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

I'm still here

I've been gone a long time - just got busy with other things.

We were in San Diego last week for vacation. We offered Leo a Disney trip but he preferred to return to San Diego again, mostly to go to Legoland. We stayed in a condo very close to the convention center, so we were there for the end of ComicCon. I noticed people wearing unusual outfits/costumes before I realized what was happening. We did the usual kid things, but didn't go to Sea World this time. I can only take a few days of amusement parks before I overdose on them.

When we rented a car at the airport, we were offered a Hummer. I never thought that I would get in a Hummer, and I didn't. We had reserved a small SUV (David's idea, not mine) but they gave us a huge one instead. What we didn't realize was that the parking space under the condo complex was very small, and getting that boat into the space was difficult to put it mildly. David scraped one door handle the first time that we did it.

We drove up to Orange County to have lunch with a friend of David's in San Juan Capistrano. (She's a liberal Mormon, if that isn't an oxymoron, and refers to entering Orange County as going "behind the orange curtain", a reference to the old Iron Curtain across Europe for those too young to understand.) We toured the old Spanish mission there after lunch. I was surprised by the San Onofre nuclear reactor. I knew that it was along the coast but it's just right there between the beach and I5, where a terrorist with a car or 18 wheeler full of explosives could take it out and spread radioactivity for many miles. And why put a nuclear reactor in an earthquake zone and in a place that could have a tsunami? The disaster in Japan could have happened there.

I'm really angry at Obama and the Democrats for caving to the crazies in the Republican party over the debt limit. Grow a spine and tell the loonies no and then stick to it! I am seriously thinking of joining the Green Party. I actually agree with them more than the Democrats, but after the Ralph Nader debacle in 2000 I feel like a vote for the Greens is a vote taken away from the Democrats, which is essentially the same as voting for a Republican.

who will my son marry?

On Sunday I took my son Leo to his school to play on the playground. During school the playground is separated by grade - the kindergartners have a separate playground, one for first and second graders, and one for 3rd through 6th graders. Since Leo is at the end of second grade (two more days left), he has wanted to play on the "big kids" playground since he was a kindergartner. As we were walking up, he made some negative remark about girls. I told him that he would change in mind about girls and would most likely marry one. He immediately said no, that he was going to marry a boy. I smiled to myself, thinking that he was imitating his own family. And chances are he is heterosexual and will marry a woman. When I mentioned this to my husband David, he said that I shouldn't dismiss Leo's statement so quickly. David said that at Leo's age, 7, that David knew that he was interested in other boys, but without role models in either his life or the media he didn't have an understanding or vocabulary to express it. I guess that is possible, but nothing about Leo has set off my "gaydar." I am curious though - of the people who read this who are gay or lesbian, did you know at age 7 that you were attracted to people of the same sex?

tobacco still kills

One of my nicest patients died last week. She always asked about Leo and how he was doing. She smoked for many years, and last year had an episode of blood in her urine. The workup showed cancer of her ureter, the tube from the kidney to the bladder. She had to have the ureter and kidney removed, then had lots of complications, including a wound infection, sepsis (the infection spread to her blood and all over her body.) She was able to be discharged and went home for a while, but she was too weak to take care of herself so went into a nursing home. Then she developed pneumonia. She did not want to be intubated (put on a ventilator), so she died of the pneumonia. But it was the tobacco induced cancer that caused her death. Some patients have been surprised that smoking can cause bladder or ureteral cancer, but some of the toxins from tobacco end up in the urine, and the ureter and bladder are constantly exposed to the toxins, and cancer is the result.

Another patient was brought in last week for a change in her personality, inability to sit still with near constant twitching, and muttering. I thought that she might have a movement disorder and sent her to a neurologist. The workup showed two masses in her brain that were likely metastatic cancer from somewhere else. Further scans showed a lung mass, so it is likely lung cancer from her smoking. The patient is now very confused and can barely get out of bed, so I suspect that she won't live much longer.

How much longer is this going to continue? Tobacco is a known carcinogen, as is second and third hand smoke. (Second hand is what others breathe in while someone is smoking, third hand is the residual left that others breathe in later - yes, that "tobacco smell" is cancer causing.) So why does our and nearly every other government let tobacco sales continue? In this country it is the tobacco lobby paying off our elected officials to continue this corporate murder. If I am every made ruler of the world, tobacco will be gone very quickly (but after equal rights for gays, lesbians, transgendered and women are written into law.)

parsnips and cherries and the bomb and the end of the world

Recently I added parsnips to the grocery list. Do most people even know what parsnips are? Could you find them in the grocery store if they weren't labeled? They look like large white carrots. I put them in a parsnip and split pea stew that I make, and it is tasty - I see that look of doubt on your face. But David, my husband, couldn't read my handwriting and bought papayas instead. Needless to say, I made another trip to the grocery store since papayas would not have worked in the stew. Then David complained about my handwriting. This is from the man who once put "hairs not" on the grocery list. This was in the early 1990s when we were first living together, long before cell phones were common. I got to the store and had no idea what he wanted. When I got home I asked him and his answer was "It doesn't say 'hairs not', it says 'hair snot'". Oh, thanks for the clarification. He called the hair gel that he used then "hair snot" and that was what he wanted me to buy.

Since I'm on a roll with food, David bought the first cherries of the season last week. Fresh cherries are great - one of the things that I look forward to in late spring and early summer. Now that I think about it, I like almost all fruit. (I know, insert your favorite gay joke here. I once joked that I brought the ideal food to a lesbian and gay mixer - fruit salad.)

One of my patients emailed me today to thank me for refilling her medication. She said that I was "the bomb." Hmmm, I'm pretty sure that's a compliment, but I've never called anyone "the bomb" before. The patient is older than I am, so I am guessing that she picked it up from her 20 something kids.

Oh, and the world didn't end on Saturday. Will these doomsday cults never end? I guess that I shouldn't say more about religion so that I won't offend people.