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“A Poem of Friendship”

We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have

We are not friends
because of the laughs we spend
but the tears
we save

I don’t want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together

Nikki Giovanni, Love Poems

Profiled at Southwest Minneapolis Patch

Neighborhood family profiles are a regular feature at Patch.com. Missy and I had breakfast with our friendly neighborhood reporter and he wrote us up for Southwest Minneapolis Patch. We talked about how much we’ve loved our first year living in our neighborhood and our thoughts on family given an impending Twin Cities Pride festival and the political climate in Minnesota.

Chastity Brown’s New CD “High Noon Teeth”

Chastity Brown played for us at our wedding ceremony and is one of my favorite local musicians. Last weekend she released a new CD, High Noon Teeth, for which she received a lot of great press. Below are a couple videos.

On Love and Joy

Life for me has simply gotten better and better since I met Missy. It’s largely due to Missy, but it’s also partly coincidence with the trajectory of my life. Maybe Missy came into my life because I was on this upward swing.

I’ve often remarked to myself and to her that I can’t believe how great it feels to, well, to feel so great. Now I understand how all those songs and poems get written. While I’ve been happy for my friends who’ve followed this happy path before me, now I really get what this step of life meant for them.

Similarly, I get how people – even if they’re supportive of you – don’t always want to hear all the details of the wedding planning or your constant exclamations of how happy you are and how wonderful life is. I completely understand that if you’re not in a place in your own life where you can empathize with that, it’s a little hard to be genuinely happy for someone else’s joy. And that’s not to say that you have to be happily partnered to be happy for someone else’s happy partnership; it just means that you’re probably a happy joyful person. Up until about three years ago, I was not a happy, joyful person.

So the point of sharing all this is that the influx of love and support and genuine enthusiasm from our friends and family has so moved me, I don’t even know what to do with myself. Missy and I are happy together inside our own little world together, but to feel that influx of love from outside of our bubble has been… I don’t even have words for it. I tweeted not long ago that I don’t want to be that person that babbles on about their wedding all the time; I received a response (in so many words) that if I’m really having a good time with all this, I need to go ahead scream it from the rooftops. It’s not even about the wedding itself, it’s the expression of love from people who mean the world to me that has me flying high these days.

Thank you.