Fun Times

I'm attending a conference in Philadelphia and my wife and I are in a hotel for two nights without Mr. Man! (Mr. Man is enjoying 2 days on the beach in NJ with the Grammies). We went out to a vegan restaurant here in Center City and it was so amazing! I had an awesome salad with beets, pineapple, walnuts and a tofu-maple whipped dressing. Also fried coconut tofu nuggets with a side of ginger shoyu sauce. The vegan cheesecake was out of this world! Yum...anyone hungry?

We're here in the hotel doing all the things we can rarely do...read, talk, enjoy uninterrupted quiet and more. There are so many options it's hard to know what to do. We're actually getting up early tomorrow morning to work out at the fitness center - together! Last time we worked out together was before I conceived!

Wired Trivia

I met the woman who does some of the baking for Gone Wired the other day (the brownies, cinnamon roles, etc.) by happenstance. Did you know that they are putting in a kitchen? That way they can do baking on-site. FYI, they are adding quiches to the regular menu. Also, the idea originally came from three women who were going to name the place "Girls Gone Wired." But, two of the women wimped out and the remaining woman took on two male partners to keep the dream alive.

Pride and what our bodies do naturally

Pride was great! It was the first time in a while when everyone was so hot, we all sweated in buckets and no one cared. There is something about days when sweat and sticky bodies become the consensus and no one really gives a f#@*. No one cared to smell their pits because that would exude too much energy anyway, and it was quite easy to blame it on the throng of people around who too were sweat'n away in the day's hot sun.

Afterwards, I believe the number of showers happening in this town were exponential. I could just here the grime and sweat being scrubbed away from all the queers in this town, a quite shh shh of white noise as everyone prepared for the evening events.

Sewing and Sedatives

Hello All,
I'm looking for referrals for two things: a seamstress and a natural sedative. I can't get fresh milk at work anymore, which is what I normally drink if I want something calming during the day. Does anyone know of a natural sedative that works? Subtle is good, I'm not looking for a sleeping pill.

Also, does anyone know of a good seamstress? I need to have some dresses taken in.

Cool.

P.S. The test went fine :-)

The Cool and Not So Cool

My world is pretty grim as of late, so I share the cool and not cool world of Mr. Man today.

The Cool:
I had no clue, but I recently learned that Mr. Man can write his own name--all five letters! The third letter comes out slightly mangled and the fifth letter is backwards, but it's really cool. He wrote it first on the white board at my office. Wish I had a digital camera to take a picture and share.

The Not Cool:
We're having dinner last night after working in the garden and he looks out the back door at George, our large tropical plant, and mentions how he thinks a bug is eating George's leaves. He's correct - there's one hole in one of the leaves which could be from a bug or more likely George's leaf got stepped on or mangled when he was drooping in the hot sun far from the rainforest in which George belongs. However, Mr. Man tells me that we should get some special spray to hurt the bug. I know immediately who planted this idea about pesticides in my son's head and I'm steamed. I calmly ask him where he heard about special sprays and he says, "Papa." Damn those non-organic farming grandparents!

Clean up

My thoughts are sheaded threads, long since frayed from the fabric in my head. There is no place for them with me, no beginning... no end. I hold them up like dandelion seeds to catch in the wind. This is the nature of things.

Positive Thoughts continued

Good luck stonetree and family! Sorry 'bout the mirgraine. Damn, how do you spell migraine. Thanks spell check!

Me and tinker bell (someone I work with who chooses to remain ambigious) are looking up positive thoughts on the web to send your way! Stay tuned.

positive thoughts, please

Hi All-

Your neighborhood recluse here. I am now in my SECOND WEEK of a migraine and I just feel horrible, along with that growing suspicion that I will never feel right again. I also worry how much of a strain it puts on Love and Mr. Man as I am so far off my game it is ridiculous. So positive thoughts for them please!

Also, I just did a decent, though far from great interview with the Big Blue in A2. A few positive thoughts there as well. It is so hard to focus with this migraine, but I don't think I sounded like a complete idiot. If I can get to second round, maybe I will feel better by then...

Fun News Flash!

Mr. Man learned to ride his bike yesterday without his training wheels. He's so cool! (And he's quite proud of himself, which was very fun to watch.)

Louie

I want to tell you about Louie. He was the uncle of my best friend in High School, Heather. I would go up to Grand Rapids with my best friend on weekends and stay with him. I told my family it was because Heather and I liked the movie theatres there, but it was because he was the first openly gay person I knew and I took comfort being around him. Louie was my emotional and spiritual guide back then. He taught me the right direction to g-d was listening to how you felt in your heart. He also taught me that sass and smart assness were prerequisites to an entertained life. Louie was a good man and if it was not for him, I do not believe I would traveled this journey to my own queerhood. I sometimes wonder if I would have been alive at all.

Louie died last week and my friend Heather just emailed me this morning. I guess he wanted no memorial or funeral, so I am left with a need to honor and remember him just the same. I choose to do it here. I always expected to see him again, and now that I cannot, I feel unprepared for the loss. I truelly miss Louie. I am so glad he shared his path with me.

Testing in Library School

I'm off from work today to study for a midterm in my metadata class. This is quite a shock to my system. I'm 2/3 of the way through a Master's degree in Library and Information Science (after which I will be a full-fledged librarian) and I have yet to be tested on anything at all. I have yet to work my brain all that hard, in fact. Librarianship is not a matter of intellectual gymnastics by any means. But there is a lot to it - reference and cataloging and database administration and programming and reader advisory work and managament. All things you really do need to know if you're going to work in libraries. But the thing is, its not like calculus, where testing is the best method of determing whether you have mastered the materials, and our ordinary means of demonstrating understanding is via assignments, papers, and presentations. So, here I am, preparing for a sit-down-shut-up-and-prove-it-to-me eight page short answer, multiple choice and matching exam. God help me, I didn't bother to start the reading until this week and I have about half of it left to do today.

Day Two: Dogs Fighting and a Cat Sitting

Good morning lovelies,

I had a really fun night last night with The Chief and Chief's G. I call her G b/c she hasn't picked a name yet. Woke up this morning feeling good and loving life. Got a wonderful present from a friend, and know that life is all right. I have just one thing to say to you all this fine morning - Thank you. Thanks for being in my life, thanks for being who you are, and for being here.

Who's Making Breakfast?

I've been struggling with wicked PMS for the last 6 months. I think of it as my penance for not having a cycle for 17 months while I was pregnant and nursing. I've discussed how to combat the beast with my doctor and I'm trying to exercise, increase my protein intake and cover my vitamin needs. Leading an optimal healthy lifestyle is undoubtedly the last thing I want to do when I enter the post-ovulation darkness. Hell, it gets so bad staying vegetarian seems challenging!

In the midst of my current state of ugliness, I enjoy taking time out to review the informational brochure given to me by my doctor about "Breaking Through the PMS Cloud." Overall the pamphlet is educational and somewhat helpful. It's most useful feature, however, is its ability to make me bust a gut laughing.

Picture the sleep hygiene page, with its helpful quips:

• Sleep consistent hours. What?


• Follow a bedtime routine to help your body and mind sleep. Isn't my routine the laying in the dark praying my son will sleep soon?


• Limit bed activity to sleeping and sex. I'll throw a party in my bed if wife and I get time to have sex at all, let alone in the bed.


• Use earplugs and a mask if necessary for a dark, quiet environment. To drown out the screaming, flailing child?

But here's the piece de resistance for me:

• Explain the importance of sleep so your family can help you feel better. Family members can, for instance, keep quiet in the morning while you're sleeping; and they can make their own breakfasts, so you can sleep later.

This lovely sidebar comes complete with the picture of a dopey white man serving two young children breakfast, holding his finger to his lips to indicate quiet voices.

I ask: Do these educational health pamphlet authors live in the same dimension as I do--and many other women who work their souls to the bone every day???

Ooops...can anyone tell which side of the PMS cloud I'm on? I'll just ask Mr. Man to make his own breakfast in the morning.

Day One: 2 Dogs and a Cat sitting

I woke up this morning having an asthma attack. I am watching two dogs and a cat for some friends on vacation and my lungs have not adjusted yet. The two dogs sleep down stairs, but the cat sleeps upstairs with me. The cat is HUGE. The cat from the Adam Sandler's movie, Anger Management, has nothing on this puse!

So, I sit up in bed this morning, brushing the cat off of me like 50 pounds of snow from a car and reach for my inhaler. Its empty! I do two futile puffs, nothing. I always think of that kid from Gooney's who has his inhaler when this happens. My morning dazed mind breifly asks, will a cute older red head cure me of asthma too? But alas, I'm not treasure hunting, just animal sitting and my inhaler is empty. I want to be a gooney.

Hey, what kind of instrument does a pirate play?
~ A Guitaarrrr.

Time to go home....

It's almost time to go home. Its 4:51 pm, that means 39 minutes and I'm free. This paper jokey doesn't like paper so much, can you tell. I always get this line from an old Pink Floyd song in my head at this time.

I want to go home
take off this uniform and leave the show
but am waiting in this cell 'cause I have to know
have I been guilty all this time?

Yep, guilty as charged, I clock out exactly at 5:30pm without hesitation or doubt.

WTF Were we Thinking?

So I was last seen departing the cafe with GoGo and Sonya last night around 9:15 p.m., when I scurried home to do parent rescue at bedtime (Mr. Man decided hitting was the appropriate bedtime behavior).  After Mr. Man was asleep, we began the task of wiping our old Dell laptop clean of files so we can donate it to a non-profit.  Now, the Dell is old and we use new technology, so wiping the files was hard because the old Windows OS (insert more hatred of Bill Gates) doesn't want to recognize any of our new data storage devices that would connect to the Dell via USB or Firewire, etc.  So, we resort to transferring all the files from the old laptop to our Mac via floppy disk!  Maddeningly slow for the amount of data we had to move and of course we only have a few floppies in the house.  We weren't finished when we went to bed at 4:30 a.m.  The laptop needs to be donated today, so I gave my wife more floppies this morning to complete the task later today. The wake-up call at 7am this morning was not fun.  I feel like a zombie and I have tons of work to do today.  I can only imagine what my wife feels like, caring for Mr. Man today.  (especially after last night's hitting spree).

On a good note, we did spend those tedious hours watching the first half of Angel, season 3.  I have some plot questions about how Buffy-6 overlaps with Angel-3.  I'll refrain until Sonya says it's okay or ask the others privately...I don't want to spoil anything.

Needless to say, I won't be seeing you at the cafe tonight.  It's early bedtime for me tonight!

Sing me a song

I love music. I love the way a good song can move through me and take me outside of myself or deeper into me. The way a lyric can hit just the right cord in me making my whole body hum, or how a counter-melody ever so subtle can reflect a counterpoint in life around me. Music is my escape and freedom from the humdrum of daily living's built up residue. It changes my perspective, connects me to the world, and offers me grace in the times when I feel graceless. Music can tear down any of my walls and expose me vulnerable to the world, or at least etch away my impregnable shell of self hidden. I grew up listening to half made bands, playing for a beer at the American Legion. There was always a guitar and a song in my father's hand since the moment I could hold a memory. I sang next to him about sunshine on shoulders even before I started school. Albums were played daily in my household, and it wasn't until I was 10-years-old until I realized people did not have soundtracks that went with life.

Ah, music. So, this morning as I sit at work listening to another good find, twirling my thoughts in my mind like curly hair on a finger, I offer a list of musicians for others to listen to. Please add more.

Daisy Mae - Heart Song
Lesbians on ecstasy
Redbird Compilation
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Pastel Blues - Nina Simone
Lazy Sundays - I forgot the album name

This was not the post I had intended.

Laptop

I'm getting a free laptop! A personal source, who shall remain nameless, occasionally comes into possession of cast-off hardware. THE SOURCE has gotten me an old laptop, 7-8 lbs and kinda slow and kinda light in the RAM and hard drive space but it is FREE FREE FREE and mine, mine, mine. I'll get it this weekend.

Sorry, but I am not high enough on THE SOURCE'S board to put my friends on her list.

help?

So, if anyone goes to my blog, you'll notice the picture for today has taken over the whole page and I can't make it smaller. If you could actually see the damn thing, you would know it was a great picture, but you can't. Does anyone know how to fix this? I am using a img reference to a picture from the website I am talking about. It wasn't that big on their page either.

Thanks!

Grrrrrrrr

I am so angry today. It feels disproportional to the minor passive aggressive manipulations I was subject to at work today, yet, here it is. Once a therapist asked me what I do with my anger and I replied with absolute frankness, "I don't do anger." I'm a lot better than that now, but I am still not "good" with anger, and I just plain hate feeling this way.

Grrr.... Snap!

I invited the woman with whom I've been doing this PA thing out to lunch. We'll see if she says yes. (No, you probably won't get an update on the blog. I checked out dooced the other day and hence I'll be rather cautious about dissing co-workers on-line)

The birth of a gogo

Tada. I finally made aboard this trip. Now that I am here in Blogland, I find I am stage freight for something to say. In my birth as a blogger, I tried to honor my old pussy by calling myself Basil (Baze for short), but apparently this name has already been taken. So, I am honoring a future puse and name myself GoGo Roku (GoGo for short). For those of you who do not know Japanese, it pretty much means 5.5.6., but sounds great outside of translation.

Wanted to give a big reminder that there is a show this Friday at The Temple club for all to come. Some great womyn will be playing, including a spoken poet I like to call Arizona, and some good singer/song writer friends of mine. If interested email me!

Till the next adventure in blogland!

Daily Dose

I'm really having fun with Mac's lastest OS. It is cool and funky and fresh (eat your pants, Bill Gates). Anyway, there's this cool thing called the dashboard (just the touch of the F12 key) where you can load widgets - little programs that are fun and quirky or serious. I currently have a clock, calendar, sticky note, calculator, 5-day weather forecast, a memory game and a map of the world showing the sunlit areas of the planet (the last two downloaded for Mr. Man).

But my favorite widget by far (and I haven't even begun to explore the world of Mac widgets) is Daily Dose - a photo blog. I get a new, interesting photo taken by a man living in Toronto. They're always interesting and the photos intrigue me to go to his website and read the background behind the photos.

I encourage you to check out http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/
In particular check out June 13 and follow the link for pedals and paint - a Toronto bike/art action. Also check out the art installation/activist message on June 10.

Have a good day, all! (btw, where are the rest of you who said you thought a group blog would be cool?)

Life at Our House...

is generally chaotic and somewhat stressful. But in the midst of all that there's Mr. Man, walking around the house with the backscratcher (long handled stick thingy with an edge with which to scratch your back). He generally just plays with it, but tonight he waltzes into the kitchen while I'm making our sandwiches to proudly proclaim that he actually scratched an itch with the device.

The evening proceeds and we're now eating dinner. In the middle of the meal (which began terribly with a defcon 4 meltdown about how egg salad sandwiches were messy) he says:

"I wish I had a bum scratcher because I have an itch on my bum." He then begins to wiggle around in his seat trying to get his itch to go away. "And it's not going away!"

I quickly forgive the screaming fit about messy egg salad sandwiches because that was just too damn funny.

Blogging from Detroit

Hello All,
I'm blogging from the Wayne State Library computer lab before class on Monday night. On Monday's I have a short work day, just 6 hours, then I drive (1 1/2 hours) to Detroit for a 3 hour class, then go to my mom's house in Ann Arbor where she feeds me dinner and a glass of good wine and I go sleepy bye. Tuesday's I get up and commute back to Lansing for work, stopping at Panera's in Brighton to obtain coffee and some of those yummy asiago cheese bagels that they carry. Those are my treats for my busy Mondays. I also try to take better care of my body on Mondays - drink lots of extra water, cut out caffeine, no sugar, planned healthy snacking to keep my energy level up, etc. And I read books on CD in the car to keep busy - right now I'm reading a recent teen hit called "City of Ember."

I'm going to school year-round to get this degree done. I plan to graduate in the spring.

Farewell, Amelia

We sold the truck today. A good thing, but sad. That was our first vehicle. Stonetree and I took our first road trips together, camped in the back and I drove it until I was 7 months pregnant (with much difficulty you might recall). So it now lives with a couple in Mason - two teachers, both seem nice, avid Bush haters. YIPEE! So next time you see the truck, it won't be me driving it!

If you have a fond memory of the truck, please share!

Here we go...

OK, so we have a space to blog and I have added folks as members provided folks can work out how to confirm and so forth. If you get stuck, call or email and I will try to help you out...

Otherwise, post away!