Happy Birthday!

Today, I am 31 years old. A year ago today, I thought it might be fun to write about a different person every day for an entire year, and undertook that project without much thought as to how freakin’ difficult it might be to remember, articulate, and record 365 memories about 365 separate people.

In other words, I did it as I do many things: on a whim.

The thing is, I stuck with the whim this time. And I’m pretty darn proud of the results.

If I didn’t write about you, please don’t take offense. It doesn’t mean I don’t think about you, it just means that other memories popped into my head when I sat down to write.

Thank you for reading for this past year. It’s meant a lot to me to have an audience.

Let’s see what the next whim brings!

Love,
Lana

Carol

Carol, my mom, spent last night sleeping on our couch in the Airstream, and as you read this we’re bumming around Seattle on one of our all-too-few visits.

Mom and I have always been close, even through the hellish puberty years, and to this day she remains my closest girlfriend. So much of our times together hinge on the fact that we can always make each other laugh; whether the joke was intentional or not, well, that’s another story.

When I was growing up, Mom had two house rules:

1. No holding the cat when you’re naked.
2. No eating steak when you’re drunk.

If Dad and I could abide by these rules, the family was a happy unit; if not, well, someone wasn’t having a good day.

Mom is the most even-keeled person I’ve ever met, other than my husband. She’s often been the voice of rationality in my more heated moments, for which I’ve been grateful since I emerged from the womb.

I remember our vacation to Cancun when I was 13, when we giggled for a solid week about Juan Carlos, the group activities director who always wore a speedo, and his weiners…or “winners”, which is what he thought he was shouting into the microphone.

I remember flying in Dad’s plane when I was about 15, on our way to breakfast in Wisconsin. Mom and I were in the back seat, enjoying the ride, when suddenly she perked up, looked out my window, and waved. I jerked my head around to see who she was waving at, and just a moment too late I realized that we were in an airplane, thousands of feet above the ground, and of course there’s no one out there. Mom giggled to herself for weeks over that one.

In my twenties, I went through a period of time where I moved, a lot. Like four times a year for half a decade. Mom and her truck were always there to haul stuff around Minneapolis, and my living situation became kind of a running joke amongst her friends.

From my mother, I learned my best life lessons: be frugal, be funny, and try not to worry so much—everything will work out just fine. She’s been the best girlfriend I could ask for, and I’m looking forward to many more years together.

Dale

My father, Dale, has more stories associated with him than any other person I’ve ever met. Some of my favorite memories of Dad are of small-child-me curling up with him on the couch, or at the dinner table, and begging him to tell me stories of when he lived in Germany, or Alaska, or growing up in our small town.

His pet seal, Shithead, whom he rescued from death while living in Alaska is my all-time favorite Dad story. That, and how he wound up in Germany instead of being sent to Vietnam, and the time he found out his Amsterdam girlfriend was a hooker.

I remember learning to ride my old sparkly purple banana seat bike, and Dad rigged up a launchpad from some industrial truck parts so I could hover at the top of the hill until I was ready, and then launch myself down the slope, screaming the whole way with Dad’s laughter echoing off the barn.

Then there’s the early memory that taught me that life is to be cherished, because it can all change in an instant. When I was 9, almost 10, Dad shattered a few vertebrae in his neck in a diving accident, and was told he’d probably never move again below the neck. After a few choice words for the doctor who dared tell him that, and a lot of determination, Dad walked into our house a month later (on my tenth birthday!), stiff, sore, and a little worse for wear, but walking nonetheless.

Dad’s one of my all-time favorite people, at the very top of the A-list, and I look forward to seeing him a few times a year. One of my only regrets about moving to Seattle is that I’m no longer a two-hour drive from dropping in on him at his airplane hangar for a bear hug and coffee.

Mandy

Miss Mandy is my friend who lives just a few miles away. I met her through work, and we quickly became friends outside of work as well, which is a delicate balance to walk for some friendships.

I mean, most people are different in the office versus at home. It can be challenging to know what’s work-appropriate, you know?

Mandy and her husband invited Randy and I over for drinks and Rock Band one night a few months back, and they didn’t even throw me out when I attempted “Tangled Up in Blue” by Bob Dylan.

Seriously, nobody should attempt to sing that outside of the car and/or shower.

Gregg

I met Gregg in 2003, through a questionable-in-retrospect website. We became friends pretty quickly, and attended some of my favorite shows together…RJD2, Thievery Corporation, Kings of Convenience, Neko Case, the Hold Steady, and Jolie Holland.

The KofC show in particular was spectacular…nobody in the crowd breathed or really even moved for the duration of the set. I’d never been to a show that held everyone so captive that there was pure silence for more than an hour.

But then again, the Jolie Holland show was memorable in its own way, too, as she chewed out the crowd for not listening closely enough.

I haven’t found anyone quite so compatible with my tastes in music since moving away.

Haley

Haley is a friend from college, and one memory in particular stems from our trip to Scandinavia.

She had scored the most fantastic pair of knee high black boots with stainless steel heels, truly sculptural and a little too edgy for the liking of our director.

Those boots were stolen from our tour bus when some Norwegian hoodlums broke in.

I suspect there’s still a tiny bit missing from Haley’s heart, still stung over the loss of those boots.

Lael

Lael is from South Africa, and I met her when she was 10 and I was 18. She had come to Minnesota with her mother for the summer, to work at the church camp I was cooking for.

Lael wasn’t techically a camper, and therefore didn’t have to be with a counselor at all hours of the day and night, so we wound up spending a fair chunk of the summer together.

We would swing for hours, or go canoeing out to Bear Island, and sneak into the kitchen at night for ice cream. That was made especially easy because I had the key.

Victor

I carpooled to work with Victor for more than a year after I moved to Seattle. One night, in a freak snowstorm, our commute home took five hours. We had to push the car at times, and navigate all sorts of abandoned vehicles, backups, jackknifed trucks, and panicky snow drivers.

On the upside, it was a gorgeous evening, and Victor (who’s originally from Panama) helped me hone my Spanish skills.

Sabrina

Sabrina is the doctor who removed the staples from my leg, post-Mexico surgery.

I was nervous for that day, as I hadn’t yet seen my leg. It had been under wraps for about two weeks, and I wasn’t sure what I’d see.

My leg was so ugly, it looked like a sausage had been stapled to the back of a hairless cat. I cried, and then she plucked out all forty staples, one by one, the whole time telling me that my leg wouldn’t look like that forever.

Leroy

Leroy is the bartender at The Melrose here in Renton. He’s fantastic at what he does, and appears to enjoy his job quite a bit.

One evening a couple of months ago, Randy and I were in there for drinks and dessert, and a drunken woman told Randy that he looks like Gilbert Gottfried. On our way out that evening, Leroy called out “Good evening, Mr. Gottfried!”, to which Randy replied “Oh, you can call me Gilbert”.

Jolene

Jolene was the radiologic technologist at my orthopedic surgeon’s office when I broke my leg. She was always very gentle, and took the time to explain everything to me, even all of my “I wanna be a rad tech” kind of questions.

She was part of the experience that inspired me to pursue this as a career; I owe her at least a blog post.

Mary

Mary owns a shop here in Renton, called Happy Delusions. She grew up here, and moved back to start this business. I liked her the moment I met her, and she’s having a great success with the shop.

Basically, it’s Etsy on a local level, where local crafters can display and sell their wares for a really reasonable booth fee.

I had some items in her shop for a while, but they didn’t move and I got discouraged. Not to mention, I didn’t really have any time to devote to making stuff at that point anyway.

Kevin

Kevin lived in the room above me in my freshman year of college.

He played his bass guitar, with amp, at all hours of the night.

This continued up until the day my roommate and I blew the circuits to the whole hall by running two hairdryers simultaneously…Kevin must have thought it was him.

He stopped using the amp then, and never started again for the rest of the year.

Unless, and this just occurred to me now, we blew his amp along with the circuits. Oops.

Sally

Sally was a long-time fixture in the Owner Services department of the timeshare place where I worked. She was endlessly patient, and we all admired her for having stuck with it for over a decade.

Sally had hip-replacement surgery during the time that I knew her, and I gave her my extra-grippy off-road crutch tips that were left over after my own leg ordeal. I left that job while she was out on her convalescence, but I hope her hips feel better than they have in decades.

Juan Carlos

When my parents took me to Cancun at the tender age of 13, we stayed at the Radisson right on the beach. The hotel had a man on staff to coordinate games of water polo and beach volleyball, and his name was Juan Carlos.

Juan Carlos spent every waking moment in a banana hammock/Speedo. Juan Carlos’ weiner was constantly almost on public display.

Well, Juan Carlos would try to recruit vacationers for the volleyball teams by saying into his microphone “do you want to be one of Juan Carlos’ winners?”

Except, with his Spanish accent, what he really asked the crowd was “do you want to be one of Juan Carlos’ WEINERS?”

My mom and I giggled all week, wondering how many weiners he had in there.

Rimas

Rimas is a famous contemporary clay artist, and I’ve always really admired his aesthetic.

In my senior year of college, I went to Denver with Lois for NCECA. It’s ostensibly a conference for education in the ceramic arts, and it is, but it’s also a huge party.

I found myself having dinner with Rimas at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse, and I was very flattered that he paid a lot of attention to me through dinner. After dessert, when we all got up to leave, he leaned over and whispered to me that my blouse had been open since the appetizer.

Brian

My cousin Brian is the kind of guy who likes snowmobiles, four-wheeling, and country music.

When we were in high school, he ridiculed me mercilessly when he found out that I liked Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

God forbid.

Bev

Bev is my mother’s cousin, and was also the school librarian when I was in elementary school. I remember story time in the library, with her careful measured words and the time she took to point at the pictures.

I was always on the edge of my seat, silently urging her to speed up and turn the page! I was impatient that there were so many pictures in the books…couldn’t we just hear the stories and make up the pictures in our heads?

Lisa

Lisa lived down the hall in my freshman year of college. She had a kind of bowlegged saunter that really caught the eye, made you wonder if she’d grown up riding horses.

Lisa was with me for my first foray into St. Sabrina’s, the site of my first “real” piercing (left tragus). She got her bellybutton done, and spent the rest of the academic year wearing short shirts to show off the crusty little gem in her navel.

Elaine

Elaine was a lady who attended my church. I remember that she was the superstar of the church choir and had the warbliest vibrato voice I’d ever heard. In my little-kid brain, I always associated her with Lady Elaine Fairchild from the Neighborhood of Make Believe on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, even though she looked nothing like a gin-blossomed sock puppet.