Sticking Points

Woke up this morning thinking about Carrie, and a couple of minutes later, she called. I just love it when that happens. It happens most with my younger sister. I’ll call her, and Julia will pick up the phone saying, “I was just thinking about you. Stop that.” I just laugh.

Since Julia got married last June, it happens less, though. I think because she’s becoming more and more bonded to her husband, whom I just adore. They complement each other, and he makes her happy.

I actually love my brother-in-law’s entire family. His sister is like my fourth sister, and his mother and I share the same birthday. She’s an actress, a writer and an English teacher, has this gorgeous old house a block from the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and we have a ton in common.

I spent a lot of holidays with them while I was living in Jersey, and since they’re Polish, I’ve gotten to try lots of fun foods I never would have tried otherwise. Is that two types of herring I see on the table? Really?

Anyway, we’re gearing up for Carrie’s wedding in April, and so Carrie and I are spending a lot of time on the phone discussing details. She did a registry with all her dream items and had me log on to check it out. She’s got such great taste. And she’s really practical, too.

I’ve found that all my friends are people I admire because they have some quality I feel I lack. (I’ve also found that my closest longtime friends were born in either February or August. Weird.) With Carrie, an August baby, it’s that she’s so straightforward. And she makes a decision and sticks to it.

Even when I was off traveling and living life in all these different places among strangers, she was always there in a letter, an email, or a phone call to make me feel less alone. There’s just something solid about her. Her heart is true.

And Carrie watches the news for me. No, I don’t keep up with the news. She does, though, and weeds through it and then filters it down to tell me what I need to know. In so many ways, I’d be lost without her.

I wonder sometimes just how much we choose our friends and how much life chooses them for us.


When I got back from the barn yesterday evening I was frustrated, sore, and completely wiped out. We’d tied the stirrups to the saddle to get my legs in the right position and keep them there. Kahlua tried to nip me. I had to swat her with the crop to get her going after the trainer told me, “Don’t let her pull that crap with you. She’s testing you.” Ugh! Not another test. Can’t we all just get along?

Between the writing class and getting sick, the trainer’s schedule and mine, I haven’t been able to make it out to the barn as often as I should. Twice a week has petered down to once a week, if we’re lucky. And I’m not making the progress I should be. Well, not the progress I think I should be making. For a second I thought about abandoning it all together, which is what I usually do when things get hard.

I walked Dog, took 800 mg of Motrin, and called the trainer.

“I think I need to come out more.”

“I thought you did really well today,” she tells me.

“Thanks, but I’m not getting there.”

“Well, what are your goals?” she asks.

“To not be such a dork.”

So, I’m making the trek out to Seminole on Tuesdays and Fridays until life pushes through again.


Rereading this great book that I’d forgotten about until Lily returned the copy I’d loaned her. It’s called In the Cut.

If you’re going to check out the movie version, do so only for Mark Ruffalo. He’s amazingly sexy in it. There's actually a line in the book/movie where his character says, "Listen, I can be anything you want me to be."

Now, were someone to say this to me in real life, it would be a big red flag... But it's a book or movie or whatever, and it's Mark Ruffalo being way hotter than he could possibly be in real life. So all I'm thinking is, "Um,.. Okay!"

The book is so much better than the movie, though. It’s extremely well written and kind of hot in a twisted, erotic thriller sort of way.

That’s what I was reading last night when I fell asleep at nine o'clock, exhausted and demoralized, in my big comfy bed under my big fluffy comforter to dream about Mark Ruffalo, horses that won’t test me, and friends who stick.