Category Archives: Friends

The people who are brave enough to hang with us.

My Friends: Jodie

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Today, Jodie turns 40!

Jodie

Don’t worry, Jo, 40 is the new 20…or something like that.

In honor of this monumental occasion, Jodie, Dore, Andrea and I took a trip up the Oregon coast. A trip where we were forced to appropriate the Las Vegas tourism bureau’s slogan: What happens in Florence, Stays in Florence. It is for this reason that I was told about 100 times throughout the weekend, “You CANNOT blog that!” So be it. The photos, however, will give you a pretty good idea of what it means to turn 40 in our presence, whilst unsupervised by one’s husband and/or children.

As for Jodie, she’s a great friend in about a zillion different ways. One thing that always amazes me about her is that she is kind of person who remembers details about my life that I can’t even keep straight. She can recount just about every detail of Steve and I’s courtship, she knows birthdays and anniversaries, and if pressed, she could probably chart my cycle. There is that whole thing about how she is good friends with one of my cousins; something I didn’t know until I saw a picture of them hanging on her wall. What are the odds? And then there is that part about her personality that you’d never guess – the part where she comes off as all mellow and easy-going, when in reality, she teaches women’s self defense. Lesson: don’t F$#! with Jodie.

During our you-can’t-blog-about-this weekend, we had the conversation about friendship, and how we have all had transient friendships in our lives that have formed bridges to bigger, more meaningful friendships. Jodie and I’s relationship is the result of exactly this situation. It just makes you realize that when friends arrive out of left field, you should always be ready, because I’d have hate to have missed you, Jo.

The Winged Walstons

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Stella was resolute from the very first moment we asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween: A Beautiful Butterfly. As the pieces of her costume started coming together, however, it became more and more apparent that Beautiful Butterfly had actually metamorphosized into Disco Butterfly. The true turning point came when the thin, pink glitter belt was added. It looked as though she fluttered straight in from a Donna Summer video. As usual, this doesn’t come without some relevant back-story. Of late, Stella has found the wonderfulness that is disco. Her #1 request that she repeatedly implores from the back seat is YMCA. Yes, everyone, my child is hooked on the Village People. Running a very close second is We Are Family, as in – I got all my sisters and me. In both cases she knows the words, and sings them with great gusto. Reason 376 we know, unquestionably, that she is our child.

I took Porter’s non-verbal cues of BEING UP ALL NIGHT that he wished to go as something nocturnal. This, coupled with the fact that he is getting four teeth at once and BITES ON EVERYTHING, made it a no-brainer that he should be a bat. He looked adorable, natch, and (along with his sister) posed for about a zillion photos .

We opted for a loop around the Arcata Plaza again this year, and after witnessing the unsavory types that trick-or-treat our neighborhood, I decided we would invite ourselves over to Dore & Lewis’s house for the remainder of the evening, so as not to have to pass out candy to the taller-than-I-am “kids” that ring our doorbell into the late hours of the night. Plus, that meant we didn’t have any left-over candy that I would surely consume by the fistful.

Little did I know that we would get to see one of the more memorable moments of the evening when Steve, Lewis and Porter all went to the door to hand out candy, as Steve casually remarked that they were dressed up as a gay couple who had just adopted their first baby.

Wedded Bliss

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Last night Stella and Porter attended their first wedding. Unsure of how kid-friendly the event would be, the original plan was that I would attend (alone) as the designated representative for the Walston family, and Steve would stay home and tend to the young ‘uns. As it turned out, this was an unpopular decision with many of the other wedding guests who, after the ceremony, insisted I call him and let him know that his, Stella’s and Porter’s presence was requested. This was good anyway since I had forgotten the gift on the dining room table.

While Steve and I took the opportunity to catch up with friends that we haven’t seen in years, Stella quickly became the life of the party. She became one of those wedding guests. You know, the ones who end up with a tie tied around their head, and incessantly request Free Bird from the DJ.

She participated in her first conga line:

stella

She got her groove on on the dancefloor:

stella

She managed to dance so well everyone backed up into a circle around her:

stella

She even managed to comandeer Lisa’s veil:

stella

Porter even managed to get in on the action. (Please disregard the fact that he is wearing overalls, and looks like he should be attending a hoe-down.)

porter

Aside from the fact that our kids proved their genetic heritage and tore the house down, Steve and I had the wonderful opportunity to see friends that life has cycled out of our orbit over the last years. Throughout the night, the word “full-circle” kept coming to mind. Some of these friends I have known since the very first days that I moved up here. Everyone has moved on to different places (both physically and metaphorically) and getting to see them all again, and catch up was so much fun.

On the way home in the car, Stella and I had one of those conversations that made me immediately relay it to Steve when I got home so that I wouldn’t forget.

“Hey Stella, did you have fun at the wedding tonight?”
“Yeah. Mommy, what is a wedding?”
“It is something where two people who really love each other say a bunch of nice things to one another and promise to be together for ever and ever. Then everyone helps them have a big party to celebrate.”
…silence for about 30 seconds.
“Mommy, I really love my grandparents.”
“Do you think you want to marry them?”
“Yeah.”

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Correction: I just realized that this was actually Stella’s second wedding. The first being Jodie & Anthony’s when she was 2 months old, and before she had realized the true scope of her party powers.
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My Friends: Dore

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Of all my peeps, Dore is one that I have gone to there and back with. She is one of the small handful of people I met when I very first moved up here, and the fact that she stuck with me through the better part of my 20s (a decade only scarcely less agonizing than my teens) says volumes. She likes tequila almost as much as I do, and she is the only person I know who considers rearranging her furniture as a recreational activity. We have gone through living alone and single, through dating and marriage, and in the 11 years that we have been friends she has managed to move away (Aptos) and come back, and away (San Carlos) and come back, and away (Monterey) and come back. She has officially landed herself on U-Haul’s wall of fame.

Dore and Stella

Although I am horrible when it comes to keeping in touch, we have always managed to stay in contact, and nowadays, somehow manage to talk on the phone at least twice a week. We often joke that our personalities are supremely opposite, yet it is purely incidental to our friendship – like after our house was burglarized and I became a paranoid lunatic, and she was quick to point out that I had upset the natural order of things by assuming her role. We are good that way together.

Dore and Porter

Friends like Dore come along very few times in a lifetime, and the amount of dirt we have on each other is enough to ensure that the friendship will last an eternity. That, and the fact that she actually volunteers to spend time with my children makes me want to weep with gratitude.