Category: comings & goings

So many anniversaries: today, 15 years ago, I met the person I married.

Some days it is hard to imagine how much we have been through in that time, and other days it is as if nothing has changed.

Still other days I am astonished by the luck I had in finding someone who loves me so much, who has taken such good care of me through some difficult stuff, and who has, in turn, asked much of me.

(for life’s not a paragraph)

This website is officially 10 years old today – it may be older than that, but that’s the earliest screen capture on file with the wayback machine. The online forums were there right from the start, too, when the site had a whopping 3355 hits. (I’m at 1.6 million or so now.)

There is no evidence of the blog until November 2003, except of course for my own posts on it, which start in August 2003, but either way, there is no denying that 2013 is my 10th anniversary year. I was writing My Husband Betty for the first three months of 2003, so finally, I will admit it: it took me three months to write, only.

Either way: it’s been a long time. Love to all of you who’ve followed me through the years – and some of you really have been reading the whole time, which blows my mind. An author could not be more thankful for such loyal readers.

But of course, as with the books, a very special thanks to my wife, who was then my husband, but who was always the one who made the blog machine work. She created the first website, convinced me to have the forums, and the blog, and then, later, challenged me to blog daily. She keeps challenging me, too, to write, to talk, to keep on; I would not trade this decade with her for anything in the world.

And if you’d like to make a donation in honor of my 10th anniversary, you can do so: to me, of course, or to NCTE (which also turns 10 this year), or to Fair Wisconsin’s Education Fund (which is also tax deductible).

So my lovely wife has been working a lot of hours for a lot of months in order to create Lawrence University’s new website. It launched this week and I for one wanted to congratulate her on this gigantic project. Well done, doll!

… and I manage to return home with the flu or a stomach virus or whatever miserable thing it is. But at least, at least! it waited until all the good stuff was over, & even waited until the flight was over, because that would have sucked in a big way.

Wow, it’s snowing again, for like the 18th time this week, feels like.

I have decided that there will be an exclamation point next to my little weather app until April, although at that point, of course, tornado season starts.

Making it through winters here is a little like making it home on the subway during rush hour: exhausting, but you really do feel like you’re made of sterner stuff than you thought.

This is the view from our front step.