I look at my circle of friends now. Interesting.

I have women with whom I go to lunch and giggle with at church. But I still avoid close friends. Janey is close, but we are too busy to be really close friends. Perhaps that's intentional on both our parts. I have a "walking" friend, but her parents are ill and we only walk together a few times monthly. I'm friends with my mom when I want to be. My sister, Lila, is probably my closest female friend, emotionally, but furthest away, geographically.

Then there are men. My Dad and I are wonderful friends. We share a similar sense of mischief and humor. We love to play board and card games. We love being outdoors. We love music. My husband is, hands down, my best friend. He accepts every part of me. He makes me want to live. He helps me feel that the best in life is yet to come. He tells me I'm beautiful. After these two men, though, by and large, more men know me, know about me, than women. I think part of this is because I'm less afraid of being myself with men, most of those men know me anonymously, and the bottom line is--they ask questions.

Most women don't ask personal questions. They make leading statements. They encourage confidences when they come. They act interested, but they rarely ask point blank what they want to know. In this, I differ from the rest of the female populus. I've always asked what I wanted to know. This has made my circle of feminine friends somewhat unique. Those who don't deal well with me speaking my mind consider me blunt/rude. Some just dislike me. Those who stay have beautiful senses of humor. They take me as I am, they ask me, "does this make me look fat?" only if they want my true opinion. We discuss REAL subjects: literature, politics, finances, music, funny things, our children, religion. I'm terribly uninformed about home decor, the latest weight loss trend, recipe exchanges, hair dressers, monthly cramps, and boorish husbands.

Darrin has noticed the amount of time I spend chatting with others, and came over today, to see my chat list. He mentioned that there were no women on it. I said if I wanted to talk to a woman, I'd go visit her personally (which is actually preferable to chat because I'm not good at all the nuance chat decorations like smiley faces and verbal sound letters). I suggested that going to visit men and chatting with them was less socially acceptable, so chat was a better forum in which to exchange brilliant ideas with each other. Darrin made that irritating snorting noise ( I think it irritates me because I don't know how to do it). He stayed to "eavesdrop" for a moment, lost interest and left to chat with my nephew (Darrin's chat list is equally balanced with men and women).

There is no point to this post, nor is there a conclusively stunning declaration with which to end it. So I will stoop to my sixteen-year-old's vernacular and end with this random statement: "I'm just sayin'..."