Q: Dear Annalise,

My best friend is spending the summer with her grandma, so we won’t be able to see each other for the entire time. How can we be sure to keep in touch?

A: Well,  just for you, good friend, here is a list of the 25 best ways to keep in touch over the summer:

1. Texting. You have phones. Use them.
2. Calling. When emoticons just aren’t enough, get some voices up in there.
3. Obnoxious social networking. You know what I’m talking about. Have your conversation over the internet, publically, where everyone can see.
4. Skype. OMG, you can see each other’s faces, but this requires putting on your pretty face. Can’t stay in bed-head form for this one.
5. Write an email. Remember when you did this? Also forward them lots of those chain emails with cute kitten pictures. Who doesn’t love those?
6. Write a letter. That is, if you still remember how to hold a pencil. Hey, it’s summer; no judgment here.
7. Send them, in any of these formats, a poem professing your undying love to them; or not, that’s cool, too.
8. Note by carrier pigeon for those times that you don’t have cell service, Wi-Fi, or their address.
9. Note in a bottle for when you again don’t have cell service, Wi-Fi, or their address, but you are by a body of water.
10. Group message. If you are cool enough to have more than one friend.
11. ooVoo: also for if you have more than one friend.
12. Create a series of cup and string telephones that stretch the distance of your houses for communication when you are grounded; in hindsight, this works better if you live next door to your friend.
13. Get Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants up in this place. Send back and forth something like a diary to each other. You can each get it for a week and write down everything you have done; a little lost time, but, hey, it’s pretty cool.
14. Get Walkie-Talkies and communicate with code names.
15. Send each other faxes because we all know faxing is the new texting.
16. Watch a movie together but apart; hit play at the same time, and text/call/communicate while watching it.
17. Send each other singing telegraphs.
18. Send postcards. Let them know the fabulous places you are traveling, even if it is just to the drugstore to get a postcard.
19. Start a blog together. It’s a way to feel like you are doing something together even when you are apart.
20. In addition to post cards, send small little gifts from everywhere you go, such as sand and a shell from the beach, a rock from the mountains — the good stuff.
21. Send pictures back in forth. Compete in your own selfie Olympics. Send so many pictures that you think you are with them.
22. Send each other E-cards on big days like the 4^th of July. You know the ones I am talking about, like with the dancing animals; everyone loves those.
23. Send a care package. Let’s face it, odds are her grandparents live on an Amish farm somewhere, and she has no access to the simple needs, like Cheese puffs and her favorite lip gloss.
24. Download multiplayer apps that stretch the distance, play them all the time, but let them win some so that they don’t have any harsh feelings upon their return.
25. Make a playlist together, so when you feel lonely, you can plug in some head phones and listen to y’alls favorite songs.

I hope this was helpful for keeping up with your friend.