Last night I made butternut squash-ginger soup for dinner. It’s very satisfying to come home from work and hack at 5-pound butternut squash with a chef’s knife, slamming it against the countertop when the going gets tough. And have I mentioned how much I like my little Braun hand blender? It truly is the shit. (Earlier this afternoon, I was raving about it to two of my friends. One of them emailed back, “Love the wand. Love the magic wand.” Uh . . . that’s a whole ‘nother appliance.)

Also satisfying: stepping out of the chill February evening and into a heated apartment with fully functional furnace. We owe our landlord a king-sized thank-you note with this month’s rent check — just over 24 hours after D. called to say that the pilot light still wouldn’t stay lit, we had a shiny new teal furnace installed.

Amid my job’s neverending slough of despond these past couple of months, I’ve had these flashes of realization about what a terrible daughter/sister/aunt/friend I’ve been lately. Incommuni-avocado all the way. I feel worst about not having called my friends since the birth of their daughter a few weeks ago. I added a little note of congratulations to the guestbook on the birth-announcement Web site, but I’ve felt like it would be way intrusive for me to call and shoot the bull. I always think that the phone will ring just after the baby has gone to sleep or that my friends won’t feel like hearing about my jobstresses. Maybe when D. is out of town later this week, I’ll suck it up and say hey.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about the nature of my friendships for several months now. I read a New Yorker article a while back about how people form friendships and social networks. The author said that friendships are more likely to blossom among the people you see most frequently: proximity = pals. Which seems very logical. But in the past few years, all but two of my friends has moved to the suburbs or worse. No matter how dutiful I try to be with emails and phone calls, it’s hard to maintain a true closeness if we don’t spend time together more than once or twice a year. Perhaps I’m more sensitive to this because I have a nasty tendency to withdraw from friendships after a few years. It’s certainly not always the case, but I can’t count how many people I’ve passively let drift out of my life.

On another note: the woman who sits next to me is imitating Rob Schneider for the (very questionable) benefit of the other five people currently in the pod: “Makin’ copies! For my husband Rob! Remember when Sting was on SNL? ‘Sting a linga ding dong — the Sting-meister!’ That was sooo funny!” Now she’s talking to her husband about “the whole Daddies-to-be section on Babycenter.com.” I miss sitting in a cube.