Scribble scrabble

Despite the melancholy tenor of my last post, it's great to be back in Chicago, and back in That's Weird, Grandma! starting tomorrow.


If you come, I'll be your "mouse-like little Ghost Friend."

Also, distance can be fun . . .

Like when your friends come back in town and you get to celebrate them not expiring in a canyon.

Or when your super-talented classmate reads your entire messy manuscript and gives you some much-needed reassurance that you're not a complete fool, and that you can, and should, work it out.

Or when you play a real-time game of Scrabulous on Facebook with a friend in another state because you don't really feel like going out. I spent a good two or three hours chatting and scrabbling last night with a long-time-no-seen friend from college. I laughed to the point of spitting on myself. The sweet (and perhaps shameful) part is, we never had a conversation that lasted that long in person. I was surrounded by so many good people in school (and so unsettled in myself) that I didn't get to know half of them as well as I wish I had. But it's never too late.

Moving to and from LA, doing a low-residency grad program, and shuffling up my relationships, have all led to the most wired year of my life . . . a year in which, as I've mentioned before, I've made more new friends in a short time than I thought to be possible post-college -- many of whom I can only keep up with online. Internet communication has its limits, but they're neither as many nor as daunting as I used to think.

Thank you, friends!

Thank you for making me laugh.
Thank you for making me brave.
Thank you for not dying.

Currently reading: The Minister's Daughter by Julie Hearn