After SUCH a long time between posts I'm jammed with updates so want to get as much down today as I can. But I have no photos yet for the biggest news: I'm going to be a grandmother again for the third time in March! AND I bought a car this weekend. Incredible on both counts: it's been over eight years since I last owned a car, and over eight years since my daughter gave birth the last time! Funny.
I'm completely freaked out by the sudden, damned-near-unlimited possibilities of being a car owner after all this time. No more waiting in the winter dark on freezing cold, wet, windy street corners for an inevitably LATE Trimet bus! No more begging trips to the store from generous and kind, but busy! friends or having to pay a cabbie, no more (im)patient waits for invitations to the coast, declining invitations, or missing opportunities or classes because transportation wasn't possible. No more terrorizing rides with crazed poet drivers ever again either! :) No more hauling groceries home on my back, bags balanced on my shoulders, or pulling my little cart for a mile from Fred Meyer. ...sigh...
Yes, it's a late model, low-miles used import, but it has an automatic transmission for a luxurious change, a spacious trunk and gets pretty good mileage besides. AND it's a pretty color. I love that.
I promise to post a photo as soon as it stops raining long enough! I'm still working on getting my daughter to let me take a preggie portrait. More on that and her famous shyness later. She isn't due until spring so there's still time.
Last weekend my younger sister came to Portland and stayed with me while visiting her daughter (my niece), Tegan who's a student at Portland State. Marcie and I haven't spent extended time together since before she was married almost 30 years ago! It was a wonderful visit and we talked and talked about our parents and our own parenting and just families in general. Revelatory and validating at the same time. I'm hoping we'll all be getting together more regularly now Tegan lives here. It was just so much fun.
Marcie and Tegan made dinner for one of the nights of the visit. Spaghetti--Tegan's favorite. Well, it's kind of a Boykin favorite all around. Here they are at my stove:
Yes, it's true that all of the women in my family are great beauties--combined with our dazzling intellects and unfailing social grace, we are formidable. It's a curse.
.....................................................................
Doc's older brother, Raymond arrived a few weeks ago for a short visit and Doc requested a portrait at an old landmark downtown--where the McBride boys posed for an Easter Sunday shot in their matching sailor suits sometime in the late 1940s. It was a total hoot to shoot them together with their matching grey beards this time. Doc is in green, Ray in blue.
.....................................................................................................
Last Sunday night I celebrated the release of Night Bomb 2, a poetry anthology published by friends, Chris and Amber Ridenour. One of my recent poems is included and they will also be publishing my book, "Creosote" next. Anyway, I also celebrated the "opening" of my first photo show at World Cup Coffee at the same event! Here is a shot of a wall of my own photos taken that night! It was pretty damned fine fun to get to say I was the one who took those photographs. I'm really pleased with the way it all came together.
................................................................................................................
Also recently I got to do some portrait work for my friend and coworker, Cherise to help with her modeling portfolio--how cool is that?! Here are a few of my favorites. Speaking of beauties...
