tonight and the rest of my life

this is a long one guys - sorry! i'm an english major. i can't tell the story without details. so here goes:

well we had our bachelor/bachelorette bash and it turned out to be quite the royal event in our humble little town. ruebi said (by telephone, she couldn't make it) that darin and i are the king and queen of placerville and i like the sound of that! it appears that everyone we know in town pretty much joined us for a wild celebratory night.

first, on thursday morning darin had left with six of his friends: zack pangborn, mikie, jamie van camp, seth, zach nelson, and justin haney for an overnight hiking trip. they arrived home sweaty and dirty and happy after i spent a long morning of cleaning and prettying up my home on friday in preparation for my girlie party. i would not let the boys touch anything or stick around too long. but they were all happy to go to coloma for a few hours to play botchyball or croquet or something in the park and drink beer and get pizza.

so rebecca arrived first and mary and kim quickly joined us. mary had brought paper bags full of clothes and jewelry and lovely things like that to give away (she's big time into simplifying right now) so the three of us delved on in...kim even got a few items i think. mary gave me the cutest vintage bathing suit i have EVER SEEN; it's aquamarine colored with little umbrellas all over it and a skirty bottom. i am so in love with it. also a gorgeous old cream colored dress with butterfly sleeves that's my other new favorite thing on earth. and a bracelet made by a local guy from the flea market. anyway suzanne arrived next bringing with her the lovely and amazing ladies sara meisner and jessica einhorn. matt and amy you will meet them at our wedding and jess has the most infectious laugh you've ever heard. she is a college professor of anthropology although younger than me, she's brilliant and darling all at once.

so us seven girls headed up in the van to madrona vineyards to do a little winetasting. it was closing at five and we got there about five minutes before five. this was sort of prearranged with our friend tim wright who works there in the cellar making wine. when we walked in, noisy and laughing and wild, a few quiet older individuals were studiously tasting at the counter and a lady who worked there said, "is one of you heather beatty?" to which i blushingly responded and she said, i'll get tim for you. so we proceeded to have a gloriously fun time, as tim poured us our little tastes (and we got to sample about twenty different wines so it was a long and very social process) we gossipped and joked and were just plain old ridiculous. we basically laughed our booties off. it was 8:00 when we got home!!! i was thinking like an hour up there!

so back at home, addie had made these absolutely delicious salads - a quinoa mix salad and a mexican cabbage slaw salad - both a bit spicy and very flavorful. kim had made a wonderful fruit salad and addie made jasmine tea with mint and honey, in my big crystal punchbowl. there were tiny candles everywhere and hydrangeas in vases and all the craft stuff was set out. mikie and mom showed up soon too, to eat with us and hang out. mikie was joyful. mom was so sweet - busy working on making food, trying to help with everything and everyone was dying for her to stay longer but she was so tired. thanks to her we had the hit of the party - a giant pan of bean dip! by this time some of the guys had arrived: tim wright had come to join us and brought a few bottles of wine which we got into without delay. darin showed up all tan and tipsy with scott sowa (who LOVES our parents by the way) and jacob and alisa, our beautiful friends who got married last weekend and just got back from costa rica.

some of us sat down to work on the craft project - magnets for the wedding favors. random people got into the painting and glittering process and others were mingling and drinking and such. more and more people showed up. i kind of want to try to list everyone. besides the aforementioned, here goes: mikie, stan, jamie vancamp, nelson, seth, jessie vasquez, anthony (who's moving into our house on roosevelt) justin haney, bridget...i don't know. there were at least thirty people. at midnight we locked up the house and the entire troop WALKED down to main street to go to the hillsider. i can't believe we didn't get harrassed by cops.

we took the hillsider by storm. all our freaky friends in all their crazy individual beauties. yes, this is the HILLSIDER i'm talked about - used to be gil's - you all know the place. gross, right? well scott sowa is the manager there now so i think it might get cooler. as for last night, it was just cool because WE were all there. walked through the bar i would see the faces of all these cute and crazy wondrous people i love and it made my heart burst with joy.

addie, mikie and i had some good beatty family moments of dancing ridiculously together. everyone danced like there was no tomorrow. the owner, michael, was the dj, and i think that especially for us, when we started dancing he immediately played modest mouse and changed the tone of the music to stuff we loved, even dumb stuff after that, we just couldn't stop dancing! kim had a blast with all these friends of mine that she doesn't know very well, she fit right in and everyone loved her. she liked my "bachelorette" party better than her own, she said! although she ended up crying her eyes out later because they called darin and i back into the bar after it locked up for a shot on the house and they wouldn't let her in and she was saying "but she's my best friend in the whole world!" picture this in kim's drunken, glossy eyed tearfulness. i had no idea what was going on but she walked home alone and got in her car and was going to leave but mikie stayed with her and talked to her until i got there and put her lovingly to bed.

mikie - you were a gem. you ARE a gem. i appreciate your endless energy and zest for life. i truly do.

addie and mom - you were both the real queens of the night. you made my house and party so pretty and fun and memorable.

the rest of you who couldn't be with us - i will see everybody next weekend and I CAN"T WAIT!!! i am starting to think there are going to be about a million people crammed into my backyard but hey, the more the merrier. nothing better than celebrating the love of your life with all the rest of your loved ones.

went to sleep at five am. got called into work at 9. oh well, it wasn't too bad. i made it through.

now i'm home to daydream about all you i love and to try to get busy fixing up my house again and getting down to the nitty gritty of planning this wedding!