Ever have one of those weird moments when you’re thinking of someone, the phone rings, and it’s the very person you were just thinking of? I really hate talking on the phone, but this almost always happens with me and one of my best friends (her name is Lynn and she lives in…drum roll please…Memphis) – but not on the phone. Most people email these days, and we do too, but we’ve also sort of made a pact to write letters to each other because they’re more memorable and real. Yes, I’m talking about hand-written letters on pretty stationary. We buy each other stationary for birthdays and Christmas; we buy ourselves stationary just to have because it’s pretty, and just in case one of us needs to jot off a letter to the other one. These days we’re both so busy. Me with family, work, and school – okay and gaming too; her being a newly divorced single mom and working (she just got a cool promotion). So, once in a while we lose track of how long it’s been since we’ve talked. And when that happens, it never fails that one of us will receive a letter from the other just as we’re sitting down to write our own letter to the other one.

Lately, I’m not home to check mail, so Mary (one of my other best friends (I have a few of these) – the one jealous of Freddie) tosses my mail on my desk. Yesterday I brushed off the catalog begging me to buy something I don’t need and went to bed. This morning, I stopped at Target for Starbucks and bought some stationary in case I got a moment or two to scribble a quick I-miss-you-and-get-in-touch-soon note to her. I didn’t get that moment or two, but I got home, was looking for something on my desk – oh yes! Mail! – and wouldn’t you know it? There’s a letter from Lynn. Knowing I probably wouldn’t have time to write back to her before those December dates, especially with all the other writing (and reading) I’m doing, I swallowed my – what would you call it? – loathing ridicule of the impersonal quality of the telephone and called her.

Yes, I have more than one best friend – I’m not allowed only one (and I was told this by another “best friend” years ago). Most of them are friends I went to high school with and we are all still in touch in one way or another. Lynn is one of them. She is originally from Memphis; her dad was stationed in SD and we met sophomore year on her first day of school…in biology. In our senior year of high school we went to Reno with my folks for the weekend and had a huge fight. My mother found us just as she was pushing me away and I was ready to hit her. A few years back, I met up with her in Reno again (she was there for a scrapbooking convention), and we made amends with the stinky city (we’d made amends with each other two weeks after the fight). Ahhh…the drama of high school. Lynn is like a sister and it’ll be great to be able to hang out with her almost all the time again.

And it’s not that I won’t talk on the phone, but I have to be really familiar with someone – my husband, my mom, my sister (the one I like), Lynn, Mary – hmmm…that’s about it. But ask me to call that guy back about the job or to order pizza or whatever else, and it’s like pulling eye teeth– fergit it! (I don’t understand that – is it really harder to pull eye teeth than other teeth? Things that make you go hmmmm… [that was a song in the nineties])

Anyone know when the next blog assessment is due? Maybe I’ll write that along with my annual holiday letter this weekend – yes, I’m one of those people who send out an annual letter with Christmas cards to let people know what’s been happening because getting me to talk on the telephone is like keeping my husband’s cat off of my side of the bed.

I’m mulling over getting a Mohawk; whaddya think?