Stumptown Ladies Sing This Song

One of the benefits of starting this blog, and of reading other people's blogs, has been meeting some fantastic people. I started to worry a bit when several people who I first met through their blogs stopped posting. I am still friends with them in real life, but I started to wonder whether I had a similar super-power to that my friend Jiro years ago learned he possessed. In Jiro's case, his special power was making women drop out of college. Each of the women he dated in college dropped out. Not one or two, either, but he dated five women while the women were in college, and each left school during or after their relationship with him. In retrospect, he realized he'd had a chance to use his power for good, if only he'd known what to do. You see, while Jiro did not attend the same college as she did, he was in college in the same city as Monica Lewinsky, at the same time. Just think, if he'd dated her while she was a college student, she'd have dropped out, which would have likely made it impossible for her to get an internship in the Whitehouse, thereby changing the course of history!

But it is too late to think about that. And I took you on this entertaining little digression only because, as I mentioned, I started to worry that I possessed a similar power, making bloggers stop writing just by becoming friends with them. But then I became friends with Debbie, who in addition to being a real-life nice person and funny, smart girl, is a fantastic writer in the best kind of stream-of-consciousness way. Her writing is hilarious and poignant within the same breath-taking paragraph, digging deep to offer truths about her darker corners while leavening a post with references that stretch your brain and make you cackle with recognition. This is a woman who, even when she wants to stop writing, can not, and for that I am very glad.

And this wisp of Portland fantastic-ness, she nominated me for a Perfect Post award. The post she honored, about not being pregnant, was written from a moment of darkness. Talking about light in that post was a form of self-therapy, an attempt to remind myself that the despair I felt on that day would lift. Thankfully, it lifted, and faster than I would have imagined. Just as I was moved that people responded with support and condolences, I am honored that the post meant enough to Debbie that she bothered to make her feelings known. Thank you Debbie, it means a lot to me.