I'm back

After over 2 months I am finally back. I wasn't planning to take a long break but it just seemed to happen. Work got very busy, family life was busy, you know how it goes.

My son and I took a vacation to visit my parents during his spring break. My dad annoys my husband too much for David to come along. The two of us had a good trip, but I left Leo's favorite bathing suit - the one that is too small - at home and he decided that he didn't want to go to the beach, which is normally one of his favorite places, in the other bathing suit. I got to spend some time with my sister, brother in law and my niece, who is 16 months old. She never got used to me and wouldn't let me hold her. It's also amazing to me how much she looks like my sister. I'm enough older than my sister to remember what she looked like as a kid, and my niece looks like a clone of her. What's really strange is that my niece looked just like her father and not at all like my sister when she was born. Someone commented that it is adaptive for children to look like their fathers at birth - it confirms that the father is indeed the father and strengthens father-child bonds. I guess that I had not thought of it in Darwinian terms like that.

There doesn't seem to be a lot happening in gay and lesbian news lately. Next month there is a hearing in the Prop 8 trial. The pro-Prop 8 side is claiming that Judge Walker was biased because he is gay. I don't think that will work too well. Then several more months until the California Supreme Court considers whether the Prop 8 backers have standing to appeal the district court's decision. I don't think that they do, and California Attorney General Kamala Harris agreed in her amicus brief. I also hope that New York can pass marriage equality legislation. But Rhode Island failed to and seems to be headed toward Domestic Partnerships instead. And Minnesota may have a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality in 2012. More evidence of why I have never been able to trust a Republican politician.

game over? I hope so

I live just outside Sacramento, California, and Sacramento has one major league sports team, the Sacramento Kings of the NBA. Their arena has been open since the 1980s, and the team wants a new arena (built at taxpayer expense, of course) with more seats and more high priced boxes for people crazy enough to pay for them. The team asked for money from the city sometime in the 1990s, and over the objections of most of the citizen, the city loaned the team $70 million, which is slowly being repaid. The owners are the Maloof brothers, who "earned" their millions or billions from casinos in Las Vegas. The city has tried to build a new arena, but like most cities now there is just no money. The city asked the voters in 2006 to raise taxes for a new arena and the citizens had the wisdom to overwhelmingly vote no. And the citizens were dumb enough to elect Kevin Johnson, a local man who formerly played in the NBA, mayor a few years ago. (What is it with Californians that so many will elect movie "stars" such as Reagan or Schwarzenegger (however that is spelled) to elected office?) So now the Maloofs are working to move the team to Anaheim. Billboards have sprung up saying "Game over?" with a photo of a partially deflated basketball. I say let them go. The city has spend way too much time and money trying to build an arena for a team that won't finance an arena themselves. And I can't count how many players and coaches have been arrested for domestic violence, drunk driving, weapons violations, etc. I would really like to get rid of all professional sports. They just seem to be a way to give people entertainment to distract them from important issues that should be dealt with.

my romantic Valentine's Day gift

Sorry that I've been gone so long. I seem to write here in spurts, with breaks in between.

Valentine's Day was two weeks ago, and it is also one of our three anniversaries. We were married in San Francisco on Valentine's Day 2004 when Gavin Newsome was mayor and authorized same sex marriages. That marriage was later declared "null and void" by the California Supreme Court, but we married in August 2008 when it was legal. We also celebrate the date of our first date in July 1991.

So David bought me the most romantic Valentine's Day gift that you can imagine... a composter. Yes, that's right, a kitchen scraps composter. You plug it in, add your kitchen scraps, some sawdust pellets (for the "browns" to go along with the kitchen "greens"), the machine turns the stuff every four hours, and it just a few days you have steaming (literally) compost. I had tried worm composting in the past, and I now realize that the environment in the box wasn't right, because all the worms wanted out, and we found them all over the garage - David was not happy about that. I'll report back how the compost turns out. The first batch should be ready soon.

Leo loses another tooth

Last night when I came home my 7 year old son Leo was in the shower. David, my husband, told me that Leo had something to show me. David was getting a five dollar bill out of his wallet, and said that I could probably figure out what Leo had to show me based on the $5, but that gave me no clue. Leo told me to look on the counter when I went in the bathroom and I saw another of his teeth there. (We don't do the Tooth Fairy thing with him, we just give him $5 and keep the tooth.) I congratulated Leo on losing another tooth. He told me how he removed the tooth. "It wouldn't come out, so this is how I got it out." He then made a fist and mimicked punching himself in the face. I was very surprised and asked if that is really how he got it out, since he had just pulled the last 3 out. Both he and David agreed that he had indeed punched himself in the mouth. "There was blood everywhere" David added. It is logical I guess, at least to a 7 year old.

first flowers of spring

Over the weekend I saw the first tree in bloom this year. There is another tree that I pass on the way to work that is my guide to the end of winter, and the last two days it has been blooming. It's some kind of fruit tree I believe, and it usually blooms around February 1st, so it is right on time. The days are getting longer, and I had to wear sunglasses for the first time in a long while on the way to work today. I realize that much of the Midwest and East Coast of the US are in a major snowstorm the last few days, but the first signs of spring are here in Northern California. Of course it is still cold here, and it may continue to rain, which we need, but still, spring is on the way.

comments my son made today, and marmalade

On the way home from some time with his grandparents today, Leo asked David "Is seven odd?" David replied that yes, seven is an odd number. To which Leo replied "Then I'm odd." (since he is seven years old) David's response was "You said it, I didn't." Later he asked David "Do you have a girlfriend?" (If David did we would be having a talk right now!) David said no. We think that one of the older boys on our street was talking about having a girlfriend and Leo is working on the concept in his mind. Then while Leo was showering while David was brushing his teeth, Leo said "I'm stretching my balls. They're tight." Where did that comment come from?

Two weeks ago when I dropped Ethan off at our friends Gareth and Analisa's house to play with their son Alec, Analisa was making orange and lemon marmalade. I was intrigued. She explained briefly how she made it, and it didn't seem hard, although I've never canned anything before. But I'm thinking of giving it a try. I want to watch and help Analisa the next time that she does it. I've checked out a few recipes online, and also some chutney recipes. I realize that making marmalade or chutney seems very domestic, but I guess I'm becoming more domestic as I get older. It's not like I'm out there partying, so why not do interesting things around the house?

my mother's lesbian cousin died

My mother forwarded the online obituary for her lesbian cousin. (second cousin actually, but in my mom's large extended Irish Catholic family no one thought about that - you were just a cousin.) I was pleased to see that her partner of 27 years, who died a few years ago, was mentioned, although she was listed after the "family" members.

Lynne, the cousin, had a few interesting episodes in my parents' and my life. She dated my dad for a while. Yes, you read that right, before my dad married my mom he had dated her lesbian cousin. Their dates often consisted on one-on-one basketball on Saturday nights, and she would often defeat my father. Her obituary mentioned her athletic skills in basketball and softball, and she played when girls were limited to the old "girls rules" which was a much slower, less aggressive game from what I have heard.

Then when my sister was getting married for the first time, I was looking through the invitations as they were about to be mailed and came across Lynne's invitation, which also included her partner's name. It finally clicked in my brain, but I acted as if I didn't know what was going on and asked my mom who the second name on the invitation was. She said "That's her friend." FRIEND??? That seems to have been my mother's family's way of dealing with their gay and lesbian relatives, a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" where gay family members and their partners are always welcome, but it was never discussed. Luckily they are beyond that now, because I'm not staying silent about being gay.

The third and funniest interaction that I had with Lynne actually happened as my grandmother was dying at the hospital where Lynne worked as a radiation oncology technician. Lynne told me and David stories about other gay and lesbian family members. The funniest was about my grandmother's older cousin Joe, who had left the town where I grew up and moved to New York for a few years, then came home. He preferred younger men and had a series of boyfriends who were always welcome at family gatherings. I can imagine that he wasn't a predator but someone who took in younger guys who may have been thrown out of their homes if their parents found out that they were gay. Apparently several showed up at this funeral according to my mother, so they must have cared for him in some way. Anyway, not only did he like younger men, but he was very Catholic (I have no idea why he stuck with the church that I abandoned as a teen), and he had the reputation of having the largest penis of any gay man in the town (too bad I didn't inherit those genes). So putting a preference for younger men, Catholic, and a very large penis together, someone gave him a nickname that stuck with him the rest of his life - Mother Superior. David and I were dying laughing as Lynne told us all of this, as my grandmother was dying upstairs. I guess laughter among the tears.