"It was a mistake"

So I spent Friday night through Monday morning with my oldest friend. She's certainly not doing well, but she's not doing as badly as I feared.

Since we've known one another since Kindergarten, it makes it easier for her to be real with me. Please note that I said, "easier." It's still not completely easy. For example ...

When I called her from my hotel room on Saturday morning, she said, "Give me an hour and a half. I'll pick you up at 11:00." At 11:00 she called and told me she'd fallen back to sleep and would be there in half an hour.

I was angry. This is my vacation -- a vacation I didn't especially want to take -- and I'm spending it with her. The least she could do is get her fat ass out of bed! Then I told myself to chill. It's only 30 minutes (actually it was 40) and we had no firm, set plans. Relax, Gal! And we did have a nice day, wandering around Beverly Hills. I introduced her to The Paley Center, right there in her neighborhood, which she could visit and enjoy again and again on her own. She needs more activities, more distractions, when she finds herself going down The Stoney End.

Then on Sunday morning I called and she said she'd be over, you guessed it, at 11:00. And she arrived, you guessed it, at 11:45. This time she said she was late because her cat wouldn't eat. It was hard for me to hide how pissed I was. As we had brunch, she confessed ...

With the meds she's on, she can't get up in the morning. Librium is essential to evening out her mood swings but it makes rousing herself every dawn like, "storming the beaches at Normandy." It takes her 2 to 3 hours to get ready for work each day. Her bosses don't mind her getting to the office until 10:00.

But she doesn't like California. At all. She kept referring to the move as "a mistake." Well, it's not one she can undo. Her house here is sold. Her boss here replaced her.

Besides, her new bosses in Tarzana adore her. And if she came back, she'd only be disappointed that the Chicagoland she has so romanticized is a fantasy.

For example, traffic. She says there "are no road closures" in Chicago. That's just silly. Every day I get an office email about this street or that intersection being closed for a festival, or a TV shoot, or a 10K race or a visit from the President or Vice President. She remembers "no road closures" because she never worked in Chicago. She lived in a town called Westmont and worked in one called Oak Lawn (how bucolic is that!) and no, Chicago Fire wasn't filmed there and no, Barack Obama never took a motorcade through there and no, there's no Run to Wrigley through those burbs. The NFL Draft is not taking place in Westmont.

And it still gets cold here. And it still rains here. And Chicago is still 2000 miles from her cousin. (Though her cousin is no support whatsoever.)

Hopefully, when she moves to Tarzana and has a nice suburban existence out there like the one she had here, all will look and feel better.

And no matter what, she'll still have me. That's a lot.