I <3 leap day

Twelve years ago, Todd and I stood in the courthouse in front of a JP and got hitched. It was the culmination of a conversation that had started two weeks before with "Hey, wouldn't it be funny...."

Happy third anniversary, baby. Here's to 30 more.



(Image from Nylonthread. Isn't it great? That is one talented girl.)

I don't like perfect teeth

Every now and then, you read something that perfectly expresses what goes on inside your head. From Salon's TV column "I Like to Watch" by Heather Havrilesky:

I prefer good people with bad attitudes to bad people with good attitudes. Personally, I enjoy lazy, unkempt people whose crabby phone voices mask their pure intentions, and avoid chipper go-getters whose pleasant, friendly exteriors hide a compulsion to win at all costs. When I encounter a broad, professional smile filled with perfectly white teeth and a firm handshake from a neatly manicured hand, I imagine that hand ruthlessly choking the life out of some unlucky little animal while those pretty teeth grit together in concentration.

Professional, upbeat, focused, detail-oriented people are just creepy, let's face it. Maybe that's why most of us instinctively distrust politicians. "He really seems to have his shit together," is the natural precursor to the question, "What's wrong with him, anyway?" It's not that we're driven to find some hidden flaw; it's that most of us can't personally comprehend what would motivate a person to get their dry-cleaning done in a timely fashion. There's just something a little nefarious about maintaining a consistently polished image.

When someone looks like a slob, personally I'm instantly charmed. When the expression on a woman's face bespeaks a life full of unmade beds, hastily prepared meals and outdated, disheveled outfits, that's when I say to myself, "Now here's a woman who's got her priorities straight, at long last!" It doesn't matter what she's been doing with her time, really, so long as she hasn't been bleaching her teeth.

Bowling with the Strings

The Os go bowling

Liam eats massive quantities for breakfast

Face-painting at a one-year-old's birthday party

Along with a DJ, puppet show, and a cast of entertainers. I don't want to judge other people's choices, but it all seemed a little excessive.

I think I'm developing a polar bear fetish

Polar bears cuddling sled dogs: SO CUTE I COULD SCREAM.

Thea and Emmaly

I feel like I've been neglecting to take pictures of the kids, which is actually the whole point of my blogging. So here's one of Thea and our friend Emmaly from a couple weeks ago.

A rollicking good time

So, yeah, despite having neglected to get tickets to the sold-out Mortified show in time, Molly, E, and I were able to get in to see our good friend Wrekehavoc read some HILARIOUS entries from her high school journal. Seriously, they were brilliant in their angst. I think the best line of the night came from Wreke, who said, lamenting about how hard it is to be smart and clever among people who are common and mediocre, "I guess even Hamlet had a fatal flaw."

[UPDATE FROM WREKE: "I hate being a perfectionist! That will probably be my fatal flaw. I mean, Hamlet had a fatal flaw, so why shouldn't I?" Thanks, Wreke! That's going to be my new catchphrase.]

Ah, youth!

It really was a great night, made even more awesome by the fact that we could BYOB. We drank copious amounts of wine, laughed til we cried, and rejoiced in our shared dorkitude. Magical.

Wrekehavoc is Mortified

A weekend of change

Like most kids, Liam is changing constantly. I'm completely in awe of what must be going through his little head. And it's gratifying to see that he's growing into my kind of guy.

For example, on Friday the kids and I had dinner at friends' house. After dinner, while the grownups drank wine and chatted, Liam dumped a bucket of toys on the floor and started to climb in it. He paused, reconsidered, took off his pants, and then continued to climb in.

On Saturday at our book/movie group meeting, AJS made the most amazing thing ever: roasted bone marrow, which he served on toasted homemade bread with coarse salt and a parsley, lemon, caper dressing on top. SO. GOOD. Though a lot of adults wouldn't even try it, Liam is game for just about anything, and spent several minutes intently licking marrow off the toast.

Saturday was also the first time that Liam played, really played, with the other boys. He sat in my lap for part of the movie, then got up to chase and be chased. When I tried to get him to come over to give me a kiss, my usually affectionate boy shook his head and ran off to join the boys. Little man, am I no longer your number one?

Freedom to Marry Week Day 7: Hope for the future

I may break into a rousing rendition of Greatest Love of All. It's true, Whitney, the children are our future.

From Think Progress:

During his controversial speech at New England prep school Choate Rosemary Hall yesterday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove was challenged by a student “to explain how giving gay people the right to marry would endanger other people.” Rove dodged answering her at first, saying that the issue “should be resolved by a legislature or a referendum, not a court.” But the student, Choate senior Marla Spivack, continued to press him.

“You never actually answered, how does it threaten anyone?” she asked.

Rove asked, what’s the compelling reason to throw out 5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman?

What, Spivack countered, was the compelling reason for society to allow interracial relationships when they had once been outlawed.

Then Rove invoked the Declaration of Independence before Spivak interjected that its reference to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” seemed to support her claims.

Eventually, Rove wiggled out of the debate by asking Spivack “when she planned to run for political office.”

Freedom to Marry Week Day 6: Why local elections matter

It's easy to get swept up in national elections. Even state-level elections usually warrant more attention than county elections. But local elections define our communities just as much, if not more. Take the Dover, Pennsylvania, and Kansas school boards, for example. Both had elected officials who were proponents of "intelligent design," a creationist campaign to teach Christian religious philosophy in science classes.

Now, I have no problem with religion being part of a school's curriculum, though I would want a class that explored a number of world religions, not just Christianity. I do, however, have a serious problem with scientific principles being ignored in science class. Our country already has enough trouble with logic and reason. I don't appreciate further attempts to erode it.

On that note, here's some local political news that could have far-reaching and national implications, and a picture that proves people who are for marriage equality are hotties. From today's Washington Post:

Two Sides Testify on Same-Sex Marriage

By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 15, 2008; B01

Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage clashed before a Maryland Senate committee yesterday, with traditionalists invoking religious convictions and gay rights advocates describing their cause as a civil rights struggle.

The lengthy hearing, which drew dozens of speakers on both sides of the most divisive social issue the General Assembly will take up this year, was headlined by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), who became Maryland's first elected statewide official to endorse legislation allowing same-sex marriage.

Gansler's office had successfully defended the state against a lawsuit by gay couples who sought to overturn a law prohibiting same-sex marriage. But yesterday, the former prosecutor from Montgomery County called same-sex marriage a "moral imperative" and a "basic matter of fairness."

"This bill is fundamentally about equality," Gansler told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "It would be wrong for me to have this job knowing there's something so wrong in our society and just ignore it." He said qualms about same-sex unions seem to be limited to older people: "For the younger generation, this is a non-issue."

Freedom to Marry Week Day 5: Idiocracy

MB's post on marriage equality reminds me of Idiocracy. It wasn't the greatest movie, but one part has really stuck with me. The main character is trying to explain that instead of watering their dying crops with a sports drink, they should be using water. This is how I — and probably MB, as well as most if not all of the six other people who read my blog occasionally — feel about explaining why marriage equality is a good thing and discrimination is a bad thing.

Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.
Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
Attorney General (Sara Rue): So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.
Joe: Yes.
Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?
Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.
Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.
Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.
Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.
Secretary of Energy (Brendan Hill): Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.
Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?
Joe: Okay, look. You wanna solve this problem. I wanna get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?
Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.
Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.
Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?
Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.
Joe: Yeah, but why do they use them to make Brawndo?
Secretary of Defense: 'Cause Brawndo's got electrolytes.

Narrator: After several hours, Joe finally gave up on logic and reason and simply told the cabinet that he could talk to plants and that they wanted water. He made believers out of everyone.

Freedom to Marry Week Day 4: On homophobia

As long as I'm just linking to what other, smarter people think, social scientist and brainy blogger Aaronish wrote a good post on why "homophobia" isn't as accurate a description as "homoprejudice." I think he has a point.

In order for “homophobia” to exist, the sufferer would have to present with terror, a gripping desire to flee, hyperarousal (non-sexual!), avoidance, and generalized fear when presented with the “stimulis” of a homosexual. (I am sure that even Rush Limbaugh does not meet that criteria.)

The more fitting term is “homo-prejudice.” This removes the pathology and suggest a much more adequate etiological underpinning: predjudice! A mental disorder, like a specific phobia, requires the attention of a mental health professional. Could a therapist bill an insurance company to treat someone suffering with “homophobia?”

No, because that person has a prejudice and, although they may benefit from therapy, does not have a mental illness. They have a prejudice against homosexuals. Would people accept the terms “Afro-Ameriphobia,” or “Chronic Womeniphobic?”

Freedom to Marry Week Day 3: A conservative case for marriage equality

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Given that our society now has a huge number of openly gay couples, many with children, and that the law has to respond to this social reality, the practical decision conservatives have to make is: what shall we do about this? My fear, expressed almost two decades ago now, was that the ad hoc responses — domestic partnership, civil unions and the like — were as practically unavoidable as they were subtly undermining of marriage. Give gays domestic partnerships and marriage-lite and straights will demand them as well. And so marriage becomes less special and less constructive an institution....

If you can make the leap to seeing gay people as the equal of straight people, then encouraging their marriages to one another is arguably one of the most socially conservative measures now subject to national debate. That's why it remains so saddening that so many social conservatives still regard it as definitionally anathema. I don't think it's a leap to believe that homophobia or fundamentalism are the critical stumbling blocks. Or that they are the real reasons for the resistance.

Interesting idea, that the real threat to the sanctity of marriage (WHATEVER, by the way) is not in letting gay couples marry; it's in creating a separate category, a "lite" version.

Freedom to Marry Week Day 2: Super Tuesday

Tomorrow is voting day, and for the first time ever this close to an election, I have no idea who to vote for.

Usually by now, one candidate would have been more aligned with my values than the others. I probably would have voted for Edwards for his commitment to anti-poverty initiatives. Now it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Not in a bad way, just in a way that makes the choice hard for me.

The candidates' stances on gay marriage are pretty much the same: civil unions over full marriage rights, and homosexuality isn't immoral now let's change the subject. Because of this, either candidate could still have my vote but neither candidate would get a campaign donation.

Their voting records are virtually the same, on gay rights and other issues, so the choice between them is really about notoriously unreliable intangibles and intuition. Suburban Lesbian Housewife says that the Clinton staff made key calls to state legislators to help vote down the recent anti-gay initiative in Massachusetts, and there was a persuasive pro-Clinton op-ed by Gloria Steinem in the New York Times recently. However, Obama was against the war from the start, and let's face it, he's awfully charismatic.

If you have strong feelings either way, let me know!

Freedom to Marry Week Day 1: Saucy Wanda Sykes

Happy Chinese New Year

Today starts the Chinese New Year, and instead of going out for Chinese like my husband suggested, we ended up at Denny's. Bleh.

We went there because it's near the PetSmart where we were planning to return a dead fish we got for the aquarium a friend gave me a few weeks ago for my birthday. The whole thing is quite macabre: if a fish dies within the first four days of being in your aquarium, you can return its body for a replacement fish. So we've had this dead fish for the last three days, slowly decomposing and turning fetid in its little baggie on the counter.

We left it in the car while having dinner, a thoroughly miserable experience. I know at some point having dinner out with the family will be fun and/or relaxing, but that's still probably a ways away.

Come to think of it, I do recall that Thea was two-and-a-half before we were able to have a mellow night out at a restaurant with her. So I suppose it's just par for the course that we spend the half hour at a crappy restaurant wolfing down our crappy food and snapping "Sit down, please. Get out from under the table, please. Eat your dinner already. You kids, I swear, we're never going out again."

And we forgot the receipt for our fish corpse, so the whole excursion was entirely pointless, anyway.

Five ways I regain an illusion of normalcy

My new must-read doobleh-vay tagged me with a very sweet little meme, and at the same time wrote a kind of blogger manifesto that resonates with me. Check it out if you get a chance. There's a lot about dooble-vay and amy t sharp that is great, including some lovely photography and smart writing.

Anywho....

Name something you do everyday
Talk to my sister

Name 2 things you wish you could learn
To speak Spanish fluently
To play the guitar

Name 3 things that remind you of your childhood
Lakes
Oceans
Farms

Name 4 things you love to eat but rarely do
Eclairs
Filet mignon
Smoked oysters
Tongue tacos (I don't mean that euphemistically)

Name 5 things/people that make you feel good
(There are a lot of people who make me feel great, so here are 5 things)
My fat-ass Cadillac Eldorado
A nice bourbon
Chanel No. 5 perfume
Akio's smoked ribs
My new fish tank

I'm tagging these guys:
Aaronish
Grandy
Renaissance Woman
MB
Nikita

Six ways in which I prove my dorkitude

I was tagged by the delicious Mamalicious to share six random habits or quirks about me. Here are six of the many ways in which I'm mildly odd:

1. I read the first thirty pages of a book, the last thirty, and then the middle if I'm still interested, in that order.

2. I'll also almost always Google the ending of suspense movies before they're over. I love movies with Nazis in them because there's no ambiguity: they're always the bad guys, and they always lose in the end.

3. I don't like big surprises.

4. I loathe romantic comedies. I kind of loved Alien Vs. Predator just because it was fairly predictable, and the guy who you thought was going to be the romantic lead gets eaten early on. That kind of surprise I'm okay with.

4. Until I was 30, I was certain I didn't want kids. I think my husband felt a little betrayed at first by my change of heart.

5. I sometimes fall asleep with my toes crossed.

6. I can smell when someone near me is about to cry.

Tag!
Heather (I thought you were going to start posting every day, dude!)
Philfree
Nylonthread
Amy T Sharp

Effing DC potholes

The very sympathetic woman getting into her car for work said that cars were lining the street last night, all from blow-outs at the same place.

UPDATE: There's another car behind me with a blow-out. Effing DC, man.

UPDATE AT THE END OF THE DAY AFTER SEVERAL GLASSES OF WINE: Renaissance Woman reminds me, the AAA guy was a total saint. After he changed my tire, we noticed that the spare was flat, too. Instead of abandoning me to wait for a tow truck, like the car behind me had to do, he drove me to a rather scary car parts place across the freeway (my blow-out was in rush-hour freeway traffic), let me wait in the warm truck safe from junkyard dogs while he asked whether they had any tires that might fit my car, picked out a tire, drove me back, and put the new tire on. In the rain. After he was already off work from his 12-hour shift. That started at 9pm the night before.

The guy's name was Maurice. I'm thinking of changing Liam's name. Maybe Thea's, too.

EEEEEEK!!

Todd just found a MOUSE! In the HOUSE! YUUUUUCK!!!

I'm pretty unflappable about most things, but mice give me the serious heebie-jeebies. While I was screeching and hopping around, Thea said that we should get a cat to take care of the problem. I agreed completely. Liam saw an opportunity and said — as long as we're putting in pet requests, I suppose — "I want an elephant!" When I said they were too big to keep in the house, he thought for a moment and replied, "Baby elephant!"

Hello, my name is ...

Henry Ignatius O, welcome! (Dawn224, because I <3 you, I promise to refer to him in print by his full name and never as the shortened version that is so easy to yell.)