my son put WHAT is our refrigerator?

Hi everyone. Sorry that I've been gone for so long. Last weekend Leo went to a carnival with a kid from the neighborhood and the kid's older sister. He came back with two goldfish that he had won by tossing a ball into a bowl or hoop. Instant pets - how wonderful. But I really shouldn't complain - as a kid I did the same thing and brought home a hamster and a cat - not at the same time of course. So Christopher goes out and buys an aquarium with all the equipment, only to have the fish die within a day - one within a few hours. So now we have an empty fish tank, soon to have new fish. But I was looking around the refrigerator last night and you can probably guess what I found. Two dead goldfish in a plastic bag. When I asked why the dead fish were in the refrigerator, I was told that Leo wants to bury them, just not yet. If I don't remind him we will have dead fish in there for weeks. I really didn't realize that fatherhood would lead to so many weird situations. The three of us went on vacation over spring break to visit my parents in Georgia. It went fairly well - no major family drama. My dad didn't have a meltdown. The first day that we were there Christopher bought a wireless router for my parents' computer, so he was able to get online in my bedroom if my family was getting to him. I bet that he had some interesting Facebook posts during that time. I even restrained myself when my sister bought breakfast biscuits for everyone from Chick-fil-A. I asked if she was aware how anti-gay the company was and she responded that she didn't care, she liked the food. I wanted to say "If I supported a company that was actively working to take your daughter away from you would you be fine with that?" but I resisted the temptation.

Christopher's third novel has been accepted for publication

We received good news yesterday. Christopher's third novel was accepted for publication! I'm really proud of him. It will be titled "Second Chances" unless the title is changed during the editing process. It will be published by Dreamspinner Press, which mostly does electronic publishing but does paperbacks as well. It was to be published in August, but another book scheduled for April release had some problems, so his book will take its place.

I think that I forgot to mention that he had a short story published in a Christmas anthology, "The Advent Calendar" by MRL Press.

Christopher and I spend part of last night moving furniture so that he can continue painting the bedroom. It is amazing (and disgusting) how much dust, cat hair and various junk can accumulate behind heavy furniture that he don't move often. We slept downstairs on the pullout sofa bed, and now I know that my parents lied when they said that it was comfortable to sleep on when they last visited. And Christopher's cat decided that she was going to sleep on my pillow, then spent what seemed like 20 minutes giving herself her evening bath.

Since we weren't sleeping in our bed, Leo decided that he didn't have to sleep in his. He dragged his sheets and comforter into the hall bathroom and spent part of the night there, then came downstairs and slept on the sofa in the family room. We are not allowing that tonight.

happy holidays

I hope that everyone is having a good holiday season. Our family is having a nice, low key holiday. We had my mother in law and father in law over for lunch today. Not a huge meal but nice.

Leo has been great today. Quite calm for an 8 year old with ADHD on Christmas day. He liked the gifts that he received and thanked us several times throughout the day. He seems to enjoy his new, warmer hoodie, his nerf disc-shooting gun, and his solar powered robot the most. I said before he was born that I would not buy him a gun, but he was using a stick and pretending it was a gun, plus the two brothers down the street that he plays the most with had guns and were shooting him, so we got him a gun to keep up.

Christopher saved the day with the nerf gun. We didn't realize that it required batteries when we bought it, only to realize today that it required six large batteries. He looked around and found two in the cabinet. Later he came downstairs with four more and put all six in the nerf gun. He remembered that we have a ... I'll call it an adult sex toy that uses four batteries. As he said to me "We just won't tell him where we got them." So the sex toy rescued Christmas.

You might wonder why I celebrate Christmas, not being Christian (and not having much good to say about the church that I was raised in.) But to me Christmas was always about getting together with the family (OK, and the presents when I was younger.) My grandmother routinely fed 20+ people at the holidays. Our family gatherings are much smaller now but still special to me.

Leo has been especially affectionate lately. He spontaneously hugs me and Christopher, and he joins us when I hug Christopher in the mornings as I leave for work and turns it into a family hug. He has also been telling us that we're good parents and that he is glad that we are his parents. I wonder if part of that is that he realizes that since he is adopted that he might not have ended up with us as parents. He gave us interesting gifts - a homemade coupon book with things that he will do for us. Mine includes "dish cleaning", a cup of homemade tea, and a car wash. He's a sweet kid that I love very much.

unusual things in our home

If you were to visit our home you might see some unusual things. Here are a few that I noticed in the last few days. First are the handcuffs on the handle of the door of the oven. No, we're not into BDSM (and even if we were, not in the kitchen), they belong to my son Leo. I have no idea why he put them on the oven, but I often don't understand why he does what he does. Next you might notice the tooth sitting on a paper towel on my dresser. Leo pulled out another tooth last night, his seventh he thinks. We now owe him $5 he reminded me today. We never did the tooth fairy fantasy, so we just give him $5 per tooth. The next unusual thing would be the house key that was found in a container of leftover cake. It is my son's house key, which he couldn't find for a while. I asked why it was with the cake and he responded "I don't know, I lost it." OK, but why put it with the cake in the first place? No answer to that.

Next you might notice the vomit on the Christmas tree skirt. This can't be blamed on Leo but on our cat Miss Otis (named after the Cole Porter song). Christopher noticed it first and commented on it, so I decided if he saw it first he should clean it up. Petty, I know, but why talk about it if you don't take care of it?

The last somewhat bizarre thing you might see is a grape on our bedroom floor. Leo apparently had grapes at school and put a few in his pants pocket to eat later. Of course then forgot about them and didn't eat them or take them out of his pocket. Somehow one grape made it through the washer and dryer, and when he picked the pants up and put them on his shoulder before putting them on the grape fell out. Well, he must inherit that from Christopher, who regularly leaves his Chapstick in his pants pockets. They melt in the dryer but thankfully don't make a mess.

who my husband is

Since I shared who I am, or at least my first name, I'll tell you about my husband. His name is Christopher Koehler, and he is an author and editor. His first book, Rocking the Boat, was published earlier this year. It's a male-male romance, although that doesn't really describe it well. It's about two guys who fall in love, but is that a romance? It seems like a novel to me. Yes there are a few sex scenes, but life does have sex. I do recommend it, having read it through rewrites and edits. At least I don't show up in this one - he did model a minor character in an earlier story on me - it was a shock to be reading in bed one night and realize "Hey, that's me!" His second novel, Tipping the Balance, is coming out in less than 2 weeks. So if you haven't read a male-male romance/novel/love story, you can give one a try. It is an entire genre of books, which I didn't realize.

new glasses...what was I thinking?

First, I want to thank everyone for their kind comments on my last post. I was overdue for being honest with my name.

Every two years I can get a discount on new glasses through work. My last pair has been sliding down my nose when I look down for the past year, and they fall off if my face is sweaty or I bend over in just the wrong way - the glasses seem to fall off most when I'm scooping out the cat box - really gross, I know. So I got my new pair today. I was excited about them, came home wearing them, and Leo's comment when he saw me wearing them was "You look like a fool." They are kinda Harry Potter-ish, tortoise shell colored plastic frames with round lenses. I looked in the mirror after Leo went to bed and realized... I don't really like them. I'm on the small side, and my eyes are closely set, so most glasses are too big for me. The center of my eyes are not at the center of the lenses of most glasses, and this pair is no exception. I dug out the old pair that was my favorite - very small round lenses in a thin wire frame. They look better on me, but two problems with them - they aren't comfortable, and the lenses are too small for my "progressive" lenses since I need bifocals. So should I go for style or comfort in glasses? Which would you choose?

To make the glasses situation worse, Christopher went with me and got new glasses as well. He picked out a nice wire frame very similar to his current glasses. As I was getting my glasses measured and whatever else they do, he changed his mind and picked another pair that are almost identical to mine, although I didn't realize that at the time. Now our glasses are too similar. For some reason I don't think that a gay couple should have nearly identical glasses. It reminds me of the time one Easter when we visited my grandmother and without realizing it were wearing almost identical outfits. We totally freaked out the teenage friend that my much younger cousin brought to that Easter dinner - I don't think the kid had ever seen a gay couple before, and the fact that we were dressed nearly identically seemed to make his head explode - he kept staring at us but would look away if we looked at him.

who I really am

When I started this blog, most of the other blogs that I read were anonymous. I started by reading the now infamous Mikey blog that turned out to be a hoax. So I didn't include my name. But I have no reason not to put my name out there. I've been out for many years now, so why not?

My first name is Burch. Yeah, I know, a weird name. I was named after my father, who was given the last name of a family friend as his first name. I decided not to include my last name here, not because I'm not out, but because I'm a physician and I don't want my patients who do a Google search on me to find this blog first. This blog is about my personal thoughts and events in my personal life, not my professional life.

My husband's name is Christopher, not the pseudonym David that I gave him. Christopher would prefer to keep our son's name off of the blog, so I'll continue to call him Leo