"Dancing on the Ceiling"

This is a sweet little piece, it reminds me a lot of the songs in the first group, but without the bounce. The lyrics are a bit strange, I'm imagining someone with a rich fantasy life, which isn't tough, since one of my dearest friends here has devoted an entire blog to hers (see 'Blogs I Have Known').

I've been thinking about friends in general lately, in terms of what I might have predicted, say, five years ago, for now. Some things remain the same: still a large group of beloved friends in my life. But the big disappointment is that I'm still often incredibly lonely. I keep busy to avoid thinking about it, and life is still good, but this specific part of my life isn't what I would've imagined, and it's not what I want. I'm thinking particularly about my women friends for this, not that I don't have very dear men friends as well, but with the exception of my husband, I don't have a burning need to talk to any one of them daily, or perhaps even weekly, on any sort of strict basis. (This sounds so harsh! But I also can't imagine that my male friends or siblings would want to talk to me every day either. Sorry, Chris.) I do have a need to touch base with a woman friend every day, and sometimes I can hear a little desparation in my voice when I'm finally with someone I can talk freely to. Desparation, ick; worse even than developing a regional accent, another recent fear.

Some of the friends I thought I'd still be talking to regularly I'm just not. Some lives are more complicated, some unfortunate fallings-out have occured, some people aren't great at keeping in touch--and that's very significant since a large number of good friends live too far away for any physical hellos to happen often. But even with people who live within a ten minute driving radius, the keeping-in-touch thing is tricky. It doesn't help that we're hours away from our immediate families as well.

If I could change things to suit me, I would certainly cut out large portions of the state that have less significance to me, just to bring those people dear to me a little closer. As it is, perhaps I need to make more of an effort to call someone daily, to check in, touch base. So that someone has heard me, someone outside my house knows that I'm alive.

I really miss you, you know. You know who you are. I want to hear how you're doing, too, to know that you're alive. Drop me a line.