Gentle reader, I present to you last month’s phoebeeating.com top 41 search results!

1. phoebe eating
2. phoebeeating
3. phoebeeating.com
4. phoebe eats
5. phoebe and jordan’s wedding
6. “but we’ve decided not to accept it for publication”
7. “fully funded” mfa studio art
8. “justin evans” “franz wright”
9. “phoebe north” etsy
10. “phoebe north” nj
11. “phoebe token”
12. “steve fellner”
13. abramson mfa rankings poets and writers
14. advice about writing samples for the mfa in poetry
15. alien nation dark horizon stupid
16. boys forced to pose naked
17. comments dunham mfg
18. dunham manufacturing class rings
19. essay hortlak
20. friends phoebe loves the hummus
21. fully funded mfa creative writing programs
22. gerald’s game deformed man space cowboy
23. love of eating wax
24. pheobe eating
25. phoebe fibing love…
26. pictures of people eating sandwiches
27. poems about sandwiches
28. poetry portfolio editor mfa
29. seth abramson consulting
30. seth abramson funded
31. seth abramson jerk
32. seth abramson talks too much
33. tin house august 16th
34. what do phoebe eat
35. what do phoebe’s eat?
36. what is a siladium ring worth
37. which episode of friends does phoebe eat
38. white mountains by john christopher projects map
39. www.phoebeating.com
40. www.phoebeeating
41. www.phoebeeating.com lori

And now, for your informational ease and pleasure, let’s address some of these pressing issues, shall we?

5. phoebe and jordan’s wedding

Our original wedding website, which I had not previously linked to the public, was phoebeeating.com/phoebeweddingjordan. If you’re searching for pictures, try the pro photo set or facebook photo set from flickr.

6. “but we’ve decided not to accept it for publication”

Sucks when that happens, doesn’t it? If someone just turned down your writing, which I’m sure was brilliant, I’d suggest the blog Literary Rejections on Display. Always makes me feel better.

13. abramson mfa rankings poets and writers

Frankly, I prefer these rankings.

14. advice about writing samples for the mfa in poetry and 28. poetry portfolio editor mfa

As always, I’m happy to talk to prospective MFA applicants about my experiences in my MFA program. If I have time (unlikely, in November, thanks to nanowrimo, but you can try), I might be even willing to talk writing samples. Shoot me an email!

15. alien nation dark horizon stupid

Well, I don’t know. I thought the movie was aight. My review on the book is here at goodreads.

17. comments dunham mfg and 18. dunham manufacturing class rings

I was exceedingly happy with my class ring from Dunham MFG and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anybody interested in buying a magical trinket. Pictures of my ring, and my review, are here.

25. phoebe fibing love…

My love is never a fib. My love is always true.

35. what do phoebe’s eat?

You probably mean the bird and it looks like they eat insects. But in case you mean human Phoebes, this one eats lots of stuff. For food-related blog entries, try the following tags: food, eating in, eating out.

I’ve been quiet lately, I know–not even updating Motes, for shame. It’s all because I’ve upped my daily word count goal on my current manuscript as a warm-up for nanowrimo.org (and frankly, in part because Claire finished hers, and I was jealous–jealousy can be a great motivator!). It’s had a terrific effect on the urgency and flow of the novel. Forget my goal to finish it by my 26th birthday: I should be done with it before the end of this week. It looks like it will clock in at just over 70,000 words.

Through the increased production, the characters started to run away with the plot a bit: my protagonist got all nervous about her first kiss, and somehow managed to drag out the action leading up to it; I realized that it wasn’t time for one character to die, despite the fact that I’d planned her death from the beginning. I don’t want to say something like, “It’s their novel at this point; I’m just telling the story,” because it sounds crazy. But that’s how it feels. I’m not entirely sure if this is a good or a bad thing: the writing is supposed to have control, of course, but I also want my characters to feel like fully realized people, which, I suspect, they are.

It is, of course, very rough. But, damn, I feel engaged. I’m looking forward to this feeling continuing through next month. Here’s to hoping that I’ll have three novel drafts finished before December. If 2009 was a year of writing, why can’t 2010 be a year of editing?

Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in reading either a first or second draft (depending on how unabashed I’m feeling) of this MS, at least, in exchange for offering copious editing remarks, I’d welcome that, bearing in mind that this is young adult sci-fi and probably not for everyone. Email me!

Since this is phoebeeating.com, I feel it’s important to mention that we had our food catered by Bosphorus in Denville, NJ, an awesome Turkish restaurant. It was sticks-to-your-stomach good, a necessity, I think, when one is drinking lots of mead!

And here’s me, the bride, chowing down (picture courtesy the Dad-in-Law). I don’t think I got to eat much more than this on the Big Day!

A day or two after I got hitched, Ms. M.B. Ferda emailed me and urged me to update. She said: “Phoebe you know that nothing is sacred and that you have to pause your wedding and post-wedding festivities to update your blog. everyone you’ve known since 5th grade is waiting.”

That’s probably true, and only a little scary. Connectivity is weird. Thanks to facebook, who knows who might be looking at this? I feel like I should send shout-outs to Inha Son, and the mothers of my elementary school friends (hi, Ellen!), and that’s not even counting all the relatives and new relatives-in-law who read this thing!

In any event, I’m not sure how we did it, but Jordan and I got married. Despite planning the whole thing in four months, and despite the fact that we were still putting up the tent about fifteen minutes before the guests arrived, it all worked, and it all worked beautifully. The day was really, terribly magical. Guests hula hooped. Much mead was consumed. People laughed and cried during our ceremony. There were impromptu high fives. I went for a (drunk) stunningly gorgeous walk with two of my stunningly gorgeous friends. Writing center people and MFA people played kings together and there were battleship battles and surprising hook-ups and it was sunny and orange and fun and just about as awesome as I could possibly imagine.

But what you guys really care about most is pictures, right? Of course. Our pictures were taken by our dear friend D’Arcey; like everyone else who contributed to our wedding (and it really did take a village), we couldn’t have done it without him. And he did an awesome job, didn’t he?

(Don’t worry, facebook folks, I’ll post these there soon, to your tagging delight, I’m sure.)

This shot typifies our general disposition during the whole thing. Giggly.

Our friends and family get off their butts and declare their support. Thanks, guys!

Our dear friend Jeff gave an amazing speech–more on this at the end of the entry.

Jordan’s comically large vows.

Our amazing shoes.

Ceremonious high-fives!

We hadn’t planned on doing the Jewish glass stomping thing, but my cousin Lisa ran up with a cup and we thought, hey, why not?

Hugs!

Me and my beautiful Mommy, who let us use her yard for the day.

Me and my beautiful Emmy, who was keeper of the tequila.

There’s some serious mead drinking going on here!

And some serious hula hooping!

John Randall was the keeper of the fire.

And kings.

But most of all, there was us–the two of us, and all of us, people who love one another.

Somehow, strangely, I think it’s easy to forget that weddings are about love, about celebration. There’s so much buying, and planning, even in an offbeat wedding, so much anxiety built into the process. But I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I got to celebrate with the people who love us. It made it that much more special.

Jeff wrote a speech for the wedding. I think he wanted to keep the text secret, as if it would somehow be better captured only in memory. But I keep rereading it. It’s probably the nicest thing that’s ever been written about us. It’s magical. It sparkles. And I’m incredibly vain. So I want to share just a bit of it with you, gentle readers.

These two have created something together that could not have come from either alone–something beautiful and cosmically right (and I don’t even believe in cosmic plans). They have built something so profound that it has nearly taken on substance, and to be with them–in the presence of their love–is to sense something almost tangible.

[. . .]

Part of loving another person is the element of time–of change–and our ability to love constantly, even increasingly, as the object of our love grows and changes and surprises us, or even confounds us.

The truth is that I wish I had met Phoebe and Jordan before they’d met one another. I wish I had seen them when their dreams for one another were new. I think that watching their love take root and bloom must have been like watching the sun rise to illuminate a landscape–making its beauty more apparent, more defined, and more real with subtle, gradual, light.

Later, Phoebe wrote to me to warn me about love. She wrote: “Part of loving is dependence, which is a weakness, and relinquishing control, which is scary, too. You cannot be a rock. And rocks are cool. And you cannot be an island.” But Phoebe isn’t a rock. Jordan is not an island. Phoebe and Jordan are independent, self-sufficient, and brilliant people who are set aglow in the light of an unfathomable–and I will admit undefinable–love. They have been lucky enough to find one another and patient enough to fall in love–to let that first limerence evolve into the enduring romance we’re to celebrate today. They appreciate one another, and everything they’ve experienced together, in a transcendentally beautiful way and it is obvious that no two people are as capable of making one another happy–of finding what they are looking for in one another–as these two.

Thank you, Jeff, and everyone else, for all you did for us. Really. Can’t thank you enough.