rivers_bend

last week we had a really quiet afternoon at work, and my colleague whom I was on the phones with was asking me about life on the California coast. This led to us both looking at property websites, as she and her brother and mom are thinking of buying a house down there. We found a place in Santa Cruz (home of my heart) that was amazing. 150 acres of meadowland and woods, with a huge, gorgeous main house, a guest cottage, and a caretakers cottage, three barns, an alpaca paddock, a swimming pool, sea views... incredible. A snip at fifteen million dollars. But whatever. That was also the week when people were posting the links to the plans for tiny houses websites and talking about that, and I went into full-on fantasy mode, thinking of all the little houses that could be built on the place, and how there could be a huge vegetable garden, and chickens, and it could be a real proper fangirl commune.

I imagined everyone having their own space, and then using the big house as communal area, with signups for the TV, and if someone was watching something you wanted, you could just join them, and I thought about cooking in the big kitchen, with people sitting around chatting to me, and maybe some other people helping to make big meals to put in the fridge, and people could come and heat up lasagne or meatloaf or stew or soup whenever they wanted. And we'd take turns working in the garden if that suited, or taking care of the animals, and spinners could spin to their hearts' content, and knitters could knit, and one of the barns could have a south-facing wall replaced with glass and it could be a huge artist's studio, and people could use it to paint or make jewelry or sculpt or whatever they liked, and we could have a little recording studio, and a fire ring, and bat boxes in the eaves, and hummingbird feeders everywhere.

And it made me really really happy to think about. I would love that so much. I never felt cut out for the communal living situations in like, Berkeley, because the people (from the looks of the ads) were not people with whom I had much in common. But yeah. This sounds great to me.

On the way home that night, I was talking to my mom, and she asked how my day was, and I told her about the gorgeous property, and how great it would be to buy it and build a fangirl commune. She immediately had a thousand practical reasons why it would never work (primarily that even with thirty people, you'd all need $500k mortgages to be able to afford it, and that's before you started making any changes to the property), and I was so taken aback. I realized, talking to her a little bit more, that she doesn't have places she goes to in her head that are nice to think about. If she wants fantasy, she reads a book or watches a movie. She only dreams of things if she can also logic a way for them to happen. I'll admit, at first, it made me feel like a freak.

But then I got off the phone with her, and remembered that being able to think like I do is what makes me be able to tell stories, and I am FAR from the only person who can do that.

Tonight I was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep so DST doesn't catch me, and I drifted off again, imagining the solar panels on all the roofs, and the windmill on the property's edge, and that wonderful kitchen, with all the counter space a girl could want, and bar stools for my friends to sit on, and, I'll admit, we were listening to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and I was maybe shaking my ass a little in time with the music, and I thought I need to write this down. So, here I am.

and now I am going to get back to dreaming, and hopefully sleeping.

Hello!

My mom is grilling me mercilessly about what would be a good Florida vacation that didn't cost an arm and a leg, for two adults of a grandparently age, two adults in their 30s, and two kids ages 3.5 and 5. She's weeping at the cost of Disney, and frankly at the idea of spending so much time in the park with kids who aren't old enough to get the most out of it. She also loves the beach. She wants to rent a house rather than do hotel rooms.

Do any of you have any thoughts by any chance? My sum total of Florida knowledge is that it sucked royally to be taken there in a rainy February instead of going to the Sadie Hawkins dance with my boyfriend when I was fourteen. Also, thanks to Burn Notice, Miami has lots of spy activity. Though I suspect this second thing might be not strictly true.

Thank you in advance ♥♥

Since long before Prop 8 passed, I've had a problem with heterosexual weddings. Not in theory--straights can get married if they want--but in practice; attending is painful for me. And yet, I continue to attend. In large part because that's what you do, but also because I forget how much it hurts until I do it again.

My cousin's wedding is a whole weekend extravaganza. Thursday night was the rehearsal dinner, last night was a pre-wedding BBQ for family and wedding party, and today is the ceremony and the reception. I'm trying to focus on the fact that it's nice to see my parents again after ten weeks.

I can't even count the number of times I've heard something along the lines of "I don't have a problem with gay people, I just wish they wouldn't shove their lifestyle in our faces..." like straight people just have lives but we have a lifestyle. Fuck that. Thursday we were presented with a slide show of the bride and groom. It was cute and adorable, and nice to see the woman my cousin is marrying, as I don't really know her. But all the heteronormative lifestyle it displayed was really upsetting to me.

The prom pictures with strings of girls in dresses and boys in tuxes, the college theme parties with couples in matching outfits, the series of proposal pictures, the happy families portraits with mom, dad, two kids and a dog... That is a lifestyle, and it's one that school administrations, opinionated bigots, the voting public, state governments, the federal government, and thoughtless, ignorant people deny me and hundreds of thousands of queers every single day. And it's really fucking painful.

And I'm one of the lucky ones. Believe me, I know that. I have parents who not only love me, but who go way out of their way to support me, fight for my rights and the rights of others like me, who advocate tirelessly, who make sure that people who aren't as lucky as I am have someone to talk to. I have always lived where it was pretty much safe to walk down the street holding hands with a girl. I've never lost my job, or been denied housing, or had to find a different real estate agent, or been punched or kicked or stabbed or shot.

But I have been verbally assaulted, shoved, surrounded by a gang and taunted, threatened with violence, spent a year in my job defending my right to care for women in labour and live with my girlfriend, put up with insults, been told to pretend my girlfriend was a boyfriend, asked if I wouldn't rather be straight, been told I was abnormal, a freak, and sick, been asked not to flaunt my sexuality when I was talking about the fact my girlfriend was a vegetarian, lived with the fact that if I wanted to stay with my British partner I could not reside in the USA, had to spend a year gathering "proof" that my relationship was real, including letters, pictures, bills, and other documents in order to live with her in the UK, when straight couples just have to provide a marriage license, faced thousands upon thousands of media slights and insults every year, and spent twenty years coming out over and over and over and over because it's worse to live a lie than to put up with all that shit, and because I am one of the lucky ones, I feel a responsibility to everyone less blessed than I am to try to make their lives easier by keeping queerness from being a shameful secret.

I don't begrudge my cousin and his fiancee the happiness they've found with each other. But I have to admit I do begrudge them how easy it is for them to get married. How they don't have to have in the back of their minds that what they are doing today is a political act, how hundreds of convenient legal changes will happen to their relationship when they sign that license, how all the people here to see them today assume this is the 100% natural next step in their relationship. And, I'll admit, I resent that they don't know any of this.

I think someday soon I'm going to have to stop going to straight weddings. It's never an appropriate time to soap box, and yet grinning and pretending everything is fine and dandy feels like swallowing glass. But I'm here now, and I'll make the best of it. Thank god my parents get it, at least mostly.

Long enough ago now that I'm embarrassed it's taken me so long, balefully gave me the color blue for the 10 things you love that are [color] meme. Here we go :D

( Blue, songs are like tattoos )

And there you have it. Ten things that are blue that I love.

In unrelated news, my mother called today to tell me that she and my father saw Avenue Q last night and thought of me when the "Internet is for porn" song happened. LOL. um. yay for no closets?

Not unrelated to the porn, today is Fic rec Friday over at more_is_more. Come rec us your favorite glitter-populated fic :D

I ended up having to ditch on church, because I am absolutely wrecked after concert and dinner. But dinner was lovely, and two of the "kids" I grew up with in the church were there, one with her eight year old son, the other her brother who is closer to my age. It was nice to catch up with them a bit. I haven't seen her since before her son was born. Also nice to see some of the other people, who are more mom and dad's generation. Sometimes I feel sad that my tolerance for organized Christian religion has fallen to pretty much zero, even the UBER liberal Christian religion that is the UCC church I grew up in, because there are some really good and wonderful people there who were a big part of my growing-up years. But. This is not what this post was going to be about. It was going to be about the concert.

This was the 20th "Home for the Holidays" concert put on by the SFGMC, but the first one I'd ever been to. It was in the gorgeous Castro Theater, which I love. We got there only about ten minutes before it started, and the place was packed, but over at the side there were three empty rows at the front, so we sat in the third row and had no one in front of us. We couldn't see the sign interpreter, because he was on the opposite side of the theater, but we had a great view of just about everyone else. At first it was jolly and merry, and there was even a HILARIOUS song about fruit cake embellished by a drag Julia Childs "making" cake, and by making cake, I mean drinking a lot of "rum". But then this boy who I'd had my eye on anyway--because he was really cute in that Adam Lambert would probably fancy him if he were just a little bit shorter kind of way--stepped up to the mic. And started singing in this AMAZING, sternum-vibrating bass voice, a song about the paper menorahs in Billings Montana. As he was singing, I noticed that he had a star of David on a chain around his neck. I was already crying by then, but tears started flowing down my cheeks, and I was wiping them with my fingers and drying them on my handbag because it's cotton, and my shirt was all filmy and not appropriate for drying purposes. I was still weeping when they started the next song which was about the meaning of Christmas and family and has a line in it about remembering the Christmas they weren't welcome at home any more. Having just recently heard a few of the GMC members talk at a PFLAG meeting, I know for a fact that several of them came out to their families and were told never to come home again. So on with the weeping I went.

I'd just about recovered by the time the sing-along started, and managed fine with Jingle Bells and whatever the next one was, but then, before we could launch into Silent Night, one of the men read an abbreviated version of the story of the spontaneous Christmas Eve cease-fire during WWI where men from both sides sang Silent Night, in English and German. Well. I was gone. Tears dripping off my chin because I couldn't catch them fast enough. I could hardly breathe, never mind sing. Missed the last two sing-along carols, too, because I was still crying.

They did have me laughing again by the end, though. And I kind of have to say. A hundred-odd gay men singing their hearts out in the Castro Theater, past which Harvey Milk marched, and past which his supporters marched the night he died, which has been the symbol to so many queers across the country over the years as a place they can go and be accepted and be at home? That's all the church I need.

My dearest wish for all of you is that you have a place where your heart is at home. ♥

Dear Dad,

Asking me to run errands for you and then taking your car away all day is not the best way to get your errands run on days Mom has her volunteering stuff. Please arrange better carpools.

Yours,
Stranded

~~

Dear Octopus,

Please be less awesome. You are too cute running like that, and I hurt myself flailing.

Sincerely,
with sprained wrists

~~

Dear Mr. President,

Your grin makes me grin. Like this:


Grinningly Yours,
no, really.

~~

Dear American tofu hotdog makers,

Please make your hotdogs taste better.

Yours,
the one who used to live in England where tofudogs were good.

~~

Dear Hummingbird bush outside my window,

It's winter now. And I love that you still have both flowers and hummingbirds.

Distractedly yours,
a hummingbird fan

I went with my dad last night to see The Laramie Project at one of the high schools on the peninsula. We also staffed the PFLAG table in the lobby before and after the play and during intermissions.

The students were amazing, including the one who broke his leg last weekend and missed the first few performances because he was in the hospital, but was back on stage last night (and a few nights before) acting from his wheelchair. Rather than retelling the story, it's more a dramatic reenactment of some of the hundreds of interviews the producing theater troupe conducted in Laramie in the year or so following the murder of Matthew Shepard. It humanizes the story in a wonderful way. I was moved to tears many times.

Several people came up and thanked us for being there, and many of the actors came up afterwards and thanked us and checked to make sure we had seen the play and not been stuck behind the table all night. We gave away several pieces of literature to staff from other schools and a few to parents and there was one girl who kept coming back and snagging one pamphlet at a time before sloping off. When she finally made eye contact, we chatted to her for a bit and told her to feel free to take one of everything. Another girl came up and cheerfully greeted us, saying, "I represent the 'B' in all those letters," and snagged a business card.

I couldn't help but be struck with how much has changed in the 20 years since I was their age, and yet, as they ran around screaming and hugging each other after the play was over, it was like yesterday that I was 16, and everything in the tiny orbit of my universe was the most important thing ever, and we'd had an amazing closing night, gotten a standing ovation, and there was a cast party to go to, and I was crazy-beautiful and amazing.

It made me miss those days. And then I remembered the complete lack of GSAs, the utterly tedious schoolwork that I hated, stupid boring classes, acne, pegged jeans, hairspray, and Paula Abdul on MTV, and decided I'll take now.

Trying to explain to my mother that I am crying because a bunch of anonymous people are loving on a bunch of people I've never met. It's not easy.

Much easier to explain the happy tears from all the love I'm seeing for my friends and for me. THANK YOU GUYS!

Mom is going to a Valentine's party tonight, and I have assured her that she DOES NOT NEED TO WORRY that I will be sad and lonely. I can take care of myself. And she can stop going stir-crazy.

and in other wonderful news, I CAN HAVE FANGIRLS FOR JARED! TOMORROW! *twirls with glee*

We had a lovely day yesterday. I ended up making dinner after Mom burned her hand, and that was fine, actually, because I'm the sort who finds helping much more irritating than just doing it myself. and Mom was mostly okay so long as she kept a bag of frozen peas on her hand for the rest of the evening. This morning she's much improved. After dinner we played a few rounds of Apples to Apples, and once our younger guests had gone home to bed, moved on to Scrabble Scramble*, which we played until 11pm when we were all exhausted. We also all got lottery scratch cards, and 6 of the 9 of us won something, which way beats the odds *g* (I won the most, at $10, but that's better than a kick in the teeth)

Inigo was a bit miffed that there were so many people, but he got over it. eta and mmm mmm, he's been out playing in the Rosemary bush and now smells deliciously of Rosemary! *resists licking him*

This morning I went a little wild and unflocked Punch Drunk, a J2 fic I wrote back in October, and even cross-posted it.

One of the things we had for dinner (and by we, I mean they, because blik), was Brussels sprouts with blue cheese and chestnuts. The sprouts on the top of the stalk were too large and we had plenty with the ones at the base. Mom and I were quite enamoured of the stalk with its top of sprouts. And so we decided to make a feature of it, much to our amusement and the bewilderment of our guests. To wit:


I hope everyone traveling today is doing so safely. And with as little stress as possible. ♥



*you take the letters from a Scrabble game (or two if playing with more than four players) and make your own 'boards' right in front of you, starting with 5 letters and taking another each time someone says "go" which one does when one has used all one's letters. You can move things around any time, re-doing your crosswords, and then you add up your points once all the letters have been drawn and one person has used all theirs.

I was this close to watching Torchwood last night before going to bed, but I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I watched it this morning instead. Only the finale remains... And Ianto/Jack is fucking HOT, even when it's only implied.

I've managed to do about 45 minutes of homework. It's 4pm and I've been up since 6.

( girlie TMI )

My brother called earlier because he knows me too well. He was in a store and wanted to know if the car-seat he was looking at was cheaper on target.com. He figured the chances of my having the internet at my fingertips were pretty good. He was right.

erin2326 made me write porn. 333 words, Sam/Dean and a vibrator:
( totally not my fault )