It is again late and I am feeling chatty.  But since everyone in my house (“everyone” having dwindled down to just 3 people) except me is sleeping, I will have to tell my secrets to you.

Not secrets, really.  Just the thoughts rumbling along the back roads of my tired mind.  Thoughts like, I wonder why my chicken noodle soup looks like vomit.  I only cooked it for 3 hours, then stuck it in the freezer, thawed it 4 days later, and cooked it (boiled it, actually) for a couple of hours while I watched a movie, forgetting about it entirely as I sat staring zombie-eyed at the Odessa Files.  Good movie, by the way. But not good for my soup, simmering there unattended for a bit too long.  I discovered, however, that you cannot ruin chicken noodle soup.  It may have looked disintegrated, but it tasted fabulous.  Especially when you’re sick and not feeling like eating anything too sophisticated.  Just needed a couple shakes each of salt and pepper, and it was delish.  I actually ate two whole bowls of it.  I just tried not to look at it.

Another thought:  When sick in bed, the best sound in the world is the laughter of 4 teen-age girls giggling over peanut butter sandwiches.  Hearing one of my daughters friends ask, “Do you have any milk?”; my daughter answering in the affirmative, then a loud, “Expiration date February 17?!  Uh, never mind!”  Finding out later that they DID find the unexpired milk without any help from yours truly, and loving the fact that my daughter has such good friends.

World-shaking thoughts like these vie for expression, and if not deliberately set free will find some other way to trickle out at unexpected moments.  I think I need to spend more time with my women friends, just talking and getting those random, mundane, profound, brain-fart thoughts out of the way so I have room for the really important stuff, like why do we have 8 freezers FULL of cookies but no candy in this house?! 

Here it is, 12:24 in the morning and I am still up messing around with all of my various social media options.  I really consider myself more of a communicator than a computer person, but I suppose that since computers are here to stay that I really need to become more proficient in utilizing this amazing resource.

Back when I was in school, nobody had computers; we didn’t even have a typewriter. But we did have fairly decent handwriting. At least some of us did!  And even though I lived in such a stone-aged lack of technology, I never felt the least bit disadvantaged.  Imagine that.

So anyway, I don’t have any earth-shattering stuff to share, just some musings on the subject of friendship.  It really is true that to have a friend, you need to be a friend.  But the face of friendship seems to have morphed into something I am not quite sure I am prepared for.  I am not sure, for example, about Facebook “friends”. Most sane individuals would never call even their CLOSEST of friends to inform them of the status of, say, their bowel movements, but Facebook friends tell all using a creative array of descriptors: “I just plopped a big one and I am naming it the Unsinkable Molly Brown.”  Now, I ask you, who really needs to know this kind of detail about your daily life?  *Oh, yeah, I forgot; my Facebook friends!*  And the FUNNY thing is that somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand people, some of whom you barely know or have never even MET, will post a congratulatory note expressing amazement at your astonishing(?) feat!  I admit to congratulating my TWO-year old on his or her prowess in depositing bodily waste in the potty but I’m not really that impressed when GROWN-UPS manage it!

I will admit that there is a real element of friendship that exists in the social media, and I am not knocking it’s ability to keep us out of the seat of the uninformed on some very important matters.  Like when my friend’s child was missing for a brief but terrifying couple of hours and I didn’t want to call and tie up her phone it was nice to post a quick, “Hey, we are praying like crazy!” to her Facebook page. When, thankfully, the child was found and brought home, it was a wonderful way to get the word out that all was well.

And I know that my daughter has met some amazing people through Twitter.  It suits her; she owns a coffee shop (Downtown Grounds in Medford) and uses her snatches of time to keep in touch with the outside world.  My husband and I are starting to get into Twitter as a way to advertise our business, make connections in the community, and maybe enhance our own social life in the process.  So I am definitely not against social media!

But there is still in me a strong desire to sit face to face with a close friend or loved one, to hear the inflections in her voice, to see the joy or the pain or the disappointment reflected in his eyes, and to KNOW and experience that profound connection that happens when two souls discover that beautiful, ingenious, healing thing called Friendship.

So, wanna get a coffee with me sometime soon?  I know just the place to go…