Not so well.

[In response to Wednesday's Plinky prompt: "What's the longest-distance relationship you maintain (or ever have)? How do you keep in touch?"]

I'm in Houston, Texas. She's in Vancouver, Canada. And I'm a bad, bad friend.

It's 1,981.7 miles, according to infoplease.com, but I imagine that to her, sometimes it seems a lot farther. Really, I am the worst about staying in touch. (My friends, you know the truth of this! Hmm, maybe I do have an answer to the "What are you famous for?" prompt after all!)

The short story: Ruth and I met in college, we graduated, got married, she moved to Dallas & I moved to Houston. We talked on the phone (for hours), we visited each other (after driving for hours), we were best friends and it was good. Then she moved to Canada, and I dropped off the face of the earth.

I feel bad about it, really, I feel terrible, but after a year (or more!) of no communication, where on earth do you even start to say everything that wants to be said? Even an answer to the simple phrase "what's up" accrues monumental proportions. And it's different in email; what's said in a few friendly minutes in person or on the phone takes pages in print.

Every now and then, I get a forwarded mass email from her. And I open it, and chuckle, or pray, or forward it to ten of my friends and the person who sent it to me... I think about replying, asking her "what's up", and attempting to summarize the last 525,600 minutes of my life in 500 words or less... So I delete it, throw away my daily opportunity to receive $10 million from the prince of Nigeria, and drown my guilt in a gallon of chocolate ice cream.

And hope she'll email again, and say she's coming to town, because I miss her, and the friendship we shared.