Sweet By & By

Cooler time

The collective weather forecasters are sending us SoCal residents scurrying into our huts to draw our shades and flip on the AC for days on end with weather advisories of “excessive heat,” beginning today. Add high humidity and poor air quality (news flash: California is on fire), and you've got all the fixin's for a shitty week, cooped up inside, kids climbing the walls, me aching to be outside in the garden. Damn it all.

However, despite life feeling a tad off-kilter over here, I'm simultaneously feeling that all is right with the world. I am making some mighty fine re-connections with old friends, and it's so good to know they're ok ... plodding through life, raising kids, getting old. I am part of an online community that I am tad embarrassed to admit joining, since I feel too old for it. But, it's panning out, as names I haven't seen in years pop up in front of me.

So my favorite reunion is with the boy who introduced B. and me. Long before that happened though, Holly and I would see this person around the clubs, and we'd dubbed him Mr. Cute, because – well, he was super cute, loved shoe-gazer Brit music (in his case, he was gazing at Doc Martens), had an adorable southern drawl, and drank wine coolers when the rest of us were beer guzzlers. Soon, to our sheer delight, Mr. Cute was our friend, and soon after that, he brought a young B. to one of our parties. A few days later, after teasing me relentlessly about going after a kid two years younger than me, he gave me B's number when I'd lost the paper that B had slipped me at the party.

Even after we left Boulder, we kept in touch with him, and he'd visit us every fall in Seattle on his way up to the winter fishing boats in Alaska. We'd send him off, worried, hoping he had sure feet, thick skin, and plenty of brandy to withstand the waves and the cold. A dozen years later, he's popped back into our lives, a husband, a dad, and a Denverite. Hey you, cold coolers and reminiscing – your place or ours?

Pool Chill

So the annual event went off without a hitch, and was surprisingly stress-free and so very "chill," just as B. promised. We had about 40 people come and go throughout the evening. No one jumped in the pool fully clothed -- rather, the heat and humidity made the pool very inviting for swim-suit-clad friends. Our Taco Man served up outstanding spicy catered fare for the crowd. Silly moments included Brad wearing a watermelon as a helmet, everyone singing along loudly and enthusiastically with Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" when it came on the iPod bucket, and an extended fireworks show from the Rose Bowl, visible from our house. Plenty of pics on my Flickr stream at right.

{Re}Union

I think this photo alone is emblematic of how neat our family reunion/wedding union was -- look at the boats and the lights reflecting on the water and the calm, happy smiles of the couple. Lucas, my brother, and Joya, his bride, were married on July 29 in Seattle at the Center for Wooden Boats, and it was a really touching, personal, scenic ceremony.

R. carried up the Tibetan singing bowl, and L. served as the ring bearer, among other added duties; she played a great role in the event. B. was a groomsman, and I got to sit back and enjoy the wedding itself, after spending three hours as the photographer for the bridal party. The kids spent nearly a week of unrelenting indulgence from gramma and grampa, aunts, uncles, and cousins. And Seattle was as beautiful as ever, serving as the perfect backdrop for such a momentous occasion.

 

 

Summer tradition

Every year, the pressure is on for us to host our annual July 4th BBQ in our backyard. Days before, we clean like mad, prune back trees, buy ambient mood lighting (i.e. candles and light strings), and generally go all out for the festivity. The parties are legend among friends and coworkers for the casual, chill, and  - as the evening goes on - pretty silly atmosphere. Matt always brings his killer guacamole, the iPod always plays fantastic music, Nick is always helping out and schmoozing the crowd, Marci always chats everyone up (really more the hostess than me), the kids are always in the pool, Kim and Jason are always  ready to hear stories, and various coworkers drift in and out with significant others and friends. It's a blast.

This year, we held the party three days after Independence Day, my man jumped in the pool fully clothed, the guacamole was primo (and so was Matt's baby, Austin), and L. shared her aspirations of becoming a guitar-playing rock star with our friends in-the-know about that kind of thing - Lucinda and Bleu.  A few photos taken late in the game (note how tired I look):

 

Retirement, re-creation

This is a shout-out to my mom, who today, after nearly 30 years, retires from teaching primary school kids. Recent years of unrelenting budget cuts, No Child Left Behind, and testing-testing-and-more testing made her realize that the job she set out to do three decades ago is not the same job she is forced to do today. She is an artist, a gardener, and poet, and a reader -- she "followed her heart" (as L. so wonderfully put it) and understood that her talents were well placed elsewhere now. 

We - my dad, brother, his soon-bride, my own family, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends - are immensely proud of her. She has made a major difference in the lives of many young children, teaching them to love reading and books, to look at words as poetry, to laugh and sing and tap your toes while you work.  

Her teaching skills taught me immensely, too. She taught me that babies need to be read to, and talked to, even if you get a blank stare in return. She taught me about helping my kids write in any-which-crazy-way of spelling that they like, because the "real way" will come soon enough. She taught me -- long ago at her basement pottery wheel -- that you can make anything with your hands if you want to, and that homemade is something with your spirit and careful touch inside it. She taught me to be out in a sunny garden and that no matter what grows or doesn't, you'll be happy. 

In teaching me, she's also taught her grandchildren - both of whom love to read, love to make plays-on-words, love to color and create and paste, love to be in the garden and feel the soil in their toes.  

Happy retirement,  Mom.

The best is yet to come!

 

Old friends, new generations

We had four very special guests last weekend, and it's been on my list to share a few highlights here. Roxie & Ruby, sisters from Denver and the daughters of my long-time best friend Holly, visited along with their mom and dad on their way to San Diego. They were tiny and cute and smart, and we loved having them here, especially since it was almost Ruby's birthday, and we had a great excuse to have a little birthday bash complete with cupcakes from Violet's.

It was so wild to have my kids and Holly's kids hanging out together.  I have known Holly for 23 years, and we were crazy sistahs in high-school/college, chasing musicians and cyclists and pining for Ireland   - wreaking even more havoc if the musicians and cyclists were actually Irish! But I digress.. enjoy a few photos from the afternoon.