Moonshine Junkyard

kind of. dark river is playing one faraway show. here's the plan: take a trip up the pacific coastline and meet our friends to play a show at a loggers' tavern in blue lake, california. so i'll be gone for a few days. but i'll be romping through the green mistylands of the redwood forests and the most romantic and beautiful highway in the whole wide world. faretheewell friends!

this is my grandma g. georgia to be exact. we call her "georgie" and she is 98 years old. that's right. 98. she shares a birthday with my brother mikie and we got to take her out to dinner and share in the presence of her shining soul. she still lives alone. she eats oatmeal with blueberries every morning, with a cup of hot chocolate. she remembers all of her grandkids' and great-grandkids' birthdays. and there are A LOT of them and even great-great-grandkids. she still loves my grandfather whom i never met; he died when my dad was twenty. she is about four and a half feet tall...teeny tiny. my dad, below on the left, does so much for her and she relies on him for a lot because she can't see very well or get around very easily. for years and years her favorite thing was to walk to the bus station in sacramento and ride the bus all over creation to do her errands and to go to bingo. now she can't walk as far as the bus station

my brother is a pisces, a rapscallion, and a bandit of love and magic. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIGS! or as darin would say, the free-wheelin mikie beatty! i miss you dreadfully today on your birthday, thinking about your roguish charm. hope that land of the "angels" appreciates your brilliance, cause it outshines every other star in sight. can't wait till you're back in the midst of our madness: and how old ARE you???? ha ha, i'll never tell. cause i like how mysterious you are like that. you're a dreamboat mikie, a lover and a dreamer. i love you kid.

have you seen this: because i watched it last night and i have to admit: i actually sort of loved it. (and so did darin, crazy huh?)at least as much as you can love a totally melodramatic 1990s teen chick flick based on a book that is much much better (i'm assuming, cause it's by joyce carol oates). but it had heart, and the sprawling portland setting and bridges and creepy abandoned house by the river sealed the deal for me. oh, yeah, and the girls sitting in the dark by candlelight bonding cermoniously, sound familiar ?   but what i really loved most of all was jenny lewis as the sheepish and shy redhead rita who takes revenge on her pervert teacher. i sympathized because of her inability to dissect a frog: that's her on the bottom left. niceness personified. she speaks in exclamation points and is a big dork. so......yeah. it wasn't until the end of the movie that i figured out that this jenny lewis who plays rita is indeed THE jenny lewis, and

for a couple of days, oh the sunshine we had! oh the sunshine... yes! this: it was so magnificent and bright and strong that i felt it warming my very bones. and i knew it was truly the pure solution to all human ills. and it was utter bliss, and i wrote lists of everything that inspires and i danced around making wild shadows in the grass and being a total maniac. me and my girls spent the whole two days outside, with a stack of books and a journal and music. here's beanie jane and i rolling and stretching and loving and purring in the sun: we even made a new friend with super cool front paws: we dubbed him pluto. today it was cloudy again but that's okay too because i've got this: and a ladies' tea party and clothing swap to attend this eve... so welcome rain, show me what you got; we can handle it because we have LOVE and a FIRE in the woodstove and our bodies are now a teeny bit stronger from that SUN.

the other night i was exhausted after work, snacking on fudge and looking at blogs when my friends called me to go explore a cave at 8 pm. i was like, um, yeah right. that sounds way too cold, uncomfortable, and scary to make me get up off my lazy ass. then i was like, wait. wait just a minute. who am i to be such a loser? i love adventures, right? let's keep that in mind self. pulled on jeans under the nightie and went out into the cold, uncomfortable scary night air with the best group of lively explorers a girl could want! jorden is a science teacher. so....we're safe right? i still can't believe i went down in there! by the way, what i fondly call a "cave" is actually an abandoned mine. does that make it more or less scary? once you creep through that freaky opening and down into the earth a bit, it opens up enough to stand. i was breathing easier...except for the scary log that seems to be holding the whole thing up? oh, and werid broken do

and i'm proud of my valentine. complete with walt whiman poetry. LOVE

Rebecca and Zack had their Valentine's party last night and all the cuties got decked out and ate tons of homemade goodies. We even got to see our San Francisco friends this time! Like the lovely CarolAnn who is moving soon to a farm. (oh by the way Darin shaved his beard into this crazy moustache. Just to spice up V-day a little even though I gave him hell for it!) We got to hang out with Ryann's sweet friend Carla from Argentina. And brush up on the old Spanish. These two went stag . (Is that word for real?) Rachel and Lesley sharing the love by the treat table, which we later strewed with lace doilies and pink and purple bras and panties and scarves! Group photo madness! The new tradition. It was especially rambunctious this time, but I really love tiny Sylvan's expression up front. We played a game. I forget what it was called, but it involved three different stages of trying to get your team to guess random words or phrases. I have to say