“Why are you calling me so early?”

“Well, hello to you too,” I said.

“Oh, Tracey. You know what I mean. It’s six o’clock Sunday your time. Isn’t that when you usually write?”

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh as I put her on speaker and placed the phone on the butcher block to make some tea. I freakin’ hate tea as general rule but this weather in NYC has driven me to extreme measures.

I JUST CAN’T GET WARM.

“I don’t know, Tina. I’m just not feeling it today.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Hold on, I’m in the backyard. Let me go inside so I can hear you.”

“You’re in the backyard?”

“Yeah,” she said and I could hear her closing the sliding door behind her that leads into the kitchen. “We’re barbecuing.”

“Barbecuing? In February?” I scowled. “I hate you right now.”

“One of the many perks of living in Arizona,” she said. A bit smugly, I might add.

“Shut it,” I said as the microwave pinged to let me know my mug of water was heated. I resisted the urge to pour it over my head.

She laughed. “Anyway. What’s going on? Why aren’t you writing?”

“I don’t have anything to write about,” I said with a shrug.

“What? How can you say that? You have plenty to write about. Didn’t Your Boyfriend visit this past weekend?”

“He did, but I don’t want to write about that.” I opened a package of tea and dunked in the bag.

“Why?”

I sighed. “Because I’m becoming THAT girl.”

“What’s ‘THAT’ girl?”

“You know,” I said, as I picked up the phone and mug and made my way to the couch. “That girl. That girl who goes on and on and on about her boyfriend and manages to turn every conversation around to be about him? Like you’re having drinks and you’re telling her about your new boots and she’ll cut you off and say, ‘Oh! William took me to the most FANTASTIC new restaurant last week!!!’ And you’re like, ‘Um…that’s nice. But what does that have to do with anything?’ And then she’ll say, “Well, it reminded me, because I got new boots for it.’ And she’ll be giving you this moony loony look with a stupid grin and you’ll just want to punch her in the face.”

“Tracey,” Tina said. “You’re not becoming THAT girl.”

“No. I am. I really am.”

“You’re not.”

“The thing is, hearing about other peoples’ relationships is ANNOYING,” I said as I settled into the couch, placing the tea next to me. The frigid temperature in my apartment had already rendered it tepid. Hmph.

“Well then, make it not annoying. That’s your job.”

I frowned.

“Why don’t you tell me what you guys did and I’ll tell you if it’s annoying?” she said.

“Okay.” I said and took a sip of the non-helpful tea. “Well, the first night he made me dinner and it was so amazing. He is a really, really good cook. Did I ever tell you that when we were 17 he made me gnocchi from scratch? And then just in October he told me he’d actually called his grandmother before I arrived to have her walk him through the recipe!! Isn’t that the cutest??”

“It is pretty cute,” she admitted.

“And then the next night we met up with Caitlyn and Bree and their boyfriends for drinks and everyone got along SO well. They really liked him. It was such a great time!”

“That’s awesome.”

“It really was,” I breathed. “And then on Valentine’s Day evening we went to Lin and her husband’s for a party. He was so amazing! I didn’t have to babysit him at all. He just walked around and introduced himself to people and gave me space to catch up with my friends. It was the coolest.”

“Uh huh,” she said.

“It was our first Valentine’s Day together as adults!!”

“Well, that’s very sweet that he came out for Valentine’s Day.”

I smiled and hugged myself. “Yeah it was, but that’s not the real reason he came out this weekend.”

“Oh?”

“No,” I said and felt my smile becoming a stupid grin.

“Well, what was the reason?” she said, with what I detected as a slight sigh.

“Because!” I squealed. “February 13th is our original high-school anniversary!!!”

“Really?”

“Yes, really!!” I sat up eagerly and pressed the phone harder to my ear. “He remembered after 29 YEARS!! 29 YEARS!!!  Isn’t that ADORABLE??”

“It is.”

“I mean, SOOOO ADORABLE!”

“Yes, Tracey, it’s adorable,” she said, obviously over it.

I  sank back into the couch and took a deep breath. “See? See what I mean? It’s annoying.”

“Yeah, kinda,” she muttered. “Don’t write about that.”

Then we chatted for awhile and caught up on what was going on with her and Hank and the baby. Then we hung up.

And then I decided instead of writing, to binge-watch ‘Parenthood’ on Netflix because ever since McKenzie introduced me to it, that’s really all I ever want to do. It literally makes me weep every episode. Every episode.

How do they do that?

So on Tuesday, (I don’t write on Mondays because um, yeah, ‘The Bachelor‘) when I hadn’t put together even a rough draft, I just wrote this.

Sorry if it was annoying 🙂

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