A friend recently posed a question online about how many of his friends and acquaintances who read that blog enjoyed the holidays. I first responded with a simple, “Do I really need to answer this?” because I figured that he knows me well enough to know how crazy I go with Christmas decorations and such.
I saw only a couple of other replies before one mutual acquaintance posted that he doesn’t like holidays, and has often wondered if the “joyful people” are brain-damaged or perhaps have butlers to handle all the stressful tasks.
Before I get into the meat of this post, let me first say that the way we handle health care in the U.S. is dumb and a disgrace. Okay. So, I think it was two years ago that my employer switched to our current provider. They sent us new ID cards, as usual. What was unusual was that the cards also came with these cute little tyvek envelopes, and the envelopes had additional information.
The size of the text on the cards and the envelopes is extremely tiny and difficult to read. There are multiple phone numbers, mailing addresses, all sorts of information. The company is headquartered in the midwest, and since they don’t have offices at all on the west coast, those of us working in the offices in Seattle and the various California locations are supposed to submit things through a local insurance network for reasons that don’t completely make sense to me. That’s one of the reasons there is so much information crammed on the cards and envelope: there is contact information for multiple offices.
Today is National Coming Out Day. If Ray were still alive, it would also be the day we’d be celebrating the twenty-first anniversary of our commitment ceremony (he promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, and he did).
Since I am still occasionally surprised to learn that someone I know or work with hasn’t figured out that I’m gay: my husband (Michael) and I are both men, and we’re very much in love with each other and happy together.
My husband and I.But while I’m (re-)stating what I think ought to be obvious, I would like to announce that I am a card-carrying liberal gay man who thinks:
I have written before about odd encounters with people through social media. One problem is that since some of the places I hang out online are forums and services that cater to specifically gay people, I wind up running into folks who are looking to hook up, but more vexingly, assume everyone else is also looking to hook up.
Consequently, my profile on all of those sites mention, as prominently as I can, that I am married to a wonderful man. My profile also always mentions my interest in science fiction/fantasy, that I write, and that I live in Seattle.
I’ve noticed a very specific phenomenon the last few years: guys who will initiate a conversation, making a comment about either the fact that I’m a writer or that I’m a sci fi fan, but who manage to completely miss the parts about my being married or living in Seattle. Seriously, at least once a week someone will chat amiably for a few moments, then start asking questions about what I am looking for in a boyfriend/long term relationship. When I point out that I already have a husband, they either get confused or flustered.
If they continue the conversation, they usually switch gears to explaining that they don’t have many gay friends, and ask if maybe I and my husband would like to hang out some time. At which point I usually ask, “Your profile says you live in Los Angeles/Jersey City/Houston/fill-in-the-blank; that might be a bit difficult.” Which leads into the part of the conversation where they didn’t realize that I wasn’t local to them.
I try not to be too snarky when I suggest that they might want to look more closely at someone’s profile before chatting them up. But I also try to cut things off, because by this point it’s clear that they either have extremely poor reading comprehension or some sort of memory/attention deficit issue.
A Smith-Corona Silent-Super typewriter in the Easter Pink color scheme, virtually identical to my Mom’s former typewriter, the one I learned to type on.My husband got me several cool presents for my birthday, but the best one just arrived late last week. It’s the typewriter pictured here.
I’ve been trying to acquire a Smith-Corona Silent-Super portable typewriter in the bright pink with white keys for years. See, my mom owned that model of typewriter since her teen years, so I grew up with that typewriter in the house. And at the age of ten, when Mom decided that she was not going to be typing up any papers for me when I got to that stage in school, she sat me down with her old typing text book and started teaching me to type. I achieved a typing speed of a bit over 60-words a minute on that machine by the time I was in middle school, and being able to hit such speed on a mechanical typewriter is why my computer typing speed is about 105 words per minute.
And the Silent-Super was a dream. It was regarded by many as one of the best typewriters ever made. Mom’s was in great shape, with a touch so light and well-balanced, you felt almost as if you could have typed just by blowing on the keys.Continue reading Tap, tap, tappity-tap-tap-tappity-tap!→
When I set my goals for the year, I said I’d do regular check-ins. It’s a new month, so I ought to check in.
I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving my goals. Inspired by a friend’s suggestion, I tried to identify a better habit to replace each bad habit. So how am I doing?Continue reading Goals? I thought you said ‘ghouls!’→
Even as a little kid I did not sympathize with Goldilocks in the classic fairy tale. There you have the bear family with their neat little house: each family member has a favorite chair, their own bed, their own special bowl for food. And they’ve just taken a walk in the woods while they wait for their dinner to cool down, and this rude girl barges into their house, messes with all of their stuff, breaks a piece of furniture, eats a third of the food, and then decides to go to sleep in one of the beds of this house that she’s broken into.
That wasn’t all that annoyed me. I was also annoyed at how critical Goldilocks was of everything. “This chair is too hard!” “This chair is too soft!” et cetera, et cetera.
But while I can’t recall ever having barged into someone’s house and messed with their property, I do have something in common with Goldilocks: sometimes I want things exactly the way I want them, and I find myself grousing over things being inferior to what I want—sometimes in contradictory ways.
A whole bunch of people joined us for a birthday dinner. I’m the weirdo in the stocking cap waving at the camera. (Click to embiggen)So I had a good birthday.
On the day itself, Michael left two presents for me to find while I was getting ready to go to work: a polo shirt with the Tardis embroidered on it, and the War Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. There was also a very sweet card that made me a bit teary-eyeed. He knows me so well! When I got home from work there was a much sillier card, and two more presents: a string of Tardis lights (we might end up doing another science fiction themed Christmas tree, at this rate), and in a plot twist I didn’t see coming, a pair of Princess Bride pint beer glasses.
It’s a sonic screwdriver! Need a lot of shelves put up?Then we walked up to my favorite restaurant for dinner. As often happens there, they gave me extra full glasses of wine. Both of my favorite waitresses were there. I had learned last year when we had my birthday dinner there that one of the waitresses has her birthday the day before mine, so I got to wish her a happy birthday. Even though I didn’t have room for dessert, they insisted I take home a slice of chocolate cake.
I had invited a bunch of our friends to meet us at AFK Tavern (where so many of our group outings happen) on Saturday afternoon. Since I needed to make reservations before everyone had time to let me know whether they would be there, I had to guess. We wound up with three more people than my upper-end guesstimate, so you will notice in the first picture we’re a bit squeezed in.
I had a lot of fun. This was the first time at AFK for Julie, Julie’s Mike, Jon, Sheryl, Chuck, and Mark, I believe. I only had three Fluttershy Mai Tais, plus a pint of Swill (which is actually a really delicious ale).
We were there about four hours.
I got a bunch of presents. A cool plant (which is going into the office, I think; I’ve had a window for over a year and keep saying I need a plant or two, so here goes!), a set of Tardis & Dalek salt & pepper shakers, the Firefly edition of Clue (which I didn’t even know existed!), a Seahawks stocking cap, two pairs of dark maroon/purple fuzzy socks (in men’s size!), iTunes gift card, not to mention some really cool cards.
My big present from Michael is still on its way. After years of me being unsuccessful at finding a Smith-Corona Silent-Super model manual typewriter in pink with white keys (sometimes called the “Easter Edition”) that was in at a price I could afford or had not already sold to someone else, he found one. It’s not in pristine condition, but the place that sells it does a lot of manual typewriter restorations and has a good reputation, so when they say it is in working order, that they’ve cleaned and serviced it, et cetera, I believe them.
I had a great time. I was so glad that so many folks could join us.
Ray unpacking after we moved into our second apartment.If Ray had lived, today would be his fiftieth birthday. Unfortunately, Ray died when he was 33. I try to maintain a good perspective on it. A bit more than three years before, the doctors had said he had maybe 6 months to 2 years to live. He’d beaten their expectations. It hadn’t been pleasant for him. There had been surgery, chemotherapy, and various side effects of various drugs.
When we’d met, he’d been this tall, thin (skinny, really) grinning goofball with a mop of curly hair usually dyed in multiple colors. As his illness had destroyed his lung tissue and caused painful lesions to erupt on his bones, making movement ever more difficult and painful, he’d gained weight and lost all that manic energy. The chemo didn’t make all of his hair fall out, but it got very, very thin, and he hated how it looked. The pain had slaved his sleep schedule to his pain pills. During that last year he would take his pain pills, wait for them to kick in enough to let him sleep for a couple of hours, then wake up and try to occupy himself for about four hours until he could take his next dose, sleep for two more hours, wake up and wait, et cetera.
Some mornings I wake up, it’s dark, the clock radio may have started playing NPR’s Morning Edition, which means the alarm will be going off soon. Which does not fill me with joy, because I’m never quite ready to wake up and get out of bed.
But about then my husband comes back into the bedroom. He goes into work earlier than I do, needing to leave before my alarm even goes off. Anyway, he walks into the room, he may turn on the lights because he’s looking for something, or he may just need to grab one thing. The important thing is he walks into the room, and a fun thing happens.
I remember that I’m married to that man.
It’s not like I have amnesia or something, but there’s a part of me that is always pleasantly surprised to remember that I’m not alone. Not only am I not alone, but I have the best husband in the world. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s sweet. He’s cute. He’s sexy. He’s very practical. One of my friends once described Michael as the most capable person he’s ever known. He can fix things—all kinds of things!—and he likes doing it. He can take a pile of fresh vegetables and turn it into several very neat piles of very nicely sliced vegetables in the amount of time a normal person would spend deciding which knife to use. He cooks. He cleans. He puts up with me (not exactly the easiest person to get along with). He puts up with all my weird hobbies and projects. He’s cheerful, even after living with me for over 16 years. His response to any disaster is not, “how can I fix this,” but rather, “I have a plan to deal with this.”
And did I mention that he’s sexy?
As if having this wonderful man in my life wasn’t already more good fortune than I deserve, my life has also been graced with a large assortment of wonderful friends. It’s hard to know where to begin, but here goes:Continue reading Feeling lucky→
A friend recently posed a question online about how many of his friends and acquaintances who read that blog enjoyed the holidays. I first responded with a simple, “Do I really need to answer this?” because I figured that he knows me well enough to know how crazy I go with Christmas decorations and such.
Font Folly 