In the Company of a Dear Friend

I'm in The Grind with Amanda, who is reading Sleeping in Flames and periodically looking up to catch me watching her as I write this, and frankly it feels like she was never anywhere else. She just belongs here or just always is here somehow. Or something. We've done little more this week but sit in my apartment and talk, go grocery shopping when we realize the woeful lack of food in my apartment (I have parts of recipes, but no real whole recipes), and just be in each other's presence, which I think is really the point of it all. Just to be with each other.

We had an interesting New Year's, in which we spent the first couple of hours of the night walking around looking for the party we were supposed to show up at, and then spent the second half at a different party, drunk off of the French absinthe Amanda brought. Then we walked home and went to bed at dawn.

Every time Amanda visits, it's a new visit, which seems like an odd thing to think but really isn't. Some people visit after a few years and you come at each other from the same place as the last time you saw them, and even if you've kept in touch, you still act like the person you once were or you expect them to be the same person they once were. Amanda's never been that way with me. We just take each other as we are. We've seen each other's worst and our best and we can just be around one another whoever we are. It's a friendship that I'm always amazed by and grateful for.

And now I'm going to go back to being with her. Because that's better than blogging.

(as a final aside, our absinthe came out of steeping yesterday; it's painful to drink and has a flavor like an herbal medicine and even mixed with cranberry juice isn't particularly palatable...but it sure makes the world all shimmery for a while)