Soapbox

As he looked on his computer, he commented that, once upon a time, the retail motto for selling an item to women was "Pink it and Shrink it" but nowadays manufacturers were finding that more and more women don't feel the need to have everything pink, so some were moving away from that. I thought of the pink 'girl' Legos, and the pink Bic pens "for Her" and how much grief the manufacturers got for assuming that women wouldn't use things that were… "boy" colors.
Corey found a single teal pack available… in Texas or somewhere. And it was a xsmall/small, whereas the one he had fitted to beautifully to me was small/med. We tried adjusting a men's size small (in a nice green)  but it just wasn't as comfortable. He offered another brand in a tealy blue, but Irejected it almost immediately because it was the same price and not as well made.

Hmmm. I looked back at the pink one. The one that was now professionally adjusted to fit me just right.

And anyway, I thought… it will be behind me. It's not like I"ll have to look at a stupid pink backpack all day, right? That's Ted's burden to bear. 
"It doesn't even really look pink to me" he said. (Nice try. It's pink.)

And so it came to pass that I will be hiking up the mountain with a pink…ish… backpack. If you see me, don't laugh. Just admire how well it fits!

I dreamed last night that I called my old friend Beth- a woman who had been my friend for 40 years and then one day cut me off with no explanation.

In the dream I posed as someone from the post office, calling to find out if she had moved because she had letters undeliverable to the address we had on file. I really just wanted to know what was going on with her and why she had rejected our friendship.

 

 And as soon as I heard her voice- that voice I had laughed with and cried with for so many decades, through so many stages of our lives, I knew it wouldn't work. 

Of course she was going to recognize my voice! How could she not? We knew each other so well! Drat- I should have affected a Scottish accent or something. Now I would have to confess Look, Beth, I really just wanted to talk to you…
 

But she didn't. She had no clue that it was me. She explained that indeed they were not at that address any longer- they had moved to France to be near her daughter who had married a Frenchman while on study abroad.

I felt smacked in the face. I mumbled "Yes, well, thank you ma'am… if you want your mail forwarded you'll need to contact the central office…"

I hung up the phone and reallized that she had moved on without me both literally and figuratively if all this could happen in her life and she felt no urge to tell me about it.

 

And I woke up feeling sad, and stared into the darkness, hearing rain on the windows.