Posts (page 2)

I never thought I'd be posting a link to Us Weekly, but this is my kind of newsworthy:

http://www.usmagazine.com/transgender-contestant-to-compete-on-antm

Isis is my new hero.

Pranzo Domenicano is Sunday dinner, a true Italian tradition.  Visiting my family in Sicily, this wasn't overly formal, but a compulsory ritual of food, family, laughter, and wine.

My Aunt (coincidentally name Domenica though we call her Mimi) is in town.  So, in a gay dad reinvention of pranzo domenicano, she, my dads, and I are going to see Mama Mia this afternoon, and are then returning to their roofdeck to bbq and sip cosmos.  Che buono giorno!

Did Blayne really say "Holla atchya boy" to Tim Gunn?  A fatal error I'm sure.

I'm concerned, deeply, about season 5 of Project Runway.  Heidi looks surreal, Tim is delicious, Nina is foxy and fierce as ever, and Michael is simply precious.  There are more contestants of color than ever before, and some look really promising.

But let's address the shortcomings lest we forget:

- Where did this season come from?  Suddenly there were ads everyday on bravo that there was just a week until the premiere.  What?  A week?  Wasn't it switching to logo?  Or something?  It seems a little thrown together.  Not that I mind that suddenly it is back on the air, I just hope it wasn't rushed and is up to par.

- Blayne.  Oh my.  Let's review:  first thing he said to his roommate: "I have a ridiculous obsession with tanning."  Then Tim gave him some circumspect feedback and Blair responded with "Holla atchya boy."  Really?  The kicker, indisputably, was his playboy bunny gone grunge design made of a diaper.  The icing on the cake that put it beyond the pale:  he named his catastrophe "girlicious" and then... and then!  He branded his model with it!  He wrote girlicious on her scandalously exposed thigh.  I don't know who I am more embarrassed for: the model, the designer who seemed to think it was great, or the entire cohort who was demeaned by his juvenile bravado.  Ick.

- Stella gave up!  What was that?  That's not how this works.  Pull it together woman.  The point is to be challenged, of course it is hard.  Silly.

More ruminations to come.  While I wasn't terribly impressed, it was fun to have a crew over to watch together, especially having champagne to toast along with the contestants.  At least it gives us an excuse for an impromptu sioree, right?

Last summer Danielle said that family week was always hard for her because she didn't quite believe it was real.  It is a week of community that makes it ok that I live so far from so many of my friends.  I get so much time to spend with with them planning, working, processing, debriefing, hugging it out, and loving them.  Each year it seems like the planning starts earlier, is a little more involved, and brings more wonderful friends my way.

Last year Kelly arrived (sick as a puppy - and as cute as one!) a week early, then Chester and Mere on Wednesday, and everyone else on Thursday.  We assembled at my house and decorated our cars on Friday before we hit the road, eating breakfast and catching up before the caravan.  Another big crew stayed in Boston Saturday at the end too, I just loved being the launch pad

This year Monica was here for a week in June, Ember's been here for a week and a half and is leaving tomorrow, Kyle comes Monday, Mere Wednesday, and the rest of the crew on Thursday.  We'll have seven people holed up in my 700 square feet next week, and that's cozy, and that's just right.

My binder is full with my schedule for the week, all my workshops, notes, staff contacts etc.  I have put a ton more time into getting ready for Family Week this year and it has given more time to connect with people I miss terribly.  Sometimes I get a bit worn from being the den mother; the laundry, the dish washing, the airport trips, etc.  Mostly though...being the person in Boston means getting lots of phone time and face  time with people who live three thousand miles away 51 weeks a year.  And that is worth all the dish washing and laundry in the world.

This year is going to be different for sure.  No Dori, Kelly, Ramzi, Nava, or Jesse.  That's quite a hole.  But then this year Jamon, Mere, Mon and I are taking 4 days to play in waterfalls and swimming holes in VT, to finish the conversations that we never quite got to in Ptown. 

After tonight I have my place to myself for the weekend, a mini solo I asked my friends for, to put me in a better space before an intense week.  I am looking forward to a quiet weekend, some non-queerspawn events and mostly low key errands - but there is a small place in my stomach that dreads how quickly the weekend before Family Week has arrived.  It means the frenzy is imminent, and once it starts it is over in a flash.  And then the people I love fly back to the Bay Area, and another year goes by. 

We call it the Family Week hangover - the sadness that hits you when you realize that this isn't the reality that we live in.  That we don't live in a world that gives us time and space to explore what it means to make community, to aspire to be better, to feel safe.  It is invariably a heartbreaking let down, and I am already dreading that the wonderfulness already starting to to arrive in Boston will all board planes, buses, and boats at the end, and my house will be quiet, and there will be fewer people to hug.  In the meantime, I am going to soak up every second of Ember's company, Kyle's visit, and the imminent influx of faces I love that put smiles on mine.

I had dinner at Dbar with Daddio last night, vodka gimlet, buger, fries, semmifreddo for dessert.  Yum.  I told him I was cutting my hair short today, like it was when I went to Italy... he couldn't remember me with short hair.  I showed him a photo of the haircut I want, and he loved it.

After an intense morning, we chatted over the phone at lunch to debrief things, and he wished me good luck for my haircut tonight.  I said I wished I'd cut it yesterday since I felt more convicted about it then, but that I'd just roll with it.  He went into a meeting, I went to work.

About 2 hours later I had a voicemail from him saying...

"Hi sweets, its dad.  I was just coming out of my last meeting and thinking about your haircut.  I wanted to tell you that I think you have a beautiful, angular, and symmetrical face, and so I think you'll look wonderful with a simple, short, haircut.  Anyways, there are my thoughts.  Love you, bye."

Really?  I dare anyone to find a more adorable dad.  Bring it.

I made a new friend.
It has been a strange six months living in my new home.  I moved in around Christmas, and every day I leave for work before the construction crew arrives, and come home after they leave.  No one else had moved into Prospect Court, so it was indulgently quiet, but sometimes eerily solitary.  In late June Kinna moved in, a resident at a local hospital.  Then Mike moved in, and then the pipe burst and ruined all of the second floor units.  After that someone else moved in who I have yet to meet... and then... my next door neighbors moved in.  I had been bracing myself: a huge Bangladeshi family, a dad, pregnant mom, three year old daughter, and four grandparents. 
They were a little disorganized about the purchase and so the move in date slid around like a peeled grape.  They were loud when they cam by to see the house, and there were just so many of them.
Finally the closing came and I heard children's squeals coming from outside.  I opened the door to find my new three year old neighbor, Prionti, and her four year old cousin Pia, they had their toy mops and were cleaning our walkway outside.  We chatted and I told them how happy I was to meet them and Pia kept poking my belly saying "I like you!"  Love it.  Pia upstaged Prionti with her superior English and hysterical personality, but in the last few days I've gotten to spend more time with Prionti. 
Moving day come a few days later, and their little Camry pulled into the driveway full of about 6 adults.  Each one was carrying a beautiful silver tray with tiny dishes full of bright ground spices and cut flowers.  They disappeared into the house and some chanting began emanating from the open windows.  My life is so void of ritual and ceremony, I hope my house absorbs some blessing by osmosis from them.
Few of the family members speak English at all.  I wake up every morning to find one of Prionti's grandmothers hanging gorgeous silk saris over the rail to the landing outside my door.  I was putting my trash out on Friday and she pointed to them and made a face like she didn't know how to say what she wanted, and then simply asked, "objection?"  Aw.  No, no objection.  I love it, I told her.
Prionti came over squealing asking to see my doggies (cats in fact- being three and bilingual has to be tricky), and then jumped up and down when she saw basil, sending basil upstairs and under the covers.  Prionti's grandmother seemed to expect that Prionti would translate from Bengali to English for her, but the poor child just smiled pleasantly at me wondering why I wasn't answering her grandmother's questions.  Grandma went inside and I sat down and chatted with Prionti for a while.  English seems to go better for her when someone isn't speaking Bengali to her at the same time. 
"Happy birthday to you!"  She would shout every few minutes out of the blue.  "I go to school today" was something she dubiously told me on Friday the Fourth of July as well as today - Sunday.  I have my suspicions.  I asked if she liked to read and she said yes, so I went inside to get some of my favorites and we read them together.
First was Leonardo the Terrible Monster, then Galoshes (where she called the worms snakes), then The Family Book (where she loved the stars and all the yellow), and then It's OK To Be Different (where she pointed to the drawing of a woman with toilet paper stuck to her shoe and called that a snake too).  We hung out a little today while I transplanted my curly wurly plant and planted a succulent container garden, then her dad came outside and she turned on a spigot and splashed with wild delight for ages.  She always asks to see the doggies when she comes by, and they (the cats) steer clear of her.
She is delighful as a three and half year old could be, and I can't wait to introduce her to Ilse.  I think our next books will be Baloonia and perhaps the Jolly Postman, though that may be advanced.  I'm glad my stash of children's books is coming in handy.  And I'm glad my new friend can come ring my doorbell, especially when her new sibling arrives in a few weeks - I'll stock up on stories so she can have some baby-free time reading stories on my deck with me.  What a lucky summer friend to find.

Its been a while.  I'm not really sure why I haven't been moved to write here in so long, I've been busy, yes, but that's not new.  Things haven't been uninteresting... at all.  I guess I just have other places for these thoughts lately.

The summer invasions is in full swing - I have tons of new neighbors including the beautiful family from Bangladesh next door, and I wake up to see the deck railings draped with gorgeous colorful saris every morning.  My new couch is coming right after family week and the granite for the breakfast bar just before.  Ember and Monica come next week and the rest of the queerspawn two weeks after that.

Caroline is a point scholar, Patrick graduated from an Outward Bound course, my eighth graders graduated, and the school is preciously quiet in these days before summer school.  Things are not bad.

I met Leslie Jordan and Kelli and Parker O'Donnell, have gotten amazing support for the new RI COLAGE chapter, and planning for family week is going at lightning speed.  Maybe things are just so pleasantly swell lately that I've had nothing to whine about, or maybe being in summer mode and not having to ever set my alarm clock has just filled me with a sense of complacent ease.  Whatever it is, life is good, thunders storms are daily events, my sandal outlined is tanned onto my skin, my deck is getting lots of use, my car very little, and champagne mangoes are back in season.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to eat my breakfast in the sun.