This is Rachel Lee Walsh. She’s pretty awesome.

This was the first time it occurred to me to snap photos of our studio. Rob likes to have the microphones just so, and you can tell in the sound quality of my final project. If you need a sound engineer in Brooklyn you should hire him and pay him lots of money. He’s worth it.

Rachel and he were scheming to play together, because she noticed his upright base in the corner of our sound booth and found out that he used to play blue grass. She has a country/folk/blues kind of thing going on. I think they’d rock together.

At one point in the interview I say to her, “Oh, you are of my people” which is a weird thing to say, I know, but the way she writes songs is from the perspective of wanting to tell a human story, and this is the way I do my podcast. Her writing is both clever and simple.

This is Rachel’s guitar strap, and I think it’s SO cool. It’s from Kelly Horrigan.

To listen to our interview, go to the interview page at HeyBrooklyn.com or type Hey Brooklyn into iTunes.

1. Watched the first eight episodes of Lost, which I’ve never seen before. (Yeah, only five years too late!) I’m intrigued, but I think I’d be more into it if there wasn’t a supernatural element. A deserted island with a unique mix of plane crash survivors should lend itself to dozens and dozens of compelling story lines without the added necessity of weird, ghostly goings on. It just seems like lazy story telling to me. We’ll see. One question, though: why are Evangeline Lilly’s armpits not hairy? Oh, is that part of the magic of the island, too? Brilliant.

2. Made Rob make me me soup and fetch me pancakes from the deli down the road. Also he: patted my back, brought me fresh tissues, and listened while I told him, “I’m dying, no really, I am.”

3. Checked my temperature several hundred times, just to see. I think the “lifetime” battery in my digital thermometer is starting to bite it.

4. Consumed half a dozen trays of Lemon-Lime Gatorade ice cubes. I hate them until I’m sick, and then I can’t get enough. Thus, they are a good indicator of my getting better-ness: when they start to repulse me, I’m coming around.

5. Did some browsing at DownEast Basics, which seems to be a store for those of us that spent high school dressed head-to-toe in Old Navy. I discovered them over at Design Mom. Good stuff.

6. Had several in-depth, fever-induced conversations with Matty, who is, by far, the best listener of the three. I talked, and he blinked back at me. It was just what I needed.

This is a jar of water Rob captured from Mahoney Falls in Denali National Park Ketchikan, Alaska in 2005. This was the trip that drew a dividing line around our relationship: when he left, he was my guy-I-sort-of-liked-and-was-sort-of-taking to-but-not-really. When he returned and I first laid eyes on him after he was away, I knew he was my future husband.

He brought some of the waterfall back with him and we “sealed” it with masking tape; now there is a layer of algae at the bottom.

I’d have thrown it out ages ago because GROSS! but I can’t bring myself to. Every time we try, I get choked up and say, “Let’s hold onto it for a little bit longer” and we do. It’s bigger than all of that, too: I was never clear on if he was bringing it back for himself and wanted to show me, or if he was giving it to me. I never had to find out, either; it was arguably our first joint possession.

Now I’m slated to move it to our fourth home, one of the smallest yet, and it’s time to get rid of some stuff. A lot of things were no-brainers: couch that I never liked anyway: gone. Ugly bookshelf I bought out of desperation from some girl around the corner, OUT! I’ve become a pretty ruthless thrower-outer person*. But this is a tough one.

It’s not like I don’t have another memento of the trip, either; he also brought me back a cheap plastic snow globe which I broke almost immediately. (I have a thing: I break any and all snow globes. Seriously, don’t let me near your prized collection. If we go into a gift shop together, Rob sets up bright orange cones around the snow globe section and tells me it’s closed and I can’t touch them, because I WILL break one. I have no idea why.) I saved the now dry and snow-less base, showing a picture of a dog sled and, I think, a palm tree (???) and with a jagged plastic edge (because, yeah, I’m hard-core and break plastic snow globes). I’ll keep that. But moldy four-year old jar of water?

This is, by far, the weirdest thing I’ve ever been sentimental about.

*****

*What’s the word for anti-packrat? Because I can’t think of one, and there should be one. And also: I am aware this is shamelessly lazy writing, but I’m moving, so whatever. Bite me.

Yesterday we went to Connecticut to continue dealing with the basement of my grandma’s house. The second it was legally ours we emptied our storage space and deposited half our earthly possessions down there. A lot of my things were already there from when I lived with her before, from ’02 to ’04, and now it’s all a mix of stuff that we don’t really need but can’t quite throw away. What’s the word for that? There has to be one.

Junk, probably.

We took the dogs with us. Every time we go they are absolutely thrilled with the huge grassy backyard full of new smells to roll in. We found a partially deflated ball in the woods, probably from a neighbor, and Tino played with that. Grandma found Matty an old tennis ball in the garage and threw it for him.

The cool thing about my dogs is that they know better than to poop on the nice grass. They all politely trotted to the wooded area to hide themselves, and pooped in the piles of decaying leaves. They don’t know not to roll in animal pee, though.

Needless to say we didn’t get as much work done as we could have, but that was fine. It’s been ages since I “went out to play”, and it seemed much more important to goof off in the fresh air.

Rob found the handle of a paint roller in the garage, and we played a round of stickball. Matty was both infield and outfield, trying to get his tennis ball back. We tried to make Leeloo and Tino in on the game, too, but they just blinked at us when we called them, and then went back to zoning out in the sunshine.

It was a really good day.

It’s fire-in-the-backyard season. I’m not sure if this is legal in Brooklyn or not, but if the police come knocking on my door trying to confiscate my fire table, I’m going to tell them they should bust the crack dealer across the street first. You know?

These marshmallows are effing fantastic toasted.

We cleaned out the backyard so we could hang out in it and enjoy the fire table and have everything be neat.  I’ll plant grass eventually.  We don’t have a hose, so I have to wait for the rain.

I spent my whole weekend with Rob.  We slept, we ate out, we ate in, we did yardwork, we did stuff I’m not going to talk about, we watched TV and we played with the dogs.

It was a good weekend (except for the part about Bea Arthur dying, which is NOT OK.  Also, the swine flu is not ok, either.  But everything else was good.)

photo by Rob

I certainly don’t cook like this for myself.

If you need me, I’ll be… oh, nevermind. Just call before you come over.

I don’t think people are supposed to be so attached to one another that being apart for a few days is painful, but I am, and he is, and we miss each other terribly.

I stayed home because of the money, because he would be busy anyway, and because Matty has a horrible ear infection that needs daily attention, and I don’t trust anyone else to do it properly or without causing him panic and pain. But I wish I was there, and not just because he’s in a city I want to see, either, but because every single person that he meets this weekend, that he has a beer with and that gets to hear him give a presentation has no idea… NONE… of how lucky they are at that moment to be in the company of the most wonderful person in the world.

I’m bummed out.