we are still here

And growing

And fishing (with grandpa)

And getting in touch with our inner citrus-y sherbert-y self (doesn't he look totally edible?)

And communing with the goddess a bit (in this case, on vacation)

And posing a bit

And goofing off a bit (Thumper is being eaten by his best friend, a silver sting ray. He adores it! And Khubz is up front and center, as she is accustomed. Scully is there as back up and I am left to document the hilarity that is a toddler, an infant, two mommies and a sting ray in a hotel room)

simple fix

What do you do when you wake up too late to roll out the roll dough and let it rise properly? Put it in a warm oven, of course. And what do you do when the oven is actually too warm and the rolls rise and then deflate looking like rolls that have had gastric bypass surgery? Tell everyone they're an exotic cross between rolls and flat bread! (I inform Scully, who has a pot luck today at work.) And when said mysterious bread product is then burned in the oven? What do you do then???

Celebrate! These damn rolls are not meant for consumption!

I told Scully "tell everyone that the children are fine but the rolls suffered a terrible death."

I do wish things at her office weren't so contentious. (How can a potluck be contentious?? but it is.) If we were in lawrence I'd have brought the overly browned hockey pucks and we'd have all just laughed about it.

Good thing the oatmeal cake turned out okay.

Recent developments

Thumper has started playing. He likes to grasp something--anything, smile and squeeze it. This is particularly funny if what he is grasping is his sister.

And Khubz has moved on in her dreams. For months we'd say "what are you going to dream about tonight?" and she'd say "a monster like grover" or "big bird in his nest" or any number of Sesame Street friends.

Tonight out of the blue she says "tick birds." Big Bird? "No, Mommy. Tick Birds on a rhino. Eating comida. Tick birds."

Thank you, Animal Snackers for spicing up dreamland.

Welcome Ryah!

Sometime last night sister Samm became Mommy Samm to Ryah. Welcome sweet little girl. You gave your Mom and all of us quite a start coming almost two months early. But we are totally proud of you for fighting so hard to come into the world. We are so grateful you decided to stay.

Congratulations to us!!!

Worth a thousand words

A big welcome from the great state of Texas.

Please note furious winds--I had to stop taking pictures and hold my skirt down. Khubz was very excited to identify the letter X for us. Also see her aforementioned cowboots.

I flip Texas a lot of shit even though George Bush is finally out of office. But many, many fabulous things happen there. Just take a look!

Our son meets the goddess

Beginning BlueBonnets

Khubz as CowGirl doing the Spiral Dance

These boots were made for walkin.

She picked them. She loooves them.

Of course they're pink.

Khubz: "See my harry potter? i very braaaave."

Scully: Well, now she's a real texan. She was attacked by a mesquite tree and

lived to tell the story.

Smiley Smilerton enjoyed himself.

Here he is demonstrating "guffaw."

I'm sure its because I said something very, very funny.

Competition for eggs was hot at the ranch. Khubz held her own. Thumper simply charmed people in to giving him their chocolate.

Frog catching, turtle spotting and all the mud a kid could ask for.

Yes. She rode this with her cousin. Dissatisfied being a side kick she also drove it. By herself. Scully fixed it to go about 2 mph. I was still pretty sick watching.

What a great day!!!

And this one was all smiles. He was cackling with laughter even when we were at walmart. People stopped and stared because the sound of laughter had never before been heard at the walmart checkout.

Jumping the state sanctioned broom

So we are getting married. Again. This time the state of Iowa is invited. Scully and I married six years ago. Our ceremony was outside. There was a stunning sunset. We called the four corners, were tied together with a lasso, exchanged coins, jumped a broom and bound our hands & fates together.

With all that, who would have missed a teeny, tiny bit of government recognition?

Well we did. So here we go again.

You can pick up forms in three weeks and I think we are going to move quickly. I am joyous, stunned, proud of iowa, nearly speechless, grateful to the queers who endured the hateful rhetoric. . .

And with all of that said, I do think marriage is kind of weird. I don't think it is the be all/end all of queer equality or ending homophobia. It is not the battlefront that I would have chosen and it is not the battlefront that I have devoted much personal energy towards.

But it is also not really me that thinks marriage is weird. Just listen to the folks who were trying to "protect" marriage. This is what they think its good for.

In prior court proceedings, Polk County lawyers had offered five main rationales for the law banning gay marriages:

• to maintain traditional marriage,


• to promote the optimal environment for raising children,


• to promote procreation,


• to promote stability in opposite-sex relationships,
  
• and to conserve state resources such as tax breaks.

Lets break these down.

Traditional Marriage--Yes. Please. Let's stick with tradition. Which tradition, you ask? How about one that allows a twelve year old girl to be married off to a 50 year old man? Yes, please! Tradition is good!

A quick side note on this one. I do wish the white queer groups would stop using interracial marriage analogies to try and logic people through this argument. Rather than helping people reason it only invites more emotion and reveals just how blindingly white most queer groups are. Why not talk religion? For real. Avoid the whole is it/isn't it a choice (who cares anyway!) question and use a religion analogy. It does go against some people's religious definition of marriage for a Muslim to marry a Wiccan. It does not & should not matter to the state--even though religion is something that can be changed. It is nobody's business and if a church disagrees with it then they do not perform that marriage. I think it's a much better analogy.

Raising children--Okay, let me try and do this one without being too bitchy. So if I was married to a man things would be better for the kids because there'd be more pornography around the house? It seems I've been confused about what we've been doing around the fruitbasket. I thought we were promoting an optimal environment for children. Forget all the endless reading of Mi Carrito over and over and over and OVER again. Forget ABCFroog! Forget the seedlings by the window, the expensive organic apples, the stomping in mud puddles. What we need is a man! If all these homophobe groups are worried that Thumper won't learn how to pee standing up they can relax. I'm a dyke. I've peed standing up my whole life.

Promote Procreation--because the human species is in jeopardy of dying out. For real, though, anyone who had the misfortune of being around me when I was on the crazy-woman-juice would know better than to suggest I hadn't done my bit to keep the human race going--queer or no.

Stability in opposite-sex relationships--Look. If your hetero relationship is threatened by the mere presence of queers you are in a whole lot of trouble. I'd think you'd want us getting married so there'd be less temptation for you to stray. "Poor heterosexuals. They can be swayed so easily." How is it that the homophobes haven't come after these lawyers for using this as one of their points?

And finally, tax breaks. Because this is the best way to decide anybody's civil rights.

So why are we doing this anyway?

Because this is the first time the government has acknowledged that we are a family with all the bliss and shit that carries. I don't think the queer rights movement should be all about achieving "straightland" and I'm not interested in "acting normal."

But Scully and I have obligations to each other. We have obligations to our kids. We live up to and struggle through those obligations every day. I just think we deserve the same government recognition of that. And maybe a tax break.

Please don't touch me

I need to start by saying, hamdillah, that we made it back safe and sound from texas. I should next tell you that we had a fabulous trip, Khubz and Thumper were appropriately adored, springtime in texas really is beautiful, we all had a very good time.

Now please stop touching me.

We left Tx at 6 pm. Thumper fell asleep about 7. Khubz informed us she wasn't going to sleep in her carseat and would instead "wait for her bed." That's fine. But your bed is 6 hours away in Kansas at a as-yet-unknown motel-6. Don't wait up.

It was pouring rain. People in OK City were driving like they did not love their lives or ours. Khubz was alternately belting out ABCD and sobbing. She was way overtired. She didn't like me periodically leaning over Thumper to nurse and abandoning her. She discovered how to yank on Scully's seat belt with her foot and didn't like being told to put! her! foot! down! Through her tears she would ask to hold my arm.

You know how this goes.

"Hold you arm, mommy?" said sobbingly. "You big arm?" "You HUUUUGE arm Mommy?" "Big,big,big arm??" She loves my arms. She loves arm fat. She loves how squishy I am. Good thing. But after hours of that, especially that spliced with screaming fits about whether she would or would not kick the seatbelt, I was ready to yell "Mama! She won't stop touching me!!!" It did not help that when I would edge away from Khubz, closer to Thumper he would actually begin to chew on me.

It is good to be home.

We also got to stop in Lawrence, did a drive-by squeeze with one of Khubz's (and our) very good friends. We also stopped at another friend's to meet their latest addition. He is completely squeezable, edible, addictive--sweet little man ready to curl up on you and grunt away. My friend and I did not get a chance to really talk (of course) and there are so many, many things I want to say. Things like: you helped me hold on after thumper was born and I am totally here to help you hold on. And like: You are right. It is too much. It is totally okay to just get through right now. And also like: This is the hardest part. This right here and everyone is at their worst because it is the hardest part and soon there will be some more sleep and soon there will be some very restorative smiles and there will still be plenty of veryveryvery hard but it will be buffered by these better moments. And also finally: I know these are all platitudes but I do believe they are true and I clung to them and you can hold them or discard them as you need to. But I am totally proud of you for being honest about what you are feeling and as always I am here for you, loving you my very dear friend.

So there is a lot to blog about--texas stories, emotional updates, kiddo updates, cheers and jeers. . . But there's been a noticeable absence of fruit here lately as well as very few posts that don't talk about me washing poop out of elmo underwear. So I'm going to try and download the Tx pics, do some kiddo posting and also some conversation about our marriage quandary, "male post partum depression", economic recovery news and whether or not Scully and I should change our names. Oh yeah--also some type of salacious fruit image. Watch for it!