I MISS YOU

So I have this friend. Because we're all grown-ups and we have real-life jobs, I'm not going to mention names, but hopefully, you know who you are.

This person is one of my best friends. She will be a bridesmaid at my wedding. She will french-braid my daughter's hair. She will always be an important part of my life. But as of the last few months, we haven't been in as close of contact. I've been sucked into the vacuum of 100/hour teaching weeks, and she's been sucked into the vacuum of 100/hour Ph.D./work weeks. These numbers are approximate. They are probably higher in real life.

Regardless, I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly announce how much I miss said friend, and give extremely detailed reasons why. That way, when we both surface from the ocean of work we're swimming in, there will be a funny memory of that one time Leah wrote an inappropriately detailed hopefully funny blog about it.

I present: a detailed numbered list of the things I miss about you.

1. I miss your laugh. You know how there are those turns of phrase you read in books, and you know them/what they mean, but are hard-pressed to find an actual example in real-life? In case you're still unclear, I'll give you some examples. Let's say I read a book about a character with a "wicked grin." I love the book, I completely understand what Eric Northman looks like with a "wicked grin," but the first time I see a friend of mine with a grin like that I think, "Wow, thati's the kind of wicked grin I read about in books!" There are many of them. For instance, "A smile slowly spread across her face." Well, you are one of the few people I know that remains true to to the phrase, "Dissolves into laughter." I miss that dissolution. I miss our hysterical moments that ended up with us rolling on the floor holding our stomachs. I miss doing this across the ocean via Skype video chat. 
2. I miss talking to you about anything. Now, because I am who I am, and I grew up with the mother I grew up with, I'm comfortable telling a great many people about a great many personal things that most people would be mortified to share, but the level of our epic sharing is beyond even the high standards of "TMI" that I set for myself. 
3. I miss complaining to you. I know this is a selfish one, but somehow you always understand, even though you're not me, and you aren't underpaid and worked into the ground teaching inner-city middle schoolers. You have this amazing ability to channel yourself into any situation I find myself in, and, unlike me, know how to deal with it. You always have the right thing to say. You always know when to be sympathetic, when to be blunt, and when to jump on the "he/she/they said that to you? WTF I hate them" bandwagon. I suppose the correct sentence to start this with would be, "I miss your empathy" but "I miss complaining" sounds funnier, so I'll leave it.
4. I miss our marathon conversations. You're the only person I can talk to where, over the course of a conversation, we'll both make complicated, multi-course meals, watch 2 episodes of a show, put on makeup, clean, and/or do 112 other things. 
5. This one connects to number 4. I miss our journey conversations. I miss hearing a running commentary on the people you're walking by as we're talking. I do very much care about the shady guy that stares at you, the displays in the store windows, the sun/wind/rain/honking horns, the girl in the slutty skirt, and the fact that if you're commenting to ME (read: queen of slutty skirts) about another girl's skirt being slutty, she's probably not even wearing one. a
6. This connects to numbers 4 and 5. I miss you having a phone! Did you get a phone yet? Get a damn phone. I even have a smart phone now. We can do things that people with smartphones do, like play 5 different apps-worth of ghetto knockoff Scrabble, and use another messaging app for only smart phones. I'm dying to do that! Can we do that? There's so many of them. Kakao tak. Tikitalk. Whatsappmessenger. Please? 
7. I don't think we actually did this ever, but can we start sending each other random photos throughout the course of our days? I'm not exactly sure what this would look like. Sometimes it could be funny captions, sometimes it could be one of those "Guess what this is?" and it's something super-zoomed in. Let's start that. 
8. This relates to number 7. Notice how I completely digressed from the original purpose of this list, which was to list things that I missed about you? Number 7 is something we've never even done. Hence, it's totally random and unrelated. I MISS OUR DIGRESSIONS. I miss our randomness. I miss not knowing how we started talking about porcupines when we started off talking about True Blood. Though that's not really such a far reach, because I can think of 5 ways immediately that porcupines could be related to True Blood. Two of these ways are painful. 
9. I miss your music recommendations. You are the Perez of the non-celebrity world in your ability to find gems of artists. 
10. I miss your boobs, in a totally heterosexual, super-appreciative way. 

Love you.
--LW