I give fake names to most of the people I write about here. This is who they are:
Noelle Tannenbaum - that’s me, the author of this blog. Not my real name, just a pen name I created when I realized I was going to live on a Christmas tree farm. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a writer. Then I became an English major in college, and decided I didn’t want to write the kinds of things I was reading. I also majored in theatre, and wound up with a career in theatre, film and television for a few years. That burned me out pretty badly, so I got a job up here in the Hudson Valley, and started writing a little. It’s just a blog hobby, but damn it feels good. If I ever became famous, this is what my James Lipton interview would be like.
Birmingham - he was my boyfriend of for years and change. We met working on a film together. It was my first, and his last. He’s actually from up here originally and was living here when I interviewed for my current job, which was a coincidence. Shortly after I moved to the farm, he got a job in Middle-of-Nowhere town, which is about an hour away. I didn’t get to see him very much, but when I did, it always worth the wait. In real life, his name in no way resembles the capital of Southern state, or any state for that matter. Sadly, things ended for us as a couple in late 2007, but we’re still friends.
Micki The Cat - Micki was born about sixteen years ago to a stray cat that wandered into the neighbor’s lawn. She is hilarious, has no sense of balance, and cries all the time. She is afraid of everyone, so few people believe in her existence. She can be good company, sometimes better than people. Sometimes I wish that she was a dog. I’m also sort of allergic to her, which is often my only motivation to clean the cottage.
The Cottage - I rented this cottage in February of ‘06. I didn’t take a really close look at it before signing on the dotted line, because I was so swept up with the romance of it all. (John Lennon slept next door once, and it was supposedly part of the Underground Railroad. Nothing else of note happened in the intervening 100 years.) When I moved in, I found it in grave need of a massive overhaul, some of which I did, some of which has yet to be done, because it is a rental after all. Some structural problems are just part of the dangerous charm. I get lots of bugs in the summer. And the fall. And the spring. And even the winter. It’s drafty yet stuffy and once a bat got in. I just signed another lease to stay on until July of ‘08.
My Landlesbian - She is a writer and an old time militant feminist. I once went to deliver my rent check to her while she was sitting near the pond, and she was wearing only a towel. Her girlfriend (the waterlesbian) came out of the pond wearing only her skin. She stopped selling the trees three or four years ago, and let them go to pasture. Before she started renting the houses on the property (there are 2 others besides mine) she ran a women’s art colony up here. The women constructed a lot of the additions and structures around the place using only the knowledge they could gain from books, and with no men whatsoever. She is a tad crazy, depending on what time of day you catch her. She winters in the city, and that is a nice time here.
SisterAlyson - She’s my younger sister and lives in New York City. She also works in publishing, for an actual publisher. She is caretaker of Lola the Dog and Copper, my boyfriend-in-law. She enjoyed going to high school, which as always made me suspicious of her, but other than that she’s cool.
Elizabeth & Daddy John - These are my parents. They ran New Jersey’s largest independent bookstore for nineteen years. As far as awesome parents go, they are always there for me, both emotionally and laundry-room wise. Dad has trouble reading my blog on the computer, so Mom prints it out for him. Once, I let mom write a blog entry, and it was super. Hopefully, she’s do more in the future, or at least leave interesting comments.
The Man of Action - We are friends for life, we’ve been so since shortly after high school, where we spent four years not knowing each other very well. He lives in the city, which he loves, and it loves him back. He helped me get Tannenbaum 2.0 up and running, and can generally be counted on for that kind of advice, except when he turns off his phone.
Penelope - She was friend from college. She lived with me for a year in the city, and is to date the only person who I enjoyed living with so much that I missed her when she was gone. She still lives in the city now. We’ve taken vacations together and met up in the city and such, and we never seem to run out of things to talk about, but that’s only when we get a chance to talk, which is very rare these days.
The Dutchess of Kickball, Flick, Tucker, KatieBell, Pantsless - These are my friends from my kickball team, the ones I get to see the most because they all live locally. They make living up here in this strange land not so bad, especially when we get together and play Robot Rally or do trivia night in the off-season.
I’m sure there are some other important people that I’ve forgotten to mention here. I’ll add them as I remember. Maybe.
