LOVE this.

Wedlock Sunday

she is working in the garden,
facing away from me,
trimming the bougainvillea,
still trim herself and youthful,
relaxed and free of cares,
doing something she enjoys,
something that she always has enjoyed,
and having lost all conception of
the passing of the hours,

and i feel a tenderness for her
that i may never have felt during
the selfish passion of young manhood,

and i wish the bitterness that
have more than merely punctuated
our thirty years together
could be magically obliterated
(which will never happen-let's
not kid ourselves-but perhaps for the
rest of this afternoon and evening
they will be.

i resolve to do and say
only kindesses to her
over dinner and in front of
the pbs mystery that we've been following

and not to react to
any sarcasms or schemes
she may slip into out of habit, hunger,
merlot, tiredness, or contemplation of
the work week's rattling hours
of third graders, parents, colleagues,
homework, grades, and art projects,

lying once again in wait for her.

"Wedlock Sunday" by Gerald Locklin

Public Service Announcement

I feel it's important that we all keep abreast of the most recent medical concerns plaguing citizens of the world. After reading this I'm sure many of you will have a whole new appreciation about the fact that you made it through high school. Alive.

CLICK HERE TO READ A SHORT MESSAGE REGARDING THIS VERY IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCOVERY

(Thanks, Julie!)

What the butter nuggets?

Since phones were a recent topic, LET'S JUST GO THERE.

This is what will happen when the iphone finally makes it to Billings, MT. I have one friend who might just pee her pants when she sees this.



Also, speaking of iphones, I gotta give my friend Whitney (who HAS an iphone) and Jason probs for showing me this time waster. I opened the link from my BLACKBERRY at 5:00 a.m. and I literally had tears rolling down my cheeks and my face did that thing where it freezes up in a perma smile. Paul thought I'd lost my mind.

For others who have seen this and not told me about it? Shame. On. You.

CLICK HERE AND BE PREPARED TO LAUGH YOUR ASS OFF.

What's a LAND line?

That's what our children will ask us. No shit.

Phone talk has been following me around lately. While in Alaska, we touched upon the topic over Christmas dinner (with my friend's parents). My friend's dad asked the table, "Remember party lines?" Well, no, I don't remember them, but I've heard of them. (My mom HAD one growing up.) The other "kids" at the table had no clue what they were, though, and suddenly I pictured future conversations with my own children: "Hey kids! Remember LAND lines?"

Remember the first bag phone? Remember ANALOG? (Shout out to Jeremy Alley!) My first cell phone was a TRIFOLD.

I cannot WAIT to show my kids this:



Gone are the days of extending the phone cord beyond all reasonable lengths in order to have a private conversation. Gone are the days of slowly lifting up the phone and practicing the breath management of a YOGI in order to listen in on your older brother's conversation with his high school girlfriend. (Hi, Eric!)

My friend Jason brought this up too, in regard to drunk dialing. It's so much easier than it's ever been! However, contrary to Jason's argument, I would argue that nowadays, we drunk TEXT because we've lost the social skills to actually brave a conversation after one too many brewskies. (That used to be where all the real conversations began!)

Like most people, there are moments when I have a panic attack because I (momentarily) think that I've lost my blackberry. Then there are other moments when I want to throw it into a river (hi Mark!). My mom would vote for the latter of these two options if she had to choose. She is constantly giving me a hard time for being attached (AT AN UNCOMFORTABLE LEVEL) to my phone.

THIS JUST IN: My Mom JUST called me. RIGHT NOW. Had I not answered the phone, I would have been left a cold, annoyed message about how I screen her phone calls and AM I ALIVE, ANYWAY?

Seriously though, my mom really gives me a hard time about this. So much so that I was going to make a (silent) resolution to be better this year. But I think I've got to go public in order to be held accountable. Paul and I have both, on separate occasions, lifted up our cell phones in the middle of dinner while the other one was mid-sentence. Shame on us! I've been on the receiving end of this type of behavior enough to THINK that I (usually) notice when I'm doing it and either a) stop doing it or b) apologize and explain why it must be done. Either way, it sucks. It communicates that the person calling or texting is more important than the real live conversation happening in front of you. Yuck!

So, enough is enough. I don't want to be the person who does that to people anymore! Here's my public commitment to be more conscious about when and where I use my phone. I know there are plenty of other cell phone etiquette taboos to keep in mind, I'm just starting with this one. What's your most annoying cellphone catastrophe? Let's hear 'em.

Who knew prancing men were my thing?

So the other day Paul and I are at the laundromat (which is a whole other story altogether...not that I'm "above" laundromats...they're really quite an efficient way to get things done quickly, I've discovered. Anyway, video below was on the tv, and it caught my attention enough for me to tear myself away from US magazine, and I'd say that saying something.

Three things to note:

1. Sorry about the commercial.
2. After it begins downloading you could skip to minute 1:00 if you just want to get to the chase.
3. If I could repeat what happens at minute 2:08 everytime I see something that moves me, I would.

But seriously, this game me chills. Don't tell anyone.



Oh, and doesn't the weird little guy in this duo remind you of this weird little guy from Ghostbusters?

A concerning resemblance.

This Halloween, my friend Amy, who has a quite reputable knowledge when it comes to art history, told me that she was going to dress up as Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol's muse, I said "GREAT! I'll be ANDY WARHOL!"

So that's what we did, because I needed a REASON to make my eyes look MORE close together than they actually are:



Yes, my boobs don't help the costume. I wore the pins because I thought SOME people might not "get" it. To my (somewhat) relief, without the pins, many people didn't. Even my grad school professor, who WAS ON JEOPARDY had to reference the pins before he came up with Andy Warhol. (To which I replied, ehem, do you mean, "Who is Andy Warhol?" badang ching!)

Anyway, I do like Andy Warhol. Even did a project with him when I taught way back in the day. SO, when I was up in AK and I heard that an exhibit called Andy Warhol: Manufactured was going to be at the new museum in Anchorage, I told my friend Whitney that we must go. And we did:



And that's how jazzed I was just by the ELEVATOR mural. We hadn't even gotten to the exhibit yet.

Anyway, one of the MANY cool things of this great exhibit was that they had an interactive thing for the kiddos, which allowed them to dress up like they were in the sixties, including glasses. And do you think I could resist that? Come on now. Of course I couldn't.



And THAT's when things started to get weird.

So I shot the (very alarming) photo above off to my mother, who then forwarded it on to her sister (my aunt, for clarification), a very accomplished artist herself. Then my AUNT took it to show all of her GALLERY friends at some meeting they were having about the gallery.

So now a bunch of people in Florida think my aunt has a "special" niece.

THEN, my Uncle John (not blood related, which I'm sure is a HUGE relief to him) decided to play around with the photo and shot THIS back to me:



A brilliant job, indeed.

But when I got home I was reading through some Andy Warhol stuff online just for the halibut, and I stumbled upon this quote:

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it. (Andy Warhol)

No, Andy, no.

THERE I AM.

I'm a genius, basically.

Me: There's something funny I want to show you. We must go to Youtube.
Paul: What is it?
Me: It's this thing with Josh Groban.
Paul: And Kanye West?
Me: YES! I'm going to put it on my blog.
Paul: Everybody knows about that. It was on msn.
Me: Na uhhh! I found it in secret. And not everyone checks MSN. I bet you $100 bucks my mom has not seen it.
Paul: Okay.

Then I went to the gym this morning and saw it on E! News.

THEN I did my daily check in this morning over at DOOCE and GUESS WHO ALSO DECIDED TO SHARE IT WITH HER AUDIENCE LAST NIGHT?

What does this mean? It means that I know good blog material when I see it, people. That's what that means.

But my mom actuallys follows DOOCE.

So, damnit.

If you HAVEN'T seen this, tell me so I can tell Paul how many people were thankful as a result of my persistance to share. After all, sometimes you just can't put a price tag on being right.

Come on baby light my fire...

Yesterday at midnight Paul and I celebrated our first anniversary. Last year we were in Hawaii when the clock struck midnight (accompanied, might I add, by some of the loveliest people I know). I was actually going to post some pictures of last year, which would have shown off some of those very lovely individuals, but that’s when Paul had a little talk with me about how that could really get some of our closest friends and family members fired. So ERICKATCINDYLUCASJILLGREGANDWHITNEY? You’re welcome. (Note, ANGIENICKELSEYBEN and MYPARENTS…you weren’t up at midnight [with us, anyway], but yes, I have footage that's just as damaging. Some involves booze. Some involves triple chins. So again, YOU’RE WELCOME.)

Despite the fact that I'm suffering from a ridiculous case of butt clench in following picture, I’m going to show it to you, UNCROPPED, for three reasons: 1) It’s kind of cool because as you can see from the date, it captures the first 56 seconds of what Paul and I will from now on refer to as our BIG DAY, 2) it shows my brother, and his wife, Kat, in the background. Please make note of what my brother is doing. We had just walked back from the beach at this point. (Or were we just heading there? The former would have been smarter while the latter is more likely.) and 3) it contributes to one of my life list items, which is to take a family picture on Christmas and New Years every year. Because that life list item was an AFTERTHOUGHT, this photo is what I'm stuck with for last year's 12:00 a.m. moment.



Why does the picture look so HAZY, you ask? I can explain. Stay with me.

This year, we were in the middle of a lake. A frozen lake. We were sitting next to a bonfire which was burning in the middle of the frozen lake. (And hell, since I already mentioned butt clench, let me just say that it took until midnight for my butt to unclench itself from the terrifying drive we took ACROSS the lake to get us to the bonfire. The real Alaskans did not seem to be alarmed.)



The chair that the bottle of champagne is sitting on is actually about to be burned in the fire. That thing IN the fire? That’s Whitney and Greg’s china hutch. Whitney has been dying to get rid of that thing since she acquired it with the purchase of their lovely home. What we failed to bring, of course, was their Christmas tree, which could have been set a flame with a hot cup of TEA if someone were to walk too closely to its branches while taking a sip.



Paul SO looks like an Eskimo and not an islander in this pic. Hey, WHEN IN ROME!?!

It was fun to ring in the New Year (and our anniversary!) with Whit and Greg again this year, as they stood up for us on our wedding day. However, I’m not sure we could top last year’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza. Though there were fireworks, it was a pathetic effort. To others, perhaps, who have never been to Waimanalo, HI on New Year’s Eve, it might have seemed like something really special, but to us, it just didn’t quite have the impact. Let me quickly explain why.

On New Year’s Eve last year, the crew of friends who ventured down for the wedding had originally thought we’d head to Waikiki (the only night we’d likely be in Waikiki for the entire duration of our trip). However, when a local told us that it’d be in our best interest to stick around Waimanalo, we decided to stay. I’m not sure exactly when we began to realize we’d made the right choice, but when we saw what appeared to be somebody’s uncle buying $5,000 worth of fireworks earlier that day at COSTCO, we really started raising our eyebrows at one another, if you know what I mean.

The fireworks show started at oh, I don’t know, 3:00 in the afternoon, and it did not stop until 3:00 in the morning. To attempt to describe to you how extraordinary this experience was would be nearly impossible. Let me say this: we were having dinner out on the Lanai when the fireworks were really getting warmed up, and we could not have a conversation. We were literally screaming across the table at one another. “PLEASE PASS THE SALT. THE SALT. THE…oh, forget it.” At one point, when there was a 5 second delay in between booms, my bff, Angie, randomly shouted across the table: “And THAT’S how I got that rash!” As you can see, I’m still riding the coattails of that little gem.

Anytime I try to explain it to someone who wasn't there, I can always tell when they lose interest, as if to say,“Quit telling me this boring story about fireworks, baby Huey.” But those of us who witnessed it that day look at one another with a deep sense of understanding.

Let me be clear, though - it ain’t no professional show, my friend, whooohoho no, it’s neighborhood rivalry at its finest. I’m fairly confident that much of what we saw go off that night wasn’t even legal. And the booming went on, and on, and on. (Interestingly, our neighbor at the beach house, who complained when someone blew their nose outside on the Lanai past 9:00 p.m., didn’t seem to mind the fireworks...not that we could have heard her if she were yelling from her window. Maybe when your neighbor spends $8,000 on fireworks, you just say thank you and shut the hell up.)

I knew we were really stumbling upon something special when I rounded the corner of the beach house at one point in the evening to see my brother speaking in to his video camera, documentary style, describing what was happening around him. He was really getting some good footage when it turned midnight. Because, well, it was…oh forget it. Just go there.

Anyway, so we weren’t in Hawaii this year. We were on a frozen lake. And there were a few sparkles here and there but mostly there was coors light, good friends, and you know, that guy I married exactly a year ago. And that was alright with me. So Happy Anniversary, Paul! I’m confident that 50 years from now we won’t be able to hear fireworks or stare at a china hutch burning in the middle of a lake in Alaska, but baby, I’m confident you’ll still light my fire.



p.s. Please excuse and typos. I'm running on like, 5 minutes of sleep. We're in the Seattle airport on our way home.

p.p.s.s. Greggie, thanks for the sweet pics.