Kaffeeklatsch

Hey, guys. I'm sure a few of you are wondering, what the heck's going on with Lynn? A few things.

Hey everyone!
My most memorable valentines was the year it landed on knitting circle and Lou ate some of my candies. ( she ate hers already )

Hello, world! Josie FINELY left her computer!
I've been planning this for weeks!

My name is Snow Apple Bear. I am thirteen ( in bear years ) and married to Little Anne Mama.

"And it looks like we made it once again....."

My sister's favorite band is The Monkees. They are not my favorite band, but they are close to it.

I think I told you guys we were going to sell our extra lot. Well, we put it on the market and it sold--with a backup offer--nearly full price in less than three days.

This is very good news. It means we'll be mortgage-free. It also means we'll lose our big yard, and I'll finally say goodbye to a dream I had for myself: urban self-sufficiency. Ever since I bought this place I wanted to have a big garden, chickens, maybe a wood-fired oven.

But first I got divorced, and my gardening nut ex-husband moved out. I remarried John, but he really hates yard work--despises it. And then I got sick. So there was this yard, slowly going fallow. Nothing I did to get help with the yard worked. I had my chickens, but it became an enormous battle with the kids to get them to do their chores and feed them.

So really, it's clear. That dream is never going to come true. I don't have the family support, and I don't have the strength. I'm Not That Guy, as we say around here, though I really wanted to be That Guy. The sale of the lot means financial relief, but it also means goodbye to my chickens, who are already in their new home. And it means goodbye to the idea of me as an urban farmer. Bye, Farmer Lynn.

I miss my chickens already.

Looking for a good Halloween read? Novelist MJ Rose--a longtime TNH sponsor--is releasing her romantic thriller The Reincarnationist as a free ebook between now and the 31st of October!

Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist's bomb, only to be haunted by near hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest whose dangerous congress with Sabina, one of the Vestal Virgins, poses a transgression so serious the lovers will face a certain death if exposed. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood and images of furtive liaisons and violence descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.

A trail of present-day murders takes us deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of ancient gems or memory stones whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones' promise to "assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation" sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.

MJ is releasing the second book in this series soon, so you'll want to read this one quick!

I point to this every Halloween because it's just too damn funny. There are some naughty words, so if that bothers you, don't click.

A friend of mine is a BIG fan of Hannah Montana. I have relised all the girls I know like, Hannah Montana, while me and Lou like the
Monkees, Heart, and Beatles.

Well! That summer just ripped by. We didn't even get summer here in Oregon until July, and then poof, it's September. Josie turned 11 yesterday (!), totally took me by surprise. Well, not that much; we have a party planned and everything. Just snuck up on me.

This has been the busiest summer in memory for us. I got a new bike and have started riding as much as possible. This is monumental. Less than two years ago, I couldn't walk to the end of the block, and I wasn't allowed to drive. We NEVER thought I'd be able to do some of the things I can do now.

We went camping. I am not a camper. I'm still not a camper. The people we camped with didn't understand that if I don't sleep the night before, I am no good the next day--really no good--and I will do what I have to do, namely take it very, very easy. We learned a lot about what we need when camping, though, and next time it'll be easier. Next time I'll remember a copy of Roberts' Rules of Order and motel reservations down the highway, just in case.

I completely lost the will to knit. No idea why. Today I finished two socks that have been sitting on the needles languishing, waiting to be bound off. I feel in the mood to knit again, in fact, even saw something in the new issue of Knitty that I might attempt.

And I've been writing. A lot. Nothing I can show you here, but it's felt very, very good indeed.

This is Henry:

Hello, dear ones! Things are nuts, and I am being torn in several directions right now. I'm still here checking on things, and eventually I'll be blogging more as I get things straightened around in my head and my life. But for now, hey, new pictures!

John, Josie, me and Louisa, taken in April--I think on Lou's birthday, but I'm not entirely sure.

Me and the girls, taken the same day. Pix courtesy Gramma Arlene (hi mom!). I'll be back, I promise!

She won! she won! she won! squeal! If you heard screaming, it was the girls and me.

You KNOW how I am about Dancing with the Stars. Kristi totally pwned the boys tonight, though, you know, I am so not sad Jason and Cristian made it to the finals. Holy cats, them are two gorgeous men, and I could look at them a lot longer than these last few weeks. But Kristi deserves it, completely and utterly. She is shorter than they are and still stood head and shoulders over them all.

Go Kristi!

Yesterday was my last day at work, I'm officially a SAHM again. This is mostly due to the fact that I was terrible at the job and miserable about it.

I.M. Town is a story. these people are main characters.

Caroline: the actress. Soul card: The Hierophant.

Tia: oldest one. Soul card: The Hierophant.

My Valentine's Day present to JJ was a bag full of goodies that cannot be discussed on a family forum. The girls got bouquets of flowers from their daddy. And I got three hours to myself at a writing workshop featuring Kim Stafford.

I haven't been to a writing workshop in 25 years. That last time, I embarrassed myself so thoroughly with my own pomposity that I couldn't face doing another one and have actively avoided the teacher (a fairly prominent regional novelist) assiduously ever since.

One of the prompts was to write a love poem about the most beloved inanimate object in our houses. Since I have fibromyalgia, that would be my Tempurpedic bed, which I worship. Here is the poem:

Oh, bed. Oh, my bed.
In winter, you are comically hard when I first slip into you
Needing my heat to soften you to the point where you don't feel like a frozen board
Like I'm lying on the tundra, the permafrost
But oh, my bed
When you warm under my body, you mold around me and hold me up
All flannel and warmth, reflected back, my own warmth captured and transmitted into softness
And next to me, under the down and chenille
My boy, drowsy and moaning in his sleep
His mouth so soft and childlike and the little gray patch in his beard
I turn over on my side, careful of the box in my chest that keeps my heart from stopping
And you hold me up another night and let me sleep
Oh, my bed.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.

I'm getting old. I can tell, because silly things make me cry.

Today, for instance, I got a notice that someone had looked at my profile on classmates.com. Went and looked; it was an old boyfriend of sorts who'd looked me up before, no big thing. But elsewhere on the page, I saw a name, a name I'd sorta been looking for, a name I'd even googled once. For here, I'll call him A. He was...well, I never really said it before today, not even to myself, but he was my first love.

A was brilliant. I mean, really brilliant. I mean, I'm smart and I felt slow around him. I mean, he didn't take calculus in high school; he helped teach calculus. He was sweet. And he was beautiful. Stunningly, amazingly, unconsciously, heartbreakingly beautiful. As much as I love my husband, and as handsome as he is--and friends, my boy is darling--A remains the most beautiful boy I have ever seen. Green eyes, golden hair, swimmers body, perfect teeth. And he liked me, for a little while at least. He was the first boy who ever asked me out, and I worshipped the ground he walked on.

Of course, it didn't end well.

One of my greatest regrets in life is that I had the chance to kiss him, for him to be the first boy I ever kissed, and I blew it. I was in his arms, and we were saying goodnight, and I went to kiss him but I was so nervous I kissed his cheek. And then the moment was gone and I never got another one.

For all I know, he's gay. For all I know, I was just something to pass the time when he came home from college (he was two years older). For all I know, the embarrassed look he gave me as his sneering best friend drove them away the last time I saw him wasn't embarrassment but shame. For all I know, he's never thought of me once since. For all I know, he's thought of me as often as I've thought of him, but I doubt it.

I just wrote him a quick note via classmates. I don't expect to hear back, so I told him what I needed to tell him: That he had been so special to me, and that I hoped he was well and happy.

And now I'm sitting here crying. I'm nearly 47 years old and I'm crying over a boy from high school. I'm getting old.

I'M BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
It feels so great! Pretty soon i won't be ten. In nine months, i'll
be ELEVEN! I'm so excited! But today, was I.M.T.s prime moment!

We got an HDTV a couple of weeks ago; our old tube TV bit the dust much earlier than we expected. Tonight John got a DTV antenna for it so we can watch digital off the air. We'll be getting digital cable once the new paycheck kicks in, but for now this is good.

And we're sitting here like a couple of stoners watching Conan O'Brien going, "Dude! Check out the detail on the background! Omigod! the couch cushions! Do we have any Doritos?"

Apart from that, I haven't seen Conan in a while, and I've heard that during the writers' strike (go writers) that he's really smokin' funny--just basically being Conan. And maybe it's the stoner thing from the DTV, or maybe he's just hilarious, because...he is smokin' funny. My stomach hurts from laughing.

He's a frickin' brilliant entertainer, and if you haven't checked him out lately, you should. He may even be *funnier* without writers. I mean, right now he's singing rockabilly, really playing the guitar, with Japanese subtitles. You hadda be there, but I'm glad I was. I can't wait until he takes over the Tonight Show.

Plus also, Conan? The beard is working for you. Keep it after the strike.

Hi! I'm back! Long time no type! blah blah! I have so much to tell you. I'm not even sure where to start. Suffice it to say, to begin with, I'm feeling better. I haven't been depressed like this--when I wasn't sick or something--in a while.

It always seems to be, though, just before a major change in my life. This time around, it's in my creative life. I'm not ready to share the details of that, and may never be, but the short version is that I finally broke through to something I've been trying to do for a very long time. (More after the cut.)

Courtesy my buddies at the Merc, I present to you, the most awesome Beatles/Led Zep cover band ever: The Beatnix, doing "Stairway to Heaven" Beatles-style. No, srsly.

Hi.