10 Years Ago I…

  • had just moved boyfriend into my dungeon-like, one-bedroom apartment. Co-mingled kitchen appliances and engaged in pre-marital sex.
  • didn’t have a college degree or even a decent way to put one to use. Er, legally, that is.
  • wrote all my stories on PAPER!
  • was employed in a job that taught me everything I DON’T want in a career. Office Space anyone?
  • had a complicated relationship with my lone cat, Betty.
  • provided the common meeting place for Friday night happy hour…and Disco Night…and…
  • was still vehemently convinced that I would NOT be having children. When would I have time to buy shoes?
  • had no clue how supremely awesome it would all work out.

natalie

natalie

Get out your lighters.

For Father’s Day, Steve got a veritable plethora of gifts: leather gloves, stainless water bottle, drill holster, bag of peanut butter chips, plaid shirt – because, you know, nothing says Happy Father’s Day like a bag of peanut butter chips. One of the random assortment of gifts of honor also included a Journey CD. The only thing missing from this list is a set of mini-screwdrivers. Oh wait. Nevermind, he got one of those too.

Not that I am a Journey expert or anything (that is the job of my muscle-shirt-wearin’-Trans-Am-drivin’ husband and brother-in-law), but I have heard those anthems enough times to recognize that something was different. Granted, it took me the better part of 4 songs to reach this conclusion. I off-handedly mentioned that this must have been one of those “digitally remastered collections”, at which point I was schooled on their new incarnation. Apparently they found a new lead singer that is a vocal dead-ringer for Steve Perry. It’s almost creepy.

We managed to catch Stella’s interpretive dance to Faithfully on video. Especially touching, is when she dedicates it to Steve for Father’s Day. I immediately tried calling dibs on it for my site, but Steve would have none of it. So we arm-wrestled. That didn’t work either. So, here it is over on his site. Go there at your own risk. If the kelly green doesn’t give you a blinding headache, then the contrasting yellow surely will. I can’t believe I am actually going to let this man have administrative permissions to my website.

Happy Baby Daddy Day

Today is the day that families around the world are supposed to worship thy father by giving him a day of leisure, pampering him with beer and meat flavored treats, and overall providing him with an opportunity to live life like he did before everything was hijacked by the chaos loving warmth of children. The reality of this holiday has been somewhat skewed by the Hallmark Corporation. Instead, Steve and I have both realized that this is an opportunity to reflect on all the aforementioned items listed. And, it has only taken us 4 years to figure this out.

This being the case, Porter is nursing some strange malady that had him throwing up all afternoon and evening Friday, graduating to some intestinal discomfort yesterday, and today is complaining that his mouth hurts. We are just pumping him full of ibuprofin and parking him in front of an endless stream of Pixar/Disney. Stella is, well, Stella – need I say more? Yes? Perhaps you should spend some time reading THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE. Let’s just say it would have been nice if Steve could have opened just one of his own Father’s Day presents. Just one.

In our eternally evolving parental wisdom, we have figured out that this day of honor and relaxation isn’t a single, pre-determined day, but rather a take-it-when-you-can-get-it hour or two here and there. Which is why I feel supremely proud that yesterday, Steve was able to find a quiet afternoon of tv watching and beer drinking while Stella and I spent the day in town and Porter took an extended nap.

So to my dear husband, all I can say is, you’re welcome, and Happy Father’s Day. Yesterday.

stella, porter and steve

Go Crabs!

On Saturday we hooked up with the A’s and the B’s for the Humboldt Crab’s season opener. If you lean in really close, you should be able to smell the beer and peanuts on our breath.

steve

Steve & Anthony

Jodie & Andrea

Jodie & Natalie

Andrea & Steve

Brian & Jodie

The A's

Promises, promises.

Many of you have expressed frustration at how my site is loading (or not loading) these days. Don’t blame me, blame Twitter. It actually drives me a little bit batty too. Although I love the service and the overall concept, I have found Twitter to be a bit spotty in reliability, which has – in turn – had a direct impact on my site. There are ways I could work around this issue, but due to my negative free time schedule, I have not been able to dedicate the time to making those changes happen. Which brings me back to the real issue: redesign.

In an attempt to actually make this site bend to my will a little bit easier, I have scheduled a sit-down with my husband, who has agreed to be my back end guy. [pause for snickering] This is a dicey proposition – turning over my code, my site, my fastidious control-freak ways to my husband so that I can focus on content, content, oh lovely content. Yes, he is a doorknob toucher, but in a completely different way than I am, and this just might have disaster written all over it. After all, when I took over the financial wrasslin’ in our household it took me the better part of three months to untangle his “system”. I needed nothing short of a decoder ring and a pair of mind-reading goggles. Although I have, technically, been doing web work since the mid-90’s, I have been far removed from the day to day grind of cranking out code. Steve on the other hand, has recently become the de-facto campus webmaster for his school, and is more up-to-speed on the various technical aspects that I need in order to evolve this site to match the pace of my life today. Believe it or not, in October this site will be 4 years old. But, my life was much different then, and considering that as of July 1 I will be reassigned to a new unit with a new time base (read: working more hours), I will be adding yet that much more to my plate. Although there are not a shortage of Walscapades to write about, I have struggled for some time now to properly document them all.

As you have seen, our lives have been fairly consumed with becoming dog owners. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit a certain amount of fatigue from the whole process of adopting Ranger. I don’t regret it, but I will be glad when we can assimilate him into our lives and routines and when I stop having to write multi-hundred dollar checks to the vet. In just the one day he was kept for observation after “the shot”, we all found ourselves missing his presence, and in this way I know we made the right decision adopting him. [I can say with some certainty that our cats would disagree with this assessment.]

One of the things that I have really struggled with lately is my lack of posting about all the great developmental things going on with the kids. I have about a gazillion post-its stuck inside my journal that remind me I haven’t written about how Stella has begun reading, or how Porter’s speech and language has hit full stride, where we are headed with this whole Kindergarten issue, Porter’s obsession with keys, Stella’s obsession with talking too much, what it’s like to watch my kids form an actual relationship with each other, and, of course, how Porter now refuses any and all attempts at a haircut. There are funny stories, and maddening experiences and charming tales that need to find their way on to these pages. And so, I shall not give up my attempts to bring them to you – my loyal readership.