seems we forgot all about the library like we told my old man now
Posted: October 9, 2011 Filed under: cats, day in the life, family, friends, home 3 Comments »Weekend recap.
Saturday.
- the market, pre-yuppie invasion. Got tiny pumpkins for singing the 5 Little Pumpkin song at school. Did not get any meat. Am sorry now.
- let the kittens outside to play.
- let the chickens out of their yard to be temporarily free range.
- visited with LB.
- coffee out plus tiny grocery shopping at Reid’s with newly re-found gift card!
- helped change spark plugs on dad’s truck. Got to borrow t-bird. Fair trade, yes?
- went to tiny reunion of kids from my summer job/birthday party, which was fab.
- dinner with K and E, which was also fab.
- bed, ah, bed….
- let kittens out again to play. Kittens are SO happy! So! Happy!
- let chickens out again, too. Chickens are SO chickens! Just chickens.
- had coffee and the comics in the sun on the front porch
- admired frolicking kittens
- yard work: moved thyme and oregano to newly weeded bed on the south side of the house; moved wooly thyme from pot to ground in two spots to reclaim it’s ground-cover roots, mowed lawn.
- gamboling kittens!
- laundry: delicates, whites, sheets. All on the line. (I run out of clothes pins before I run out of line space with my new clothesline.)
- moved litterbox to mudroom, freeing downstairs bathroom from lowly “cat bathroom” status and facilitating transition to no motherfucking litterbox. I hope.
- picked up LB in the t-bird and went for a drive. Saw Jim Waive play, drove home. Did not cruise through a hamberger stand, but had fun all the same.
this is a ttc blog, damn it.
Posted: September 20, 2011 Filed under: blogging, family, friends, home, stupidly introspective, the big IF 2 Comments »Lest I forget, in the midst of back to school trials and indefinite breaks, these folks, the Injector and Lesbian Dad, remind me about what is it that I set out to do and why I want to do it.
Three failed FETs this summer. One last ditch effort this fall sometime. Work is kicking my proverbial ass. Hold on to your hats, my friends.
xx
Posted: September 8, 2011 Filed under: family, friends, home 1 Comment »Back in the day, my high school didn’t start until after Labor Day. All the public schools did, but we lucky kids at Tandem got an extra little bit of summer.
That said, I have no idea, really, what the exact first day of school would have been, back in 1991. But it roughly coincides with some day this week.
Which means I have been friends with LB for 20 years.
Yes, that is twenty. Over half my life.
I can’t even think of enough ways to say how glad I am.
food/gift craftastic
Posted: December 2, 2010 Filed under: blogging, eco shit, family, food, friends, home 5 Comments »Or, “I don’t need to take the little pips out, do I?”
Oh, come on. You know you’ve missed live blogging with The Food Crafters.
Present: T of Tuesday Fame, Elsie, Cho-girl, LB and me. Here we fucking are. We are making infused vodka and flavored salts. If they turn
9 pm. Maths. Math is hard. LB is cutting citrus for infused vodka and Elsie is commiserating about mL and numbers of limes, slicing and doing maths while the rest of us sit on our collective ass and talk about a new fabric store. Vodka is filtering, so as to see like higher quality, a la SJ.
9:17 pm. Cho-girl begins lavender salt. Smoked paprika is the shit this season, you know. So we’ll be doing that next. And macha which is good on eggs. Vodka still flitering. T of Tuesday Fame is packaging some cleaning shit for us. Terra Scrub if you must know. You must know.
9:25 pm. Pic of sliced citrus as we wait for vodka to filter. Again.
LB said “wait while I hold it against my bosom!” but I didn’t post that one. This is a family blog, after all.
9:35 pm. Lavender salt done. Vodka update: first bottle, 3rd pass through the filter.
Live blogging is hard. I’m passing this shit on.
9:40 pm. Where is the shamwow? Cleaning utensils-salt flavoring change.
9:45 pm. Kermit crab status-mass murder and painting.
T of Tuesday Fame: “did you calculate for the displacement of the citrus?”
SHG: “fuck no.”
9:50 pm. New salt is smoked paprika and moving on to matcha which smells like green tea ice cream.
9:55 pm. Smells like a tea house.
10:00 pm. Four cycles of filtering the vodka is our max. around here, pouring it in with the first citrus mix, grapefruit.
10:05 pm. V-Bottle two, pass one. S-done for now, we will be drying citrus and doing that later.
in other news
Posted: October 24, 2010 Filed under: day in the life, family, friends, home Leave a comment »I forgot to tell you the neighbors moved. Insert big sad-faced emoticon here.
It’s sort of great, really. Who doesn’t want friends with a little farmette? But, for real? I miss knocking on the door to borrow a lemon and ending up staying for dinner. I miss stealing their internet. I miss early morning coffee on the porch in our pjs. I miss looking from my kitchen window into theirs. I miss watching prime time tv with them. I miss late afternoon drinks, when we’d stand around on the sidewalk with no shoes, watching the baby run around in the yard.
It was months ago they left, but I am still really not used to the idea yet.
put your money where your mouth is
Posted: June 21, 2010 Filed under: family, home, the big IF 9 Comments »Sometime ago, my grandfather was a little boy who shined shoes and cleaned spittoons in downtown LA. To follow a certain line of reasoning, he lived the American dream: he went to trade school, got married to a pretty girl, moved out of the city to a little town with cute houses and avocado groves, which has since been swallowed by sprawl, but that’s another story. He worked hard and treated his big city like a small town. he liked to go dancing with his wife and have afternoon drinks with his friends. All his kids went to college and he put away money for each of his grandkids to do so as well.
I didn’t, though. Go to college that is. I took that money and used it to buy a house 8 years ago, right before the market here exploded. By some stroke of luck or grit or something, housing in my neighborhood has not lost value in the past few years, so my house is worth far more than what I paid for it. Last Friday, I closed on a loan to refinance my house. A cash out refinance loan, which will pay for IVF. Turns out I had the money all the time.
When I was a little girl, my grandpa would call me sometimes, and after telling me that California was God’s country and wondering why I lived in Virginia and then insisting that I refer to myself with my mother’s maiden name included with all my other names, he would ask me for a loan. “I need $50, Starrhillgirl!” he’d say. Only he’d use my first and middle names instead. Then he’d talk about how he just needed this little loan for a little bit and that he’d pay me back really soon. With interest! And so I’d send him a check in the mail. $50. And a little bit later, I’d get a check back. For $100.
I figured out pretty quickly that this was a sort of scam in my favor, one that was probably sort of fun for him and was designed to teach me the value of putting money away. But, as an adult, when I think about it, I wonder if what I learned in addition to that was that being generous with your money is right. I am, clearly, reaping the benefits of his generosity as well as getting the reward for having put my money away in the right way at the right time. I wish he were here still so I could call him up to see if he needed a loan. I wouldn’t charge him any interest this time.
dispatches from the North
Posted: May 30, 2010 Filed under: crush, family, travel 4 Comments »My soon to be mother-in-not-law has flown me up to the north for a visit. I was all freaked out about somebody paying for my travel (oh, let’s be honest, I get freaked out by anyone paying for anything), but I got lectured by several people about smiling and saying thank you when one is offered something. So. Here I am.
Since arriving, I have :
- eaten Korean food about a million times
- sat on the screened porch and had delicious scotch from the gf’s uncle who died, which made me think fondly of my uncle who died.
- watched a movie with the gf’s brother
- slept in and then had coffee in bed
- ate more Korean food!
- watched the gf try on and look great in a million fancy shirts from her aforementioned uncle
- prepped for a trip the the beach. Yes, you read that right, I’m going to the beach. Woo!
glutonous
Posted: February 3, 2010 Filed under: doula, family, general queer stuff, miscarriage sucks, nablotryagain, stupidly introspective 6 Comments »Here I am. Just back from …. birth class. No, no. I’m not knocked up. I’m taking it for my doula certification. You’ll remember, you old timers, you, that I took a weekend long doula training class. And it was great. And birth work is great, what I can do of it – teaching sort of gets in the way of being on call for births. Having taken the training, but not completed the certification process, I can attend births, but I cannot claim to be a “certified” doula. To be certified, I have to write up six births I’ve attended and take a birth education class, in addition to other things I’ve already done. Well, a friend is offering a free birth education class, so I figured I’d take it and be all the closer to certified.
And it’s great. Yep. Great. Full of interesting information and well balanced with regards to intervention-heavy vs. intervention-free birth.
And it’s hard to sit through – writing a birth plan or visualizing my cervix opening like a flower seems rather akin to prodding an almost healed puncture wound with a chopstick.
And it’s straight. Yes, friends, you’d think I’d know at this point that coupled, straight people have babies and most of them have no real, true idea that I exist. Nobody’s mean, or hateful, or anything like that. It’s simply as if they have *no idea* single mothers, or lesbians, or any other differently familed people might be giving birth, too.
come on now, won’t you come back home
Posted: September 26, 2009 Filed under: family, friends, home, Uncategorized 8 Comments »Or, How To Throw A Funeral In 10 Easy Steps.
- Find a dead Some One. Try to find a dead Some One You Love, as this leads to having the funeral land in the laps of some other folks you love, as well as partially in your lap. This may be painful. This may, in fact, be really shitty. Whatever. There’s a lot of business around death. Somebody’s got to deal.
- Handle the red tape. What, you thought there was just a pine box and some ashes to ashes shit? Nope. Ha ha on you! From inter-state shipping to archaic, homophobic bullshit, you – or some one you love – will have to deal with regulations that turn no ear to love. Remember: somebody’s got to deal.
- Remember shit. When you’re in the thick of it, remember shit. Those stories about __________________? And the ____________? Fill in the blank. Those motherfuckers are priceless.
- Call in the troops. You’ll want a nice bottle of George Dickle. Or some carry-out bagels and fresh coffee. And somebody’s got to go get them and bring them to you. So pick up the phone. May you count your friends as your family and your family as your friends and may they all come riding up when you put out the call. You’ll remind yourself that your Dearly Departed was good at this sort of thing.
- Call in the troops again. This one is the All Call. It’s death, y’all. People will come. They’ll show up in dark suits. They’ll bring food. They’ll make the Bible palatable to atheists. They’ll drive you and yours around and listen to history they have no interest in, while seeming interested. They’ll call you for no reason. They’ll laugh at inappropriate shit and you’ll be glad. You call; they’ll come.
- Bear Pall. Really, do we have to say anything else? Just do it. Folks have carried your weight before and will again. Return the favor and be proud you were asked along for the ride.
- Food. The living like to eat, and you know your Dearly Departed did, too. So plan your After Party accordingly. Did your Dearly Departed love oysters? Have some. (Be sure to find some poor soul who knows how to shuck them.) Or maybe the favored food of The Deceased was any sort of dessert? Then make a cake. Or three. Don’t let the dog eat the cake.
- Drinks. Have them. Toast en masse and in small groups. Drinks win at funerals. Circling with a wine bottle makes you look like good host and allows you to check in with lots of guests. Yes, this is yet *another* lesson from your Beloved Deceased.
- Good lord, do not forget the pictures. The old ones you dig out of the box at the top of the closet and then ones that about a million people are taking right now. You’ll be glad to have them. Or, at least you’ll be glad to have some of them.
- Keep talking. Those folks you love, the living and the dead, are around so long as you keep talking about them. Heaven or no heaven, they’re still here. Call your friends your family and your family your friends and keep them all close by.
grandma tuesday
Posted: March 25, 2008 Filed under: family 10 Comments »
My love of stylish glasses must be genetic. If she were wearing a more revealing top, you’d see I also got my boobs from her. Thanks, Grandma.
There is also my other grandma, aka Banin, of whom I have no good pictures. Poo. She is equally great. And busty. Yes, I get it from all sides.
