Ski Day, Sled Day, Single Day

I woke up briefly at 2:30 yesterday morning, and not a drop of snow had fallen. Another false alarm?

No. By morning, we had the predicted 4+ inches. I made breakfast and started calling friends, to find somebody who wanted to snow-walk with me.

Not to whine, but as usual, I didn't find anybody. I went out walking anyway. On the way home, after passing three cyclists (!), three buses, and countless people on skis and sleds in ninety minutes, I said hello to a woman waiting for a #5 in my neighborhood. She looked like someone I'd like, my age, trim, a bus rider. She said she was headed downtown where she needed to get some publicity shots done for her gallery opening Friday night.

All sounds promising. But I realized I had no words to say, Hey, want to try me out as a friend? It would have been easier, oddly, if she'd been a man, to say, Hey, are you by any chance single? (Not that I've ever actually done that either.)

I realize I need a plan. I read recently on Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project blog about Rachel Bertsche, a woman in her thirties, who had as much trouble as I do locating a new BFF (which I thought meant Best Female Friend, but my friend Ruth said it means Best Friends Forever). And Ruth is one of those, a BFF, whom I've know since I was 30. And there's Amy in Port Townsend. I do have friends. But on a snow day, especially, you want a BFF in the neighborhood. I wanted somebody who'd wake up and think, "I've gotta call Mary. She'll want to snow walk too."

This Rachel wrote a book about it, MWF Seeking BFF. Obviously, I need the book. From what I remember reading about it, though, she actually set up weekly "dates" with women who might turn out to be BFFs.

I can do that! I have a little list of women I have met, women I like, but it's hard to know much about them from the moments we grab between dances or during coffee hour at church or waiting at bus stops after SAL.

I'd like to organize my own BFF search, and I think I'll start by resolving to organize a weekly "date" with one of these women, for a walk, or Scrabble, or soup, or something. And just see if a BFF emerges.

It doesn't snow often in Seattle, but next time, I'd like to be ready.