This video is a good snippet of why I long for summer. Today was the warmest day of the year so far, and reminded me that it is not always hard to live here.  I literally skipped from the house to the car while I carried buckets of water and comfortably washed our new little VW.  Our neighborhood is so quiet right now and has been all winter.  Interestingly though, I am constantly meeting new young people and families who just bought a home in North Minneapolis or who say they've been thinking about moving here and want to hear all about it.  And I get really excited and am more than willing to oblige.  It is so unique to join in on a transformation that people have been working toward for a long time, at a moment where it's showing signs of growth. I'm mainly gauging growth right now based on 1. The sheer number of people I meet that are investing in the area or considering it,  2. How passionate all of these people are about where they are, and 3. What I read in the Northside News, which is fantastic. Tory showed me this article over breakfast a few days ago about an neighborhood about 10 blocks from our place. 


 http://www.nenorthnews.com/CurrentNews.asp?view=1654&paperID=2&month=

This is partially nostalgic for me having grown up in Canada and made similar igloos when I was younger, but also heartwarming to see people diverse in age and race getting to know each other and enjoying their community even in the middle of a bitter Minnesota winter.

Before: we were two people, each with our own priorities and sense of balance between them all.
I kept a pretty easy balance between things I needed to get done, things that could wait, and how each would affect my overall happiness and relaxation. 
Now: we are two people, living as one, and we need to find a new balance.  Time to restructure!

4. Italo - Anathallo
5. Look at What the Light Did Now - Little Wings
8. Birds Fly Away - Theresa Anderson
9. Skinny Love - Bon Iver
10. My Friend - Bill Callahan
11. Smells Like Content - The Books
12. All I Need - Radiohead
13. You Love the Streets at Dawn - The Flame/Rough Bunnies
14. Where is my Tarp? - Mount Eerie
15.  I Called You Back - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Music we used during the ceremony:
Humming Song followed closely by Golden Town with Sunglasses, both by Aoki Takamasa and Ogurusu Norihid.
Do you Realize? by The Flaming Lips.

One of the many really cool things about my husband is that he can sometimes describe an entire moment of time in detail and tell me what song was playing. He can only do it if a certain song was playing along and he can't turn it on at the time, it just happens.  So when we said that these songs have served as soundtrack to our relationship, they really have. Just ask Tory.

Fashion Update: because it takes less thinking than putting to words all my feelings and thoughts that have conspired over the last two weeks!

I took a break from commercial fashion endeavors to design and sew a personal collection for my wedding: my wedding dress, created from my mother's 1986 wedding dress, a flower girl dress, and four bridesmaids dresses inspired by the women who mean so much to me and stood for Tory and I in our wedding.


Rich and Patsy deLange, 1986.


From right:
Katie Moekler, my aunt
Jessica deLange, my sister
Me, Rachel Roff
Rebecca Garofano, my friend
Anna Gretz, my friend
Italia Roff, my cousin-in-law


Tory and Rachel Roff, 2010.

I also had custom necklaces made by my sister and she did a beautiful job:

The difficult thing about blogging is that the most exciting times are the times I have the least amount of time to keep up with blogging. Needless to say, I am getting VERY EXCITED. Tory and I are getting married in 12 days?? To me, that is unbelievable. I am still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the details of planning the wedding, plus house remodeling and leaving my lovely apartment, roommates, and area, all of which I've come to love very much (but mostly the roommies).



I slept an hour and a half last night during our insane cleaning spree before we were all due out of the apartment. I vaguely remember getting a bit in my head and singing a lot of Regina Spektor, and being stalked by a trail of purple sparkle under everything I overturned.



But a friend just passed on a link to a recent article about our caterers and it is spot-on. They are the most wonderful women and the article really got me excited about everything all over again (not that I wasn't already). When Tory and I met them after several unsuccessful attempts at finding a caterer, it was so perfect because we all clicked so well. They are lavishing us... is a good word for it I think... lavishing us with ideas and sweetness and laughter and of course, amazing food. It is so neat how you can recognize genuine hearts and connect so immediately, and it was a great relief to finally know that these were the right people to cater our wedding.
The details are definitely coming together. This is what I think of for our wedding vibe: Beauty, creativity, collaboration, community!

4 down, 1 to go.

Tory and I went to our first block club meeting yesterday. It was really great to meet neighbors and connect with those we've seen around. At one point during our discussion with the crime prevention officer the conversation turned to our neighbors who rent across the street from us (they weren't at the meeting) and people were offering us solutions with the assumption that we want them out, which we did; until we met them.

Neighbors know when a house is selling drugs because of the amount of traffic that is generated around the place and the instability that seems to be present with people coming and going at all hours and we are aware that these neighbors fit the bill. When we got to know them a little though, we found out that the main resident has 8 older children, many with families of their own, so though we still question the activities that go on, much of the "traffic" is actually family coming and going. The main resident is a softy with a tough guy presence and takes special interest in and care for the neighbors he knows. It's an odd role because he is essentially protecting his neighbors from the people his lifestyle may bring around. Their presence has not brought about any events that have made us feel unsafe, but they are not a traditional stable family like many of the other houses around and their company likes to hang out in the street and drop trash in front of our house. It is morally difficult for us to call them into the police on the grounds that we "know" something is going on, but even more difficult when we know he would prefer traditional (legal) employment and that calling in pushes them out further. Even if we are more vulnerable because they live across the street and are connected to other volatile people, their safety is in jeopardy day to day because the majority of people they know and are connected to are volatile. We can only hope to be a listening ear or a connection to stability for them. All this was received with (kind) disagreement by all our neighbors at the block club meeting. We defended our reasons, but I decided it was not the time or place to ask the questions that were in my mind...

How can we support the weakest members of our community when we are trying to push them out? "Loving them and hating what they do" gets complicated when they hate it too but have few or no other choices. And if you hate what they do more than you love them, you are not loving them at all.
Are they less valuable than increasing the value our homes? Should we further alienate them from stable society in order to preserve our idea of a clean street? And the most difficult question: is attempting to secure our safety and control our environment more important than loving our neighbors?

For now, I believe the answer to all these questions is "No" and for this, we are considered naive. I prefer to call it, "intentional vulerability". I will not be too afraid. To love. God help us.