I think that went well.

"Notice anything different about me?" I asked her. I was already smiling. She knew me so well, she'd undoubtedly see it right away.

"I don't know. Did you dye your hair a little bit lighter or get a tattoo or something?" She answered my question with a question, which is in my top five biggest pet peeves, but I let it slide because she's kinda close.

"You're so close," I lie.

"Just tell me," she spits out, without looking me over again. I shrugged it off because it didn't even bother me, okay? Maybe you but not me.

"Guess please," I quipped as cheerily as I could muster, contorting my face to look as elfish and whimsical as I wasn't feeling. She audibly sighed and stopped her knitting to look me up and down.

"You got a new shirt," she said not quite angrily, but I knew she was teetering on seething complacency and pre-domestic-violence temper tantrum.

"Yea! Do you like it?"

"I do. I love it." This was the oldest shirt I've ever had. It was my dad's and he gave it to me because the paint stain on it looked like the Lady Madonna, whom I was given my haircuts to look like until I was sixteen. The new thing was my pants were on backwards and inside out.