rich is 40

well, my husband is 40 now. when i first saw him he was probably 21, a cute guy i didn't know in a history class. whoa. we had veggie lasagna and penne and meatballs and rolls from lucca on valencia street, a huge chocolate rum cake from dianda's, a half keg of rolling rock beer, 4 bottles of jameson's, only 7 little kids, one whoopee cushion, 2 rented videos to keep the little kids happy, one injury (cousin natalie got whacked in the head by a giant horseshoe magnet), and a whole lot of karaoke going on. by the end of the night chris and rich were playing guitar duets lying on their backs on the living floor and we even played the point arena song for brian. maya and miles partied until 11 or so, and we paid for it with some tears at dinner time tonight but hey, worth it, right? to sing karaoke and get loud and obnoxious with a lot of friendly and long-known faces? maya dancing honky-tonk and little marta inventing endless permutations of whoopee cushion play and miles and andy pretending to poop objects and cracking each other up. kim was there with rich on her t shirt. uncle evan riled up the little ones but didn't whip them into a full-on frenzy. shhh, someone confided to me they planned to have children. oh yeah, and mike d and sheila's incredible rendition of summer lovin'

of course there were some loved people missing from this gathering. we take what we can get.

we put on the twinkly outside white christmas lights and i bragged about my city view, of the yards and trees and some open sky. i think if we could only see the backs of people's houses, or the sky only if we looked straight up, i couldn't take it. our downstairs neighbors came up around 10, their 3 year old blonde beautiful girl willow wanted to "see the band at miles' house."

4 things i heard that made me feel good: julia said i looked nice, even though i am feeling like an elephant these days. somebody i didn't see said this was a great place. brian said this party was just like the good old days with one of his good old brian smiles. and rich's big birthday toast was that we would all be toasting together at our 50th birthdays.