Missin' ...

I miss my friends. Not so much that I'm crying myself to sleep, not as much as last time I was here and Kris was still in California, but still, our crew is tight. A bunch of our peeps are having a slumber party this weekend, and are going to call us (fortunately, they can dial a local US-domestic number, and it will ring on our VOIP line at our house), which I'm sure will engender much longing and sighing after the phone call ends. We have friends here, now, too. New friends! Friends I made last year during Kong, and new friends that we didn't have until this year. Thank the gods that Christopher is good at making friends, because it was really easy to fall in with his New Zealand crew. (Yeah, UH, our CREW, bitches, 'cause we're from the STREET! Like, Sesame Street, maybe.) But in spite of our new friends, who are all pretty great, I still miss my older friends back in the States. I'm glad we're going back for Burningman. I'm glad our new friends are going, too, so that they can meet our old friends, and vice versa. I think everyone will like each other a lot.

I miss our animal friends, our cats. Not that I'm a cat-person, all having dozens of cats and thinking that they are capable of abstract reasoning and contemplating hypotheticals and having such a thing as "dignity" or "pride" -- I know that such qualities are not in the realm of actual cats. And while in some ways, I miss them less than our non-animal friends, in another way, I miss them more. They were part of our household. They were manifestly fond of our company. They were free to come and go as they pleased, and it was their pleasure to spend most of their time with us. They were warm and soft. It was nice to be with them as they dug on each other. They are really great cats, and together, they are more than the sum of them individually. They'll be in New Zealand in August, after having completely forgotten us and having only memories of Vanessa, who's hosting them until they come over here. That's OK, though; it won't take them long to forget her and only remember us. That tiny brain of theirs is a double-edged sword.