The back stacks. Newest on top, like everything else around here.

Saturday, July 10, 1999
Reading: Angela's Ashes, finally

Wedding number four. My friend Monica from library school, at a Methodist church in Independence, reception at the VFW hall. Lovely, sincere, a hundred degrees.

The women's World Cup final was on this afternoon, and by the time the cake was cut roughly half of the guests, most of the groomsmen and the groom's own father were packed into the little bar off the hall watching it on a TV bolted up in the corner. It went to penalty kicks. The bride went in to drag her new husband out and then just stayed, in the dress, holding her train over one arm. When the last kick went in and the U.S. won, the whole hall screamed so loud the DJ stopped the music. It is the single happiest wedding moment I have witnessed this year, and it had nothing to do with anybody getting married.

Table 9 this time. Progress.

Saturday, June 19, 1999
Cat census: Moriarty ate a curling ribbon off a wedding gift; he's fine and unrepentant

Two weddings in one day. Numbers two and three. A full Catholic Mass at eleven (my cousin Jenny) and a garden wedding at five (Tom from the reference desk, who is the only man I know who owns a cummerbund on purpose).

In between, I changed dresses in the back seat of my car in a grocery store parking lot, like a spy, and ate a bag of pretzels for lunch. A man in a truck saw more than he bargained for, which was one bare shoulder and a lot of swearing.

At the first one, my Aunt Carol asked when it would be my turn. At the second one, Tom's mother asked when it would be my turn. I have started answering, "Right after the Royals win the pennant," which buys me several years.

Home by eleven. All three cats were asleep on the navy dress I didn't wear.

Saturday, April 24, 1999
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha is still on hold, so Cold Mountain

Wedding season opens. My cousin Kristen, twenty-six, at home, with the whole family in attendance, which meant my mother had the entire reception to work with.

She introduced me to three men. One was the groom's uncle, who was divorced "practically since last fall." One was very nice and turned out to be the Lutheran pastor, and married, and my mother knew that, and said she just thought we'd have "a lot to talk about, with books." The third one was fourteen. I think that was an accident. I hope that was an accident.

I danced with my dad to "In the Mood" and he stepped on my feet in exactly the same places he did when I was six and standing on his shoes. Some things you don't need a man for. Some things you need that particular man for.

Sunday, February 14, 1999

Valentine's Day. I bought myself a dozen yellow tulips and a box of the good chocolates and put the tulips on the kitchen table, where Moriarty knocked them over within the hour. There's a lesson there somewhere about buying yourself flowers, but I've decided it's about the vase.

Spent the evening in the reading chair with Sherlock on my feet, Mrs. Hudson in my lap and Moriarty on the back of the chair chewing my hair. Nobody asked me to dinner. Nobody forgot to ask me to dinner, either, which is the part I'm choosing to focus on. Earlier I'd gone to the matinee of Shakespeare in Love by myself, for the third time, and afterwards I ate the whole bottom layer of the chocolates.

My mother called to ask if I "had plans." I said yes. I didn't elaborate. Let her wonder. It's the most romance she's gotten out of me in years.

Friday, January 1, 1999
Cat census: three, which I'm told is the official number

Hello. New year, new page. The kid who volunteers at our branch on Saturdays showed me how to make one, and it took me three tries to get the picture of the cat to stop being the size of a garage door.

About the name. At my sister's Christmas party a man I'd just met asked if I was married, and I said no, and he asked if I had kids, and I said no, I have three cats, and his whole face went, "Ah." Like a doctor who has seen the X-ray. So yes. I am a single librarian with three cats. Allegedly I'm a cat lady. I would like it entered into the record that I also go to movies, own a good pair of boots and have been to Mexico twice.

The cats, since they'll come up: Sherlock is a big orange tabby who investigates everything and solves nothing. Mrs. Hudson is a fat old calico who runs the household and thinks I'm doing a poor job. Moriarty is small and black and was found as a kitten in the book drop the fall before last, and I think you can guess how he's turning out. (There was a Watson once. Watson was a goldfish. Watson did not survive Moriarty's first week. I don't want to talk about it.)

Resolutions: read fifty books, go to Ireland someday, stop letting my mother's voice narrate my life. Two out of three would be fine.