Here is something I originally wrote in August of 2017:

“My summer friend knows a lot about day lilies and script-writing and Russian criminal tattoos. All of his belongings can fit in the back of his pickup truck and he has no fear about leaving this place to go to a new place. I wish he would stay, but I also can’t imagine him here in the wintertime, living a stone’s throw from the lights of a racetrack, our favorite ice cream stand shuttered in the snow.”

Brandon has gone from a summer friend to a full-season friend and we’ve been living together for a year in November. He’s just as good in the wintertime as he is in the summertime and he’s happily added to my knowledge of World War II, the Tour de France, the Bible, and Morrissey’s catalogue. He’s as voracious a reader as anyone I’ve ever met, loves finding strange old movies on Prime (see “Kiss Me Monster”), and every weekend we carve out time so I can chase him around local metropark trails on our long runs.  He’s beginning to thaw Miss L, too, and last night, I went upstairs with my “summer beach read” – “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties” (maybe I should just get a nice light paperback for our trip up north next week) and heard them downstairs together for a solid two hours eating ice cream and watching old Kung Fu movies.

Anyway, there are a lot of updates, including the fact that I got my hair cut, that we’re revamping, repainting, and reorganizing the second floor of my house to give L a better room, updated and designed to accommodate her more grown-up sensibilities, as well as a study for Brandon. I’m a little over halfway done knitting my first sweater, we’re doing the Crim in August and the Savannah Rock & Roll Half Marathon in November, but all of those will have to wait for different posts. I really sat down to write today, after my typically long hiatus, about Facebook.

I know it seems like a very modern way to complain about social media – by turning to another form of social media – but I’ve been blogging far longer than I’ve been MySpaceing (God, remember THAT) or Facebooking. And honestly, I am beginning to turn back towards the blog as a preferable way to express oneself online. I took a “digital detox” from FB for a few weeks and I don’t know if I want to go back. I have grown increasingly ambivalent about posting there, except for political rants and adoptable cat shares, and increasingly weary of scrolling to see passive-aggressive vagueposting about discontent with some friend or relative or other situation that one can’t be bothered to confront head-on, rundowns of what one did during one’s workout or what one ate (note: only PROFESSIONAL FOOD PHOTOGRAPHERS should post photos of FOOD – unless you have a talent and an eye for it, your picture is going to look like something that belongs in the dog’s bowl, no matter how yummy and lovely it was in real life). I am irritated when people post sad bleats about how lonely or bored they are, sometimes with an accompanying blurry photo of a tureen of Flip Flop or some other bottom-shelf wine. It seems odd, though, to think about deleting my profile altogether. It seems hard to imagine existing in today’s world without a social media profile, and the thought of deleting it makes me feel vaguely Ted Kaczynski-ish. As though my acquaintances will think I’ve gone to live as a hermit, off the digital grid, growing body hair and avoiding human contact (and really, only the last part is right – see above about recently getting my hair cut).

So I’m not too sure what this means but felt compelled to muse. It’s Sunday morning here and I’m sitting with my laptop and coffee on the front porch, watching bunnies in the hedgerow across the street and bees in the hydrangeas. Until next time, be well friends. xo