Away. Away. Away.

And then I found myself here, in the quiet, in the place I've longed to be. And I'm a contradictory mix of bliss and fear and joy and, and... It's beautiful and the silence is interrupted only by birds twittering, rain falling on the roof (it's rained, a lot!), the occasional donkey walking past and the even more occasional car. I can feel my soul slowly unwinding.

I am blogging as myself, elsewhere, keeping this blog as its semi-anonymous self. I like this place, this haven I've created, but I wanted to be able to blog for everyone I've left behind without losing the anonymity of this one. Anybody who's interested, please put your e-mail address in the comments and I'll happily send you the link.

Online shopping and a lot of chocolate biscuits

I have just completed my online shopping for the trip to the Great Wide Open. Normally, grocery shopping doesn't hold huge appeal to me although, if you were to ask me to choose between clothes shopping and food shopping, there is no contest. Take me to the nearest food shop please. Shopping for my great adventure, though, was not a chore. Although, the slowness of my connection/their site did make me say some choice things that I am (possibly) not proud of.

I'm new to online shopping, and after my experience this morning, I should probably best avoid it. While I admit to being a bit of a hazard - in the ooo-look-at-that-let's-get-one-even-though-we-don't-need-one variety - in the grocery shop itself, something about online shopping brings out the compulsive shopper in me even more! There's just so much there. I know, I know, it's all in the shop too, but as I said above, I'm not the hugest shopping fan, to put it mildly. My loathing of hundreds of people ambling down aisles, stopping in inconvenient places etc, saves me from over-spending time and again.

In the real shops.

Online, that slightly hysterical claustrophobia doesn't exist. I'm in my lounge for goodness' sake, I can look out of my window at my furiously flowering, beautifully purple, potato bush, and behind it, the mountain. While I buy another packet of chocolate biscuits.

This shop, not only absent of the fraughtness of Other Shoppers, but also for my great adventure was, I must admit, highly enjoyable.

And one can never, ever, have too many chocolate biscuits really, can one?

Getting stuff done

Sunday, late afternoon, after a weekend of getting things 'sorted out', readying for my trip into the Great Wide Open. Seven weeks it'll be. Seven, full, weeks. This entails much planning. It's funny, though, the routine grocery-buying, salary-paying, getting enough hand cream, tampons, dog food for two months, suddenly takes on a silvery sheen, a shuddery excitement.

The Big Black Dog is coming with me, she's getting old, I can't leave her. I also can't deny  her the joy of living in a place where she will be free to roam, lead-less, her lungs filled with clear, fresh, air, the sky above her stretching further than she has ever seen.

That sky.

But still, regardless of the silvery sheen on it all, there is much still to be done, I just can't do it now. It's Sunday afternoon, I still suffer (twenty years later) from Sunday Aftenoon Blues, a hangover from boarding school. The dread of going back, hearing the doors lock behind you, leaving the weekend looking forlornly at the closed hostel door.

These Sunday Blues, however, are a lighter blue. More eggshell blue than royal blue, because I have six more working days until I am off for 60 days. Sixty. With that, I give a happy sigh, and get back to my sorting out things, the huge blue sky doing somersaults in my head.

Junkie

It was a pretty average Monday afternoon, at 5pm, broad daylight still, on that road, you know the one? That one that snakes off the mountain and flows into the city, past that big shopping centre on the left, it curtsies to The Grand Old Lady before bending to the right. You know that bend? The one with the old cinema that shows art movies, the one named after the princess with the rude name. The cinema next to the gracious old government building, or is it naval?

It’s the one that watches over that intersection, the one with the robots (traffic lights to you foreigners), the robots that lead up the little side street that connects to the other big road that goes all the way up to the mountain and falls down the other side, into the bay. That little side street is the same one with that music shop, you know, that one. The one with the guy who found Rodriguez.

I’m moving too far from where I saw him, though, let’s back up a bit, back to the gracious (naval?) building, the one next to the rude princess’ cinema. It has stairs leading up to it, open onto the street, walled to about chest height at the street level, the walls filled in with grass, I think. It doesn’t matter. It was the stairs that mattered. Well, not the stairs really, more the boy on the stairs, his back pack messily placed next to him, various things scattered about him.

He looked like an average twenty-something year old, almost a hipster, but not quite. I first just saw the tip of his hatted head above the walls of the stairs as we came around the bend after curtsying (sp?) at The Grand Old Lady. The robots were red, so we stopped. I had a chance to look at him properly, to take in his rucksack, to get a glimpse at his face, a good-looking face, I think, I couldn’t see properly because it was bent slightly, a tight elastic band or string clenched between his teeth that led to the top of his arm where it snaked around just below his pushed-up sleeve.

He was concentrating very hard on inserting the needle of the syringe into his vein.

I made G go around the block, and when we passed again, fleetingly this time, as the robots were green, the syringe was gone, but the tourniquet was still there. I wondered if we should stop and release it for him.

A strange coincidence after I’d read American Junkie over the weekend. I’d never before seen a junkie shoot up on a public street in broad daylight and it made me sad. We continued on our way, though, down that side street, past that music shop, you know the one, and on to dinner with old friends, to celebrate their new year. The sadness hovered near the door though, as I hoped he’d find somewhere safe and dry to sleep, even if it was just there, in the doorway of the arthouse cinema with the rude princess’ name. Rain was forecast.

Looking ahead

I was doing well there, for a bit. Getting a post out every day, every second day, and then I faltered. I feel like I have nothing to say, I kept opening new blog posts, even giving them a title and then, breath bated, I sat. Then I berated myself and said: "Shiny, if you have nothing to say, then you'll just have to bloody write about having nothing to say." Feeling suitably shamed by my own beration (is there such a word?), here I am.

I'm counting days until I leave for the great Karoo expanse. I shall be there for almost two months, blessed with large tracts of time during which I have no commitments. None. I plan to do a large amount of sitting on the stoep, maybe drinking beer, maybe reading, maybe watching the donkeys amble by (yes! there are donkeys), maybe chatting, maybe being still and listening, but definitely breathing. Large lungsful of clear Karoo air that make my heart swell.

And then, hopefully, I'll be showered with inspiration to write and I won't feel like I'm dragging myself over here by the scruff of my neck.

So very, very, excited

I am three days short of a month of the date that will take me to the heart-swelling, inspiration-inspiring place that I long to be. For seven weekd. Seven! That would be thirty three days until I go, give or take. I can hardly contain my joy. Short, simple, truth.

Little girl lost

She is beautiful. She has his cheekbones and is immaculately made up, her hair tightly braided. He wouldn't have liked that, apparently. Rastafarians like their women 'au natural' - no make-up, no hairstyling, just looking as they were made by Jah. I like that, the bit about being natural, not so much the idea that it was forced by the men on 'their' women. I digress, though. There she was, manicured, and talking about him, her father, Bob Marley, in the documentary of his life - Marley - which I watched yesterday.

Her beauty, her perfect manicuring, however, did little to disguise her sadness, which poured out of the screen, a product of parental neglect, still at forty-something utterly tangible. It was as if she just wanted his attention, but never got it.

It's not that he was a bad man, his ideals were good, loving, human and his music, well, we all know his music. He just had no idea how to be a father. It's not surprising in the greater scheme of things, his father was completely absent by the sound of it, a white man having his way with as many beautiful Jamaican women as he wished. And Bob Marley had eleven kids from seven mothers. I never knew that.

It's a fascinating story, about a fascinating man who did incredible things, but it was her, his daughter, that has stuck with me. He was riddled with cancer when he was flown back to Florida from Germany to die. He was only 36-years old as his family gathered at his bedside to bid him farewell.

"I thought then, maybe this time, that I'd get to have my moment with him, just us," she says with barely contained sadness that borders on bitterness. It broke my heart.

Discussions of death

A friend of mine's father died last night. A wonderful, generous, larger-than-life man. He had a massive heart attack and died. Sudden, unexpected, tragic. It got me to thinking about death and dying, again. I know it's inevitable and we don't get a choice in how it happens, but I hope mine's quick. In my sleep even better.

I say we don't have a choice but that's not entirely true - we do, really. I'm a complete believer in the fact that we were given intelligence to allow us to make that choice at any point that we have become tired of life. In my head I would rather make that choice than suffer for a long time with some horrible disease and then go. The real problem lies in the pre-empting of that.

How do you know when it's going to happen? You just don't. I guess that's the eye-opener here. You never know, so one should take note of all those 'Live for today' cutesy postcards that people insist on plastering their Stalkbook walls with. Is it obvious I'm not a fan? But it's the postcards I'm not a fan of, not the sentiment. I've had my brush(es) with death, I know how quickly the world can turn upside-down.

I'm trying to decide if I'm scared of death, it's one of those questions people ask. I don't think I'm scared of death itself but I know I'm petrified of dying, the process. Ug, what a depressing topic for a beautiful Saturday morning in early spring set to a soundtrack of Florence and The Machine.

Let me rather 'seize the day', 'live in the moment', 'dance like nobody's watching' etc, and stop rambling on.

Spring has sprung

And suddenly it's Spring, proper. I love this day of the year. The one when you wake up and it's suddenly lighter, warmer, the birds are singing slightly louder and the air smells of Summer. It makes my tummy do somersaults and my chest swell with joy.

It's today, that day. The day that reminds me that I'm not always a grump, I can actually be quite pleasant, smile, laugh, hell, even be a little bit funny on occasion. Every year during the dark, cold months of Winter I forget this, without fail. It's ridiculous. I've just looked back to last year, this time, and found the exact same rant.

Time for another letter, this time to myself, to be sent around Mid-Autumn next year. Remind me, won't you, please?

Dear Shiny,

You are about to go into the Winter months. I know you are less-than-happy about this but, I'm afraid, there is nothing you can do to stop it other than marrying rich and moving to the Northern Hemisphere for six months and you know how your previous efforts in that arena turned out.

I am writing to warn you that you'll be losing your shine and, perhaps, should change your name from Shiny to Grumpy. Just for the next few months, mind. Remember that after the hibernation period during which you frown a lot and stop making an effort (this year, please, can you at least keep on dying your hair, you're getting older you know!) the sun will come out again, and bring with it your personality. There'll be that day, you know the one you love?

In the meantime, listen carefully... Make a fire as often as possible in the hearth and practice your red wine drinking. It'll be okay, really.

Love always,
Shiny xxx

Hooray for Spring!

Searching for Sugar Man

"He poured petrol over himself and set himself alight on stage."

That was one of the rumours of what happened to Rodriguez, explaining away why we never heard anything about him, despite his haunting music, his beautiful, sometimes political, always meaningful, lyrics. He was the soundtrack to thousands of South African teenage years, from the 70's right through until the 90's, when I was a teenager, and perhaps still. I don't have teenagers, so I can't be sure. We all thought he was recognised worldwide, being from America and all. Apparently not.

One lover of his music made it his mission to find the real story and the movie documents it. He tries to find out who was behind Rodriguez, where he lived, who he was and, in doing so finds many dead ends, a record label who say they 'sold six of his first album in the States.' It's estimated that half a million have been sold in South Africa, thus far. Nobody in the States seemed to know about it, nobody knew where the money went.

And then, they found his daughter. And him. Alive and still working as a construction worker, living in an old decrepit house in Detroit - a city which just looks desolate and slightly hopeless - and he shines. It's as if he's from another world. An absolutely beautiful man, with a voice that makes your blood feel like honey, he's old now but, even in the film, he still shines.

It's hard to put into words exactly what it is about him, he's just so gentle and unassuming and I won't spoil the movie by talking about the end of it because it needs to be watched to be believed. I cried and cried, big, hot, heavy tears, not because it's tragic, it's just so... emotional. See? Struggling to string a proper sentence together about it, to write something that does it justice.

Axis-tilting

Every now and again, out of the blue, one meets someone that will alter the axis of one's earth. It is, in my experience, always completely unexpected and absolutely bloody fabulous. Sometimes it's not absolutely bloody fabulous initially, but it always becomes so. I'm not necessarily talking about only lovers or relationships, which always get the kudos for these axis-tiltings.

No, I am talking about the whole range - from a conversation with a stranger in a post office queue that alters your thinking, to the three-day affair with somebody society considers Most Unsuitable, all the way through to the lovers. All of them, the people that shape the way you think, the way you live, the way you love.

As Spring springs here on the tip of Africa and the birds begin a nest-building flurry amidst the sensual fragrance of jasmine twisting through the blossoms, I am reminded of one such creature. Once upon a time, a long time ago now, I fell whirwindingly in love with a Most Unsuitable Boy. I knew right at the beginning that it wouldn't last, that it couldn't last, that my heart would break, but for that short, electric period of time, I didn't care.

And did my heart break? Hell, yes. His too. But we knew it was going to happen, the inevitability of it made the electricity spark and crackle so much more brightly, a will-o-the-whisp amongst a drugdery-filled marsh, a firework display above a void.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. A reminder of a life to be lived, a heart that doesn't live within the confines of an ordinary life, blood pumping strongly through ones veins, air filling ones lungs, under a bright, star-filled sky.

Weather and a secret addiction

Anybody who has read more than two posts on this blog will know that I have a great love of The Weatherman and am fascinated by weather reports and have not-so-secret crushes on all the TV weather people. I could go into the pros and cons of each, but I shan't bore you. I'll slip in there that Paul Monare is my favourite.

The reason I'm bringing up the weather is because it directly influences my desire to put pen to paper. Give me a grey, weathery day and I want to hole up and write. Today is one of those, pleasantly coinciding with Friday, allowing me to cocoon inside, while outside The Weatherman is wreaking havoc. The wind is howling and making The House in The Middle of the Street's bones creak, the rain is beating out a lullaby on the tin roof and The Big-Boned Cat is greedily pushing herself between me and the computer, purring loudly and demanding attention and warming hands.

It's just lovely. Then I say it makes me want to write, and it does, but I have a terrible confession to make: I have become most ridiculously addicted to playing Scrabble on Facebook. I. Can. Not. Stop. I've always played it, having various games on the go all the time, making a move every couple of days, but I've now discovered something new and sinister...

Two Minute Scrabble. Each player has two minutes for each move which, in essence, means approximately half-hour Scrabble games. Addictive? Hell yes. I've taken to starting three games at once and playing SuperSpeed Scrabble. Great fun, but the minutes slip into hours, which slip into days, as the Things That Need To Be Done gather dust in the corner. You see? Like I said - sinister. Like it was sent directly by the devil.

The funniest thing, though, is the number of men playing Scrabble on Facebook who are using it as a means to hook up. The number of "U're sexy" and "Nice tits" (I kid you not) that I've had is astounding. Then again, even more astounding is the fact that they know I have nice tits from the 1cm x 1cm picture of only my face that shows up next to the board. Funny, in a vaguely disturbing way. I'd have thought there were better places on the internet to go looking for such things but who am I, a self-confessed Scrabble junkie, to judge? And there was the rather seedy tale of Scrabble Boy.

Excuse me, I must away. I have things to attend to. Ahem.

Conversations

We lowered the age category of the restaurant by about twenty years and, let's not kid, we're not youngsters anymore. As always, I was fascinated by the conversations around us, especially by the non-stop gossip of the table of four seventy-plus ladies at the table right next to us. Who wouldn't be when one hears this:

Very grey-haired Old Lady One: They've been together for fifty years.
Very grey-haired Old Lady Two: Is it really that long already? How time flies.
Very grey-haired Old Lady Two: Yes. You should know, she's your sister. There must be something more to it. I think they must have great sex (tittering giggles.)
Very grey-haired Old Lay Two: My sister? (Incredulous expression) Carol?

I had to take a big gulp of my most delicious chanpagne cocktail and then smile at the elderly man next to me to stop myself from guffawing loudly.

Conversations, I love them.

Enormous sky beckons

Whinge, whine, moan, groan. Good grief. Enough already Shiny. Enough. I'm stopping now.

In much happier news... My plans for escaping into the Karoo, to the place that makes my heart swell, are coming along. There was a slight hiccup a couple of weeks ago that, momentarily, looked like it might upset the whole apple cart and not allow it to happen but, in the manner of a pitbull, I refused to let go, and it now looks like I'll be going for six weeks.

Six weeks.

Fresh air, open sky, nothing to do but contemplate the fresh air, the open sky. Bliss. I'm also hoping to give the trashy novel I wrote last year during NaNoWriMo a good working through to see if I can make it readable and, perhaps, publishable. I also have wisps of another story flitting about in my head and am contemplating doing NaNoWriMo again this year to try and capture those wisps.

It seems silly not to, when I'll be out there, in the fresh air, under the enormous sky, in the place where inspiration flaps around me...

Oh, I am SO excited. I've been waiting months to write this post, the one where the dream, finally, is forming into reality.

Fragility

I guess it happens all the time, to everyone. Sometimes we see it happen, other times it happens without us even knowing. Brushes with death. When we notice it, it's a wake up call, a reminder of the fragility of it all. When we don't notice... well... I don't know, maybe we realise somewhere, way deep down in our psyches and we draw a breath in, surprising ourselves, but not really knowing why.

It started last Monday, fairly innocuously, but I was pre-menstrual at the time and terribly emotionally fragile, so I was struck down with a terrible sadness that made me want to sob. It was a floating upside-down fish in a fish tank at a fish restaurant, being removed most carefully into a plastic bag. He was being taken home to the restaurant family owner's son's (and our waiter) tank, hopefully to be revived from whatever goldfishy ailment had turned his world, literally, upside-down. It all seemed too much. Remember... I was awfully PMSsey.

The next morning, I narrowly missed 'walking into' a crime scene. See post before this, or before that one. It made me want to devise some kind of filming set-up that filmed a minute ahead of me, and a minute after. Wouldn't that be fascinating? Or maybe just give one more to worry about.

And then, last night, the third (and hopefully last... come on Old Wive's, prove you're right with that 'Bad luck comes in threes' thing. Please.) This, truly, was a proper eye-opener, not a hormone-induced sob-fest.

They'd unwisely brought some of the fire they'd made outside into their completely closed room. Her mother had done it when they lived in the Transkei, in a hut with windows which had no glass and a door that opened onto the beautiful Kei hills. She didn't think that it'd suck the oxygen from their lungs and fill the room with god-knows-what noxious gases. It did.

I heard her screaming to her sister, her son as they, all three of them - two grown women and one 7-year old came into the house and literally fell into my room looking as if they'd all been drinking. He was crying quietly and squirming in his mother's arms. Her sister fell onto my bed, sliding down onto the floor where I could hear her breathing heavily as I simultaneously tried to get the story out of her, calm them all down and call an ambulance, my father, anyone.

It seemed like hours before they all descended on the house, as I thanked my lucky stars for family, friends, paramedics. An hour later and all had been examined and given the all-okay, her sister up off the floor, standing up, breathing normally, her oxygen levels back to normal.

And me - a swirling, bubbling, confused mixture of sheer anxiety, fear, claustrophobia, sadness and anger. I just feel like I need a good, hard, and possibly loud, cry. The fragility of us all, the momentariness, the fact that death really is always just there, waiting, it all just seems too much.

We're all alive though. For now.

Coffee shop observations

Meeting there seemed wise, she knew that nobody would suspect anything if they saw her meeting him in that kind of place. Affairs are not conducted in coffee shops. If she met him there, people would think she was having a business meeting, nobody would suspect a thing, as long as he didn't stare at her longingly, like he had the other night, when they'd met at an edge-of-town motel, all affair-like, while she told her husband she was going to a PTA meeting. Her husband had a 'late meeting' - his most unoriginal euphamism for 'a date with my secretary, who I've been shagging for three years.'

She couldn't do another motel meeting, it had made her feel seedy and dishonest, rather like she was having an affair or something. She worried, too, that she'd bump into her husband and said secretary. That would just be awkward. So, yes, a coffee shop was a better option. They wouldn't be able to touch, but at least she could see him, and talk to him, and try and quell the fierce missing that they both felt.

What she hadn't taken into consideration was that love and passion can't be hidden by the aroma of coffee and baking muffins. Holding hands or not, the lady sitting waiting for her friend in the corner having a glass of wine can see it shining off her. It's alright, though, she has made up a story in her head and will keep mum. You deserve some happiness.

Admin, boring bloody admin

I have things to do. Lots of them. Tax submission admin, looking for writing work so I can keep Freelance Fridays going, some editing for someone who's kindly done a whole lot for me, fighting with the medical aid... boring, boring, yawn. All the admin I want to be doing is making proper plans for my Karoo trip, but that is fraught with hanging on other people's decisions. I'm not even sure that sentence makes sense. I just wanted to throw 'fraught' in the mix.

With all this admin glaring at me disconsolately in the corner, I find myself sticking to my guns and blogging regularly. Now you know why.

When bad timing goes good

"Will it be ready soon?" I asked, my foot wanting desperately to tap out an impatient tune against the slightly scuffed desk behind which she sat, watching her printer single-mindedly as if, in doing so, it’d hurry up and print the authorisation.

I’d been there waiting since before eight. I watched them all arrive, unlock, turn on the lights, moving around inside the shop windows like a live TV show. I was there to see how age had affected my eyes in the past two years, and to get new glasses to replace the current pair that look… well… well-used.

Optometrist appointments make me nervous. I’m never sure if I’m getting the answers right for which option is clearer and I always think I’m going to give myself the wrong prescription because I don’t do it right. “Which is clearer, the green or the red?” in my head sounds like “Get this wrong and you’ll be the recipient of lifelong blurry vision and, possibly, headaches too.” It makes my blood pressure rise and my palms sweat. Okay, maybe I’m getting a little over-dramatic.

I’m pleased to say that my left eye is pulling the middle finger at age and hasn’t got worse. The right eye is slightly worse. The puff of air in the pupils, the oh-so-close-up-I-can-see-your-irises-optometrist-lady measurements, all done and dusted. Then the final hurdle – frame choosing. Again – palpitations, sweaty palms etc.

Well, I thought that was the final hurdle. Turned out the admin was the actual final hurdle. Filling in forms, sending off medical aid authorisation, waiting, waiting, waiting. I had another appointment, I needed to get going. Being of a normally patient disposition I did wait, marvelling at the industrial roof and listening to the conversation between the two secretaries who were discussing the pros and cons of flesh-coloured stockings. Important stuff. After fifteen minutes of being patient, though, fifteen minutes that would make me twenty minutes late for my next appointment (I hadn’t planned all that well to start with), I told them they’d have to fax it to me, I had to go.

I was, indeed, closer to half-an-hour late for my next appointment, at a shop located in a less-than-salubrious area of the city. Luckily. I arrived with the police, who had been called following a robbery that had occurred at the shop, some half hour before.

Somewhere, someone is looking out for me.

The bridge ladies, a story

Her lipstick was just a little too red, her eyeshadow a little too dark, her skirt a little too short. At least, according to their very exact, and much gossiped about standards. The room became murky amidst a cloud of judgement from the other women in the room, their lipstick slightly duller, eyeshadow less dark, skirts slightly longer. She swept through the room, her high heels catching ever-so-slightly on the thick carpet, her hips swinging provocatively, keeping her gaze on the door leading out to the patio.

They'd been playing bridge all morning. None of them really knew how to play properly, it was just an excuse to get together and twitter. Not in the new-fandangled Twitter internet way, no. This was twittering of the slightly nastier version. That one where affairs, divorces, in fact anything a little bad newsy, was regarded as highly interesting and very talkworthy. Especially if it involved people outside their bridge circle. They'd been known to make ladies cry. Ladies who didn't conform to their exacting standards, their dour, boring, existences.

They stopped twittering as she walked through. As she felt their eyes on her, sixteen of them, taking in her provocation, her lipstick, her short skirt. Turning to them as she opened the door onto the patio, the young man outside standing, ready to greet her, she smiled at them, her too red lips stretching across her face, her eyes lighting up beneath the too dark eye shadow, and they all looked down, fiddling with their cards.

She greated the man outside, hugging him and leaving a blood red imprint of her lips on his stubbled cheek where she kissed him. Sitting down, she ordered a Singapore Sling, with two cherries.

Relationship versus friendship

After hearing a few remarks on my post yesterday and a quick re-read, I got to thinking. Most of my gazillions of two readers quite understandably took it as a little prose in celebration of an anniversary, which it is. The thing is, though, that it's a 'friend' anniversary, as opposed to a 'significant other' anniversary. This is what got me thinking.

In this day and age, where so many of us are not doing the nuclear family thing, it seems like a good idea to celebrate the friends that, essentially, are our families. Why the focus only on celebrating the anniversaries of 'significant others'?

While I realise it's just socially inbred in us to to take note and remember the date that we met/first kissed/first slept with our significant others (I love that everybody starts counting from different points. I, myself, have often blurred the edges of these so-called significant points in relationships, but that's another story, for another day...), why don't we do it with our friends?

The particular friend I was talking of and I met on another friend's birthday so, admittedly, it's an easy enough one to remember but I'm thinking, maybe, we should just celebrate them everyday - our friends. I know I'm blessed with a group of fabulous ones, the one mentioned yesterday, and others.

Essentially, the  little piece I wrote yesterday differs between our friends and our significant others - be they boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands or wives - only in the last sentence of the second paragragh, really. Someone who you feel like you've known forever, someone you will, now, know forever. Sadly, this often doesn't apply to the significant others. Hearts break, emotions get bruised, people part, and often the 'knowing forever' bit falls by the wayside. (Again, my history with this blurs... yet another story, for yet another day.)

I suppose that sometimes happens with friends, too. Writing this has reminded me what a lucky girl I am. Here's to fabulous friends. And more shared homemade chocolate ice cream. Hell, let's throw in a glass of champagne too. Or a bottle.