Sunday, February 19, 2012

Sitting on my a$$

My friend Tony and I have known each other since high school.  We carpooled, flirted, and had an abortive relationship in college.  He was the first of only three (oh-so-lucky) people to feel me up, and now I'm afraid to e-mail him.

We drifted apart, as high school friends do.  He followed our relationship with an Ivy League doctorate, while I followed it with a depressive breakdown and a bachelor's degree from a state college.  Last time we talked, he had moved to San Francisco to work in his field-- lucratively, I assume-- around the same time I was settling in as a receptionist in our hometown-- not so lucratively.

A couple weeks ago, the guilt of losing contact intersected with a moment of bravery, so I sent him a message on Facebook: "What's up, dude?"  He wrote back: "Lots!" and I was sore afraid.

It isn't just that I'm freaked out to hear that he's wildly successful and maybe even married or engaged.  (Please let that not be true.  That he would be so serious about a relationship with someone I've never even heard of signifies that it's truly been a very long time since we talked and that I'm simply not a part of his life.  Which I know to basically be true, but I think of him as a close, dear friend, wherever he is in the world, and that we'll always reconnect, unlike the high school or college friends that I'm well shed of.)

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Sanding away at the wait

Heather is nearly finished with an epic bathroom redecoration that has overwhelmed our morning ablutions and, as of yesterday, cast a film of dust from sanding across our bedroom that will cause us both black lung and also result in 8450428 hours of dusting.

A year ago, Heather was elbow-deep in the epic redecoration of our kitchen.  We talked then, as we do now, about how the next project will be the nursery, and I wonder if there's going to be time for her to wallpaper a hallway before there's real concern for whimsical decals.  (Yesterday she declared to me that, "if you think I'm going to have the room painted and shove some furniture in there, you're kidding yourself.")