watching the Simpsons with my husband, eating chocolate covered cherries and drinking a glass of wine.

the holiday season has fully begun.

have a peaceful week.

wm

Oh, Chris Cornell. Ouch. Too bad you had to leave your sexy-awesome wife and run off with… a French model? What? (I may be getting the story entirely wrong.) (I don’t think so, though.)

Note: Kim Thayil in background looking remarkably like Young Steve, circa 1989.

(Also, would kill to find copy of interview Ann Magnuson did with Soundgarden, “Sub Zep?” for Spin, February 1992. I believe this is the interview wherein she asked them, “Who would you kill if murder was legal?” and Kim Thayil got all huffy, Well, it’s not. “But what if it was?” Well, it’s NOT. “Sheesh, Ted Nugent wouldn’t have a problem with this one.” hahahahaha Ann Magnuson, you are funny, funny girl.)

(Why am I rambling? Why am I posting all this? Cuz you know I am feeling thoroughly, totally, completely outshined at the moment.)

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, MY PEEPS!

wm

ps my mom-in-law is in town. We will consume wine, celebrate Kim Thayil’s Hockey God’s birthday early and eat cranberry sauce. TTFN.

I do not have time to write, friends, but I will tell you this…

1) I love my girlfriends. I love you, L.S., and I am sending so much love out to you right now, I hope you feel it like a warm coat wrapped around your shoulders. We all love you so much and I am thinking of you for most of the day, every day.

2) L.G. — you are a good friend, a good woman, and you have a good heart. We would be lost without you.

3) B.J. — wish you were here. Wish I was there. That’s the way it always is. Thank you for always being “there,” even when you’re “there.” I think you know what I mean.

4) A.M. — it was nice seeing you. And thank you for getting me reading the blogs, way back when. You: “You have to read this Amalah!” Me: “Ama-who? Blogs?”

5) C.H. — You do a great job wrangling those preschoolers, and all of the others placed in your care.

6) B.L. — good luck with the project, I hope it all goes well.

7) N.R. — how many more? You’ll be done counting soon. Yay. YAY!

8) B.K. — aren’t you planning some sort of vacation for us? Remember, I won’t fly anywhere anymore.

9) S.D. — Give C a hug for me and a big kiss on the head. You are doing a great, superwonderful job. Don’t ever doubt yourself.

10) N. from T. — I love your blog.

11) TOL — yours, too.

12) That’s enough with the private notes. Sometimes you just have to thank your girlfriends all over the internet, then go light your candles. That’s what I’m going to do right now.

Seriously. What happened to my brain? OK, a short list, then I go to work.

* The weather is sunny and HOT here in Portland, Ore. Go figure. What’s next, the smelt running?

* The kids are settling into first-grade and fourth-grade really well. A little too well. My daughter: “I know, Mom. My babies!”

* My babies!!!

* It was our tenth wedding anniversary. We went to the beach. The ocean was right there in our faces. The coast line is changing. Yikes.

* It was our girl’s birthday, so the celebration was for her, too. It’s a cocktail party on the street over here every September, what with the anniversary, the birthday, school starting, the realization that it’s almost fall and all we did all summer was water the garden and watch TV.

* Hockey God: “Did we even go to the beach this summer, other than right now?” Me: “Uhhh…” Wacky Girl: “We went last Easter.”

* We went to Depoe Bay, the “Smallest Harbor in the Universe” and watched the ships come and go. Did not see the whale the lady was trying to point out to us, “There! Past the rocks, about 300 yards…” Approximately 200 whales a year don’t mess with the roadtrip to Alaska, they just kick it at Depoe Bay, then head back to Mexico. Two hundred whales, you think we’d see one. It’s not like they’re tiny. Nope. Did see a large sea lion.

* If you have braces, you cannot eat the following: kettle corn, carmel corn, popcorn, caramel apples, fudge, salt water taffy. My poor kid.

* Also went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and saw crazy fish and seal lions and otters and those adorable little snowy plovers.

* Went for lunch at Gracie’s Sea Hag (in beautiful downtown Depoe Bay) because, you know. It seemed appropriate. They play the Chicken Dance song on bottles and rock out. Our waitress was adorable.

* I gotta stop now or I’ll be late for work. What’s new with you, Internets?

love,

wm

From Brother Randy:

I am a Portlander looking to tell North Portland churches that an 11-Neighborhood mission has been launched in North Portland to help those in need of help with rising gas and food prices.

Our organization, Bright Neighbor, has teamed up with the City of Portland to help neighbors better get to know one another, and to create local networks so people can lend out items like lawn mowers, find local babysitters, set up ride sharing, do cooperative gardening, etc.

We have a public meeting about this North Portland project at the Historic Kenton Firehouse this
Thursday evening at 6 PM. If you would like to attend, the event is kid friendly.

Respectfully,

Randy White
Community Project Manager, Bright Neighbor
randy at brightneighbor dot com

Marriage has turned out differently than I thought it would. We have too many scares and tears and ER visits, but we also have more flowers than I ever expected, good meals, sitting around together talking, playing dominoes or gardening. I planted herbs and flowers all afternoon yesterday. We sent out for pizza and ice cream, stayed up late watching movies.

But Iowa is on our minds. I never expected, when I first married, that Iowa would become such a big player in our lives, and that I would love my husband’s family this much.

My son is disappointed he’s not there with his grandparents this weekend, in Iowa City, going to the park, playing in the yard, having Pagliai’s Pizza instead of Eddie’s Flat Iron.

“Poppy’s coming here?” he just asked my husband, hopefully.

“No, honey. He’s staying home with the big flood. The road from his house to the airport is closed.”

Cedar Rapids (where we fly in when we visit my in-laws, where my husband’s brother and wife live with their three girls) is a mess. Our family is fine, their neighbors are fine, but whole sections of town — homes, businesses, cars and bridges — are toasted or severely damaged.

My in-laws are stuck on their side of town — no way to get to downtown Iowa City. They have been helping how they can, but how can you stop a river? How can you stop nine rivers?

Steve put up some pictures on his blog — they formed a book brigade to save the books in the main library. I love that library, where my father-in-law worked for many years. I love the campus and the Writers’ Workshop. Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver did, too, along with about a zillion other writers. I love Iowa. The people, the boating, the farmlands and the huge barns. The parks and great schools and my husband’s old high school, City High, where we went for an ice cream social one time when we were back home visiting. Steve teases me when I call Iowa “back home,” but you know, Iowa is not that far from Arkansas, where my mom grew up and all of her extended family still lives. For me, that all is “back home.”

Ice cream socials and huge gardens and my kids, running with their cousins all over the place. Having gin and tonics at cocktail hour, watching the fireflies — that’s home.

We were about two seconds from moving there, but a lack of jobs (and lower wages, if we managed to find jobs) stood in the way. I wish we were with our family right now, but am so relieved that my husband and kids didn’t fly out. (I was staying home to work and wrap up end of school year.)

So, prayers please, and good thoughts and I can’t believe that the next time we go to my husband’s home state to visit, it will be all different. We still don’t know the extent of the damage and won’t for a while.

Here’s to things calming down and an attempt to get back to normal. Whatever that is.

For now, much love and a Happy Father’s Day to my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and of course, my excellent husband.

please send out prayers and good thoughts to my in-laws in Iowa.

wm

You know, this Friday (that would be May 9th, 2008) it will be eleven years since Hockey God and I went on our first date. I didn’t really believe in Modern Love, or magic, until I met him. Now I do.

Happy anniversary, you big hunk. I’m playing bunco that night, you’re on your own. (PS — not really. I mean, you’ll have the kids and all.)

love,

wm

Steve, I love you a lot. Nancy

(ps I swiped this list from the cutest newlywed on the Internet, Diamond in the Rough.)

1. The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly. ~Peter De Vries

2. I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. ~Rita Rudner

3. Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open. ~George Bernard Shaw

4. Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work. ~Author Unknown

5. Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret

6. Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate. ~Barnett R. Brickner

7. Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you’ll meet that night. ~Paul Hornung

8. Divorce: The past tense of marriage. ~Author Unknown

9. The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

10. Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. ~Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1966

11. In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced. ~Robert Sexton

12. English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law. This is our idea of useless legislation. ~Author Unknown

13. Wedding rings: the world’s smallest handcuffs. ~Author Unknown

That’s it! What else would you like to hear? Do you think it’s odd that the Nekkid Neighbors returned home from their trip at the exact same minute we returned from ours?

Kooky is what that is!

wm