happy birthday DAD

happy birthday to the greatest DAD, aka big popi!

this picture reminds me of what my brother chris looks like these days - exhausted but full of love!

happy birthday MOM!

happy birthday to the most wonderful mother! i hope your day is fabulous and dad is wearing jorts!

also happy birthday to kate - my best friend from high school beth's & bill's baby! born today! wooo doggy!

the ancient and modern olympics

i made this poster in the 4th grade - 1986.

the basement flooded and the index card from the ancient olympics is missing.

the index card from the modern olympics contains some dated phrases:

  it was so important i used white-out to correct a lowercase "o" in olympics.

optimistic thought

we're just spinning on some granite that we like to call a planet, and if you need to contemplate...

breakdance teddy bear 1982

i found some treasures in the basement this weekend which my mom was kind enough to box up and send down here. 

 this is what i was thinking about in second grade. breakdancing teddy bears.

dressers of a feather

could these dressers be any more similar? 

identical size. 3 drawers. top drawer opens with round pulls. bottom drawer pulls are 95% identical. 

 the one on the right was in my bedroom growing up in rhode island, the one on the left in kevin's while he was growing up in tallahassee. 

i was shocked when i went to visit him for the first time in 2008 and saw it. 

i think it's so strange that we both kept them, and ended up with them as adults. 

they're old and scratched and dinged and heavy and his is missing a drawer pull, but they're sturdy as hell and i love them.

bonnet shores 1989

packing up boxes i came across some old photos that needed scanning. 

 i'm not going to identify the people in this picture because it's just too ridiculous, but one of them is me, and this is a normal typical scene from my childhood. 

one of these girls had just cut her own bangs with manicure scissors.

february in chapel hill

red bud trees are already blooming. it was in the 60's and sunny

pasty legs were bared at the beautiful new baseball stadium.

we went to chapel hill for the unc vs. clemson basketball game. my brother gave us tickets for christmas. he said the seats were right behind the bench, and i knew they would be good, but i really had no idea how good.

turns out row b really does mean row b. as in row 2. as in there's the players' bench, a row of chairs for the  jv team, row a and then row b. we were SO CLOSE.

close enough to hear the ref bark at leslie mcdonald 'find your seat' when he was dancing at tip-off.

close enough to hear roy williams scream at the bench after a turnover  "THAT WAS CARELESS AND CASUAL!" i plan to use this phrase in anger for the rest of my life.

the black falcon made this shot, the heels won, played well, i didn't get any good pictures, other than the ones in my head, and those i will treasure always.

we followed the crowd out and somehow ended up in a room with balloons and punch bowls overflowing with brownies. score!

after the game we met up with old friends and new friends for too many drinks and dinner on franklin street.  not much has changed at all in 10 years. it was glorious.

this is a damn shame and some more alcoholic readers may want to avert their eyes - but in classic bob-fashion, he ordered another round of drinks when nobody had finished their first ones, and then promptly left to avoid babysitter-fury when they realized the time. the extra drinks spell "bob."

 

this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and i am so grateful to have a brother who made it possible!

whitney houston

the first* real concert i ever attended was whitney houston at the providence civic center in 1986. she was unbelievable. that voice. that VOICE.

boston garden 1986

 i learned about whitney after spending much of that year in the back of a woody jeep wagoneer limited being driven back and forth between rhode island and long island. 

 we listened to her debut album "whitney houston" over and over.  and over.

it was a tape we all could agree on. (unlike lionel richie "dancing on the ceiling" which was thrown from the car window in a fit of scorn along route 95 in connecticut.) i memorized every word. the lyrics taught me all a 10 year old needed to know about love and relationships. "how will i know" "someone for me" "all at once" and of course "greatest love of all" - i feel like i LIVED these songs! in the 5th grade! 

her voice was like a damn bell. this is before auto-tune and computers, she was a huge natural talent. huge.

sorry she's gone too soon, sorry her path was a disaster, but her debut album will always have a giant place in my heart. 

*the first not-real concert i attended was rosenshontz. they were awesome and incredible in their own way.

ball bouncing game

m my name is marilyn and my husband's name is merlin, we come from maryland and we sell marlin

hunger and whistling

i am hungry. 

for the first time in 5 days. 

which makes me ecstatic! 

i don't know if it was stomach virus, flu, or food poisoning. all i know is that i've had no appetite since last thursday. frowing up, spare you the details, bad news. my last meal was probably the culprit but since there's no way to *really* know the cause, i'm just going to look at the last thing i ate and whistle. 

[looks at picture above and whistles] [goddamn you taco truck chicken] 

this was a trick of my great late grandfather named flops. when he wanted to blame somebody, he would say "i'm not going to name any names, i'm just going to look at the person who did it and whistle." and then he would look at somebody in the room and whistle.

happy birthday kelvin

i wish he could revert to this age for a few minutes just so i could rumple his hair and squeeze his cheeks!

***** ALSO - please head over to his website: wnc debt law - he helps people having financial trouble in western north carolina (seems to be about everybody today) and blogs often about how to f your bank before your bank f's you.  

two things i would like to share: he was a superstar pitcher in his youth and struck out a-rod with 3 pitches one time in a florida high school championship game. yes that a-rod. 3 pitches!

i have also witnessed him speak to an owl. he made an owl noise and a great owl swooped in and landed on a branch 20 feet away.

primary

last week kevin & i celebrated the 3rd anniversary of our first date.

december 10, 2008. wednesday night. i was living in asheville, he was living in charlotte. we met at a bar that neither of us had ever been to in hickory, about halfway between.

we hadn't seen each other for more than 10 years. we were friends in college in chapel hill in the late '90s. 'friends' might be pushing it - the truth is he was friends with my boyfriend, and i was living with his girlfriend. the 4 of us hung out together throughout that year, and i always liked him.

we reconnected through the magic of facebook in november and then decided to meet up for a drink. we ordered hawaiian pizza and didn't touch it. we had beer and eye contact and laughs and sparks and made plans to see each other asap. i drove to charlotte two days later with holden and nacho and stayed for 3 days at his fantastic house on a lake and the rest is history.

i can't say it's luck or destiny or hard work or familiarity or timing or what. we like to do a lot of the same things. our energy levels are about even. he is smart and funny and kind and honest and responsible.  he is curious and adventurous and makes his own health and mental health a relative priority.  i love his hair. i love his smile. i love making him smile. his family is funny and generous and eerily similar to my own, and he has excellent taste in friends.

i don't write about him or love or relationships too much here, maybe thinking sharing will dilute it, or maybe jinx it, or maybe because i know the anonymity of the web has evaporated in the past year or two and i am not comfortable with who is reading. i don't want it to seem like bragging, or sillyfluffy, or gag-inducing. i'm not very social and i'm not very open to the public, and i am glad for this blog to be a creative outlet, but if you're looking for deeply personal stuff, and you're not one of the 2-3 close friends i am able to maintain at any given time, you should probably watch some reality tv instead!

i put the picture of the tee box markers on top since there have been 3 years, which is by far the longest relationship i've been in.

there's been a lot of golden moments, and some blue, and some red. but mainly when i look back, they have been gold.

smoked mussels halloween

we had no trick-or-treaters last night. 

which is good since we had no candy. 

we agreed if any trick or treaters showed up we would put a handful of smoked mussels in their bag. 

can you imagine a worse treat than smoked mussels? weird color. weird smell. weird texture. full of crap. their smoky fish oil would get all over the candy in your bag. 

my late great grandfather named flops ran out of candy one halloween and put a meatball wrapped in paper towels into the kids bags, pulling out some of their candy to give to the next kid as he did so.

blood

my 33 year old brother chris had pulmonary embolisms on saturday. that means blood clots in the tissue between his heart and lungs.

he was in africa for two weeks for business and took a 20 hour flight back to the US last week. he closed on his first real house friday afternoon. he had chest pain friday and it was getting worse throughout saturday, and thought he pulled a muscle or cracked a rib. then he couldn't breathe and finally went to the hospital. he's lucky he didn't trow a seven.

he's expected to make a full recovery and be home later this week. and into their new home this weekend.

the picture above is from 1984 when my 33 year old mother was in the hospital for the exact same thing. my dad took us to the spring carnival by himself and we had our faces painted.

you never know when you'll want to grate cheese so it's good to have a rusted antique grater hanging on the wall.

happy 90th birthday grandpa wallace

my grandpa wallace turned 90 years old last friday.

the picture above is when he opened my present of asheville bear poop.

on saturday 18 of his family members spanning 4 generations gathered to celebrate at noon in the card room of the palm beach condo highrise where he has lived for the past 50 years.

he made his grand entrance fashionably late using ski poles as canes and playing 'happy birthday' on his harmonica.

he grew up in providence, rhode island, as one of 5 boys raised by a single mother whose father abandoned the family when the youngest was 1. he was in the air force during world war 2, and then had 3 kids (including my dad), and spent his life drawing and doing architectural delineation, which he continued to do until very recently when his eyes and hands stopped cooperating. he worked very hard, and very well.

he has a great sense of humor, and great love for his wife margaret, who was so classy and chic that we grew up calling her 'lady margaret.' he is a very snazzy dresser - palm beach resort style - wearing white pants and white keds every time i've seen him in the past 35 years.

we spent a lot of the party looking at amazing old photos and newspaper clippings. his younger brother john brought a picture from the providence journal of his senior prom.  lady margaret was cool with it.

one of the most touching parts of the day was when he played a few songs on harmonica for my nephew willie. willie was entranced. he would finish one song and willie would say, "more!" 

 

what a life! 90 years - can you freakin imagine?

twin towers march 1998

this photo isn't black and white, it was a cloudy day.

this was also new york in '98, but on a much more sunny day.

chris birthday age 5

happy birthday to my brother chris. quissy. crick-a-fuh. bucky. the most even-keeled, patient, calm, thoughtful, energetic and enthusiastic person i know!

i hope your crown doesn't have glue dripping down it.

happy birthday MOM

i hope you have a fantastic day! thank you for making my lunch every day (and dinner and breakfast) and driving me around everywhere for the first 17 years of my life!

and i wish you saved all your clothes from the 70s - 80s. you were always pretty stylin!

yessss

when you bank says no, champion says yessssss.