good night

I started using (here, and on several other sites) the phrase from Millay, "I am not big enough to love things the way I do!" a few weeks ago and tonight was one of those nights that the meaning came in full force, for no real or heralded reason.

I'm sitting here working on the Chris Rankin interview for Leaky which I HOPE will be done tomorrow to go up in time for his play thingamajiga. And as there's a lot of formatting, I found myself zoning out, thoughts going fullspeed as usual.

I am [insert appropriately emphatic curse here] lucky. I'm sitting here and Milly - who runs the Floo Network's galleries and is visiting, and is a complete darling - is chatting with my roommate about Macs and iPods and everything, he cooked her dinner and they have just been babbling for two days straight. (Actually, now they are using photoshop to manip a picture of Milly so that she looks like Mick Jagger Milly, as I call it - or McMilly, as Mike calls it.)

At work today I got a voice mail from Arjuna, who lives in California now, about this huge Sondheim event in NYC - the message went "Wongggbajblahblahblahblah - STEPHEN SONDHEIM FRANK RICH JOSS WHEDON wonggongwblahblablabhblah," so I called him back and said, "I couldn't hear most of your message, but what I could hear translated into WE'RE GOING!" He called a few hours later and we had one of our old school screaming-about-theater sessions, the kind where we're cutting each other off with our ebullient ramblings, topping each other's enthusiasm over and over until we got to a point where the conversation had so much joy in it I think it drained the battery from his cell phone.

Even earlier, I woke up to an e-mail from Cheryl, to whom I wrote an entirely bitchy email last night because I was in a MOOD after a long day at work; it wasn't bitchy to her as much as it was bitchy in tone, bitching about everything under the sun. She and I have both been working crazy hours and so the email full of sympathy and funnies made me smile and I started the day in the absolute correct way.

Lately David and I have been passing back emails the size of small novels, because it's fun, and because it's a nice way to unwind without the stress of talking on damn cell phones (and in his case over the loud winds of New Haven as he rushes from class to class). So, I've just sent one off and I've got one from him to look forward to, and it's like waiting for a good chapter in a serial.

Back and forth today and all week are emails with Nancy and Christy, with whom I'll be presenting at a career day on Friday at a high school here; N and C are friends from...well...ever. I've known them longer than I've known how to interact with the opposite sex or put on lipstick. I've known them for everything, and love them with the love only people who are physically in each other's lives for this long can love. It's so easy to be a friend when you only have to see people now and then. When you can be a friend when you are constantly presented - in the flesh, not email - with that person, that's when you really know them; otherwise you know them on paper, and that's not knowing in the most sincere sense. It can't be. Be strong enough to let a person get close in real life, and that's real friendship.

I'm digressing. The point is, I'm so lucky. These are just a few of the people with whom I am blessed. Last night was my sister's birthday celebration and Milly commented to me on the way back home that she was in absolute love with my family. (And mine loved her, sweet girl that she is. My mother, especially, liked her, said she had a good heart. That's all you need to win my mom). And she said this and got teary eyed, at watching my family and my family's friends, and now today as I just realize how these people dragged me out of the nasty-ass, kill-the-world, bite-me-on-a-stick mood I was in yesterday, it gets me teary-eyed too.

Holy cow, I'm such a sap I should be trickling out of a tree...