Pink Socks and Candy

I am unmoored since my BFF left for Africa yesterday. She was in London and Dublin for two weeks at Christmas and I did not get through that well at all. On about the tenth day, I was emailing her testily, "this is bullshit. When are you coming home?" (Eventually, I took to watching re-runs of Barefoot Contessa - in - London and Oprah-and-Gayle in Yosemite episodes, because as I always say, we are just like Oprah and Gayle, if they were straight, or if we were rich.)

Actually, I fell apart before she even got off the ground that time, because her flight got delayed while she sat for hours on the tarmac in a giant snowstorm. I wasn't so much worried about the snow or ice or flight conditions (though I should have been), I was just projecting my claustrophobia onto her, and hyperventilating in sympathy. As her battery ran down, I kept texting her "CALL ME ON THE SKYPHONE," (I don't even know what a SkyPhone is.) Several people pointed out, she is the most capable person we know, and would've flown the plane if she needed to. (Now I have a flighttracker app where I can watch her as a little green dot floating over the ocean. It's soothing.)

I can relax a little knowing she arrived safely; that she watched two Coco Chanel movies on the plane; and that it's night there now.

But this will be a long two weeks, for a million reasons. She's the one who keeps my Rainman in check ("snap your rubberband Rainman!" or "get off your hamster wheel Rainman!") Who else will drop by the cave and watch the Parking Lot Movie with me (and be able to identify all the rockstars)? Who else will care what new documentaries will be on HBO this week? Who else could drop by my classroom to wrestle the online access into submission? (Well, technically, there's an IT department, but they would laaaaaughhhh.)

Who will bring me pink socks and  candy? Whenever she sees pink socks on sale, she buys them and drops them off. I love my pink socks. And I can never have too many, because the dryer eats most of them. I hope I don't run out of them while she's gone, because I don't know where they keep the pink socks. They just appear here, like magic. (Once she brought me a "lardon needle" -- for threading more bacon into my recipes I guess -- and she's a vegetarian.)

She and BFF94 are the only friends I have who are willing to clear out Target's entire stock of Oatmeal Express and bring it back to me because I looooove Oatmeal Express, but haaaaaate to go Outside the Circle (and Target's the only place that has it). They are hunter/gatherers. I tend the homefires, and will cook whatever they kill. Preferably, Cinnamon and Brown Sugar flavor.

On her way to the airport this trip, she left a big bag of pink candy on my door. She knows cherry is my second favorite flavor (after coconut), and that when I was a kid, I somehow got it into my head that strawberries were what poor people ate because they couldn't afford cherries, but that everybody knew cherries were the superior fruit. That is why I don't like strawberries. I might know everybody's favorite flavor in our social circle, but only she knows everybody's second favorite flavor.

At any rate, the Pink Candy's almost gone.

I should've paced myself.
Also, my feet are cold.