
**I made Beulah an apple martini. In a shaker and for real and everything. It was Jameson for me. A few of them. In a fancy crystal glass. Because I am pretty fancy when you come right down to it.
***Beulah doesn't like just standing in a crowded bar. Who does? I will do it, but I agree that a nice unjostled place to sit beats all. And I'd never eaten at the Dresden, so we decided to have dinner. A pair of fine steaks it was. And a good-looking Hispanic waiter whose name we never got. I defaulted to Jose. Beulah defaulted to Elian. And Tom showed up somewhere mid-steak, in time to help us with dessert and to say hello to a leaving Craig Anton. Beulah and I saw Jeff Small walking somewhere with what appeared to be take-away something or other. I didn't call out to him, but I mentioned it to him last night at the Bounty, and Brendon (his brother) made merciless fun of him. And I laughed and was grateful to have a sister of my own who would easily have made the same sort of fun of me, given half the chance.
****I can't tell you how much we laughed. But I can tell you about the time we were stopped at a traffic light and a bookish fellow to our right was making friendly eyes at us as Beulah jammed to Bitch Betta Have My Money. She encouraged me to wave at him. You know. Make his day. She then said he looked like an Ira. She was right. When we hit Downtown, I took us through that awesome 2nd Street tunnel and all over the place. Through Chinatown and Little Tokyo. We reminisced about visiting the New Otani Hotel on a Saturday many years ago, after driving up from San Diego to see a Francis Bacon/Helen Frankenthaler exhibit at LACMA. We had no idea back then. No idea whatever.
*****We packed lovely sandwiches and quesadillas and pickles and Pocky and soda pop and beer and potato chips and grape tomatoes, and we ate in the sunshine like kings. We were taking pictures of ourselves lying down on a straw mat when I felt a nuzzling in the back of my hair. It was a cute little four month-old corgi puppy named Buttercup. We made instant best friends and took her picture. And I'm sure we would have stolen her at gunpoint if (a) we had had a gun in our picnic duffel bag and (b) her mommy hadn't been so awfully nice, too. It was the best picnic in the history of picnics. And it could only have been made better if we had gone on a three-legged race with just the two of us. We ate so well there was certainly no room for the sundae and malted we had at Mel's later that night. But who's counting.