I’ve met my blogfriend and yours Noel five or six times now. We found each other through a girl I went to high school with, and I was immediately drawn to the way she can write soulfully about seriously provocative issues without turning hippie-dippy or New-Age-y. Noel’s husband was a few years behind me in school, so I was aware of his brother, and he was aware of my cousin, and Noel had been to all of my favourite places in Ohio. Like my hometown. And the one and only pizzeria in it. And the Circleville Pumpkin Show.

Noel gets mad that I sometimes mention our dates here but never show any pictures of us together, so I’m continuing the trend (mostly because I didn’t actually take any pictures of us this time around). Here’s a picture of my best friend, Tracey, holding Noel and Ryan’s son, Silas:

Did you just feel your reproductive system cry out a little? No? Mine, neither, but let me tell you that Silas is twice as cute in person as in pictures, and this was in the rain when he was in need of a nap and had just watched us gnaw on burgers at Max & Erma’s for an hour while he had, like, peas or something.

Later in the week, Tracey and I met Noel again for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory while Ryan watched the kid, and we talked about families and teaching and boys and blogs and boobs. Then we went to see My Week with Marilyn, in which Michelle Williams had my hair, and in which Hermione Granger didn’t get naked, and in which I snorted so loud when Marilyn Monroe announced that Abe Lincoln was her dad.

And thus concludes the December meeting of blogfriends who pronounce their names weirdly.