"Doug is just like Poppa. He even has Poppa's sweet little smile..." That's what I thought to myself early this morning. I thought about the most important men in my life and they have shared some really startling qualities, given that they're all from parts rural - either in Texas or Iowa. Poppa grew up in Paris, Texas on a farm growing cotton and sorghum. That sorghum was used to make syrup (and TJ Blackburn syrup is still made in Jefferson, Texas; that was one of his cousins, I believe). Daddy grew up in Temple, Texas and my grandaddy coached football and was a school teacher. Both my poppa and my daddy read poetry. My poppa was an artist and a poet himself. He had a beautiful singing voice and sang on the radio in Dallas with his brother and two other men in a quartet. My father could quote all the great poets and knew all of Shakespeare's sonnets. He sang beautifully and loved opera. How do men who grow up in Paris and Temple love these things? We never listened to country music in my home growing up in San Antonio. We listened to classical music and opera. We listened to Perry Como. But we never listened to country music. I don't remember either of my parents ever reading a trash novel. The book I can picture in our bookcase at home is Jude the Obscure.

Doug grew up on a farm in southwest Iowa. He loved poetry and playwrights and is gentle and sweet like my poppa. Doug is the first person in his family to go to college, and then he went on to graduate school, where I met him. I don't know why it never occurred to me before, how much like my poppa he is, his sweetness and his gentleness. I am sure I went looking for that. Children react to Doug just exactly like they did to my poppa - like moths to flame.

why is everyone a whisperer?

Is it just me or is there too much whispering going on? Why is it just because you say you whisper to a horse, dog, ghost, child, mentally disturbed person somehow you are the great communicator? I have always been more of a yeller myself.

Fatter Somewhere

funhouse mirror self-portrait
Originally uploaded by craftivista

I grew up in San Antonio and I am fatter there than I am anywhere else. I am a little fatter in Austin, where I went to college, than I am in other places, but I pull it off better than I do in San Antonio. I am always very fat in my mother's house. I am fatter in Seattle than I am on the Eastside (where I currently reside). I am thinner downstairs in my own house than I am upstairs. I am always thinner in church than I am out in the world. Feeling forgiven makes me feel thinner.

I have accepted that it will always be so: being fatter some places and thinner others. I have understood that my perception makes my reality and alters it according to my mood and my circumstance. I am not an objectivist. I like Ayn Rand, but I don't subscribe to her theories, at least not where my belly is concerned. My upper arms vary minute by minute, mirror to mirror. I can gain 200 pounds in the span of an hour. I can acquire a pound per mile as I travel from one part of the country to another. Memories and insecurities add fat as surely as the lack of them slim me down to my true size.

I take my clothes off in the middle of the day to check their size. Not that it matters. The 4s or 8s or 6s don't matter. the P after the 8 makes me feel no better or a little better depending on my mood. Everything is judged by what is better a 4 regular or an 8 petite... Everything is that kind of trade off. I see what I want to see. I see what I can't bear to see.

At the dentist office I ask him to turn up the Nitrous because I'm not feeling it. I feel drunk when he says, "are you sure? You're pretty small." I say, I'm not paying extra for that, right? I wonder why he tries to flatter me, what his agenda might be. He's tricking me. They're laughing at me behind my back, he and the hygenist, that's what I think.

Sometimes I go into the bathroom and do what I need to do without ever catching my reflection in the mirror. Sometimes I can't stop staring.

Post Your Secret

This is incredible:
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Ugly, ugly, ugly

Jon Gosselin
Originally uploaded by argo21

Ok, I can't figure this out. Why would one woman (much less three or four) show even a passing interest in this loser?

For one thing he's as ugly as homemade sin. Those puffy eyes and that squashy face. Ugh. He's soft. He's got a fat neck and a weak chin.

For another he has a brood of kids and a lot of baggage. He'd better be makin' a lot of money because he is going to be paying a fortune in child support. He's going to have to keep drumming up the drama just to keep the payola flowing in to support all these kids and exes.

Just gross.

The point is mute

Moot is what he meant but mute is what he said. Moot: meaning debatable - like a moot court, not important, or just academic -- it doesn't mean soundless...

I can't tell you how often I hear someone say, "irregardless" which, of course, isn't a word. They really mean irrespective or regardless.

But, when people say, "the point is mute" I either want to laugh or scream.

Don't look... but stay right there

My children are ridiculously modest. They can't have anyone be in the bathroom with them, no looking while they get dressed - all that. But they've been that way since each was about 2 1/2. So, it's difficult with a small, boy child not to help at all in the bathroom. I mean if you care anything about the walls and floor of your bathroom.

So Wilbur wants me to go with him to the bathroom, but he doesn't want me to come in, and, in fact, he locks the door as if I might want to terrorize him by popping my head in mid-stream. But he also does not want me to go away. What he wants is for me to stand outside the bathroom door and wait. What he says is, "Don't look. But stay right here."

It struck me this morning that this is a metaphor for parenting. As my children grow up they say that to me in many different ways and sometimes it's hard to hear. The 'don't look' part feels like, 'don't meddle, don't be in my life.' I have to remind myself of the 'stay right here' part that comes after.

Cuckoo Puffs

Cocoa Puffs Combos
Originally uploaded by danajohnhill

Wilbur has asked me for this cereal, insisting that it's called Coo-Coo Puffs. I tried to say that the bird says he's cuckoo for cocoa puffs but he gets very frustrated with me and says, "No, it's COO COO FOR CO-CO PUFFS!"

Seattle Pride

Our church marched in the Gay Pride parade yesterday - Doug stayed home with the boys and I marched. It was a beautiful Seattle day and it was a great parade. We waved and blew kisses and tried to show the gay community that there are churches where they are welcomed and wanted.

That was the cap to a wonderful weekend. We saw The Tempest on Friday night with our friend Bradley Goodwill as Alonzo. We stayed out until almost 2 AM that night. We had taken Leigh and Alex with us and they took us out to Via Tribunali after the show. Matt, in town for Catch Me If You Can at the 5th Avenue, met us also. Matt brought the musical director for Catch Me (his friend John) and we all had a marvelous time.

I hope that Leigh and Alex think it's fun to meet these people - these friends of ours. I hope we don't make them uncomfortable. Sometimes I wonder about that. We have all these friends who are theater people and I hope they find it fun and not tiresome to hang out with us.

Saturday the boys went to the Doyle's for brothers' day - an annual event now with them. Brian and Brandi Doyle are lots of fun and their kids and Wilbur are bosom buddies. So, I dropped them off at noon. We spent a little time alone, just the two of us, and then we went by a graduation reception for a boy who has done some sitting for us. Then we went back to the Doyle's for dinner and to pick up the boys. Wilbur cried his eyes out when we left - a total melt down. "I don't want to go-oh-oh-oh!!"

Yesterday was the pride parade. I feel like thank god it's Monday, because I am exhausted.

I got posted on Hey Rude!

Check out my friend Helene's site about rude behavior in New York City! You'll see that they posted one of my submissions:

http://www.heyrude.com/2009/06/who-are-these-people-clean-up-after.html

City-sponsored meetings for gays trigger showdown over privacy vs. public records

City%2Dsponsored%20meetings%20for%20gays%20trigger%20showdown%20over%20privacy%20vs%2E%20public%20records

Shared via AddThis

This is why I'm marching in the Pride Parade here in Seattle on June 28th. Not b/c I care about private vs. public records, but because a guy like this is out there spending all his spare time making sure no one is getting ahead of him in his race of rats.

Sage about Age

Wrinkled Elegance
Originally uploaded by Athary

I think this is what's hard about aging: the -ing. It continues and it's ongoing. It's in process. It's not done.

I look in the mirror and I don't like a change I see. I realize the inevitability of the new wrinkle or the sag or just the alteration in the nature of my skin. Then I come to acceptance - of that, the way it is that day. But then I realize that I am not frozen in time and it's not going to stay 'this good'. That's what happens. I have never aspired to look like I'm in my Early 40s. But now, given that I'm almost in my mid-40s and then I'll be in my late 40s and then my early 50s (and the beat goes on), hanging on to the early 40s look sounds good.

100 dollar words

Yesterday Emery was upstairs trying to watch a program 'On Demand' and he was struggling with the remote. I heard him grunt and get mad and I asked what was up. He said, "It's this remote! I can't get the infernal thing to work!"

This morning Wilbur is watching his requisite Backyardigans before school (it seems like they watch a lot of TV)... It's the Viking Voyage episode. Wilbur called out, "It's a whirlpool!" and Emery said, "It's more like a maelstrom. A maelstrom is even more powerful."

Happy Birthday Son

Today my oldest boy is 10 years old. I can't believe it. How can I describe how much joy this child has brought into our lives? We call him our good luck charm because it seems that after he was born, everything fell into place.

It is certainly a journey that I couldn't imagine before I had him, and it's a journey that is so different today than when he was a baby. I used to see families with their children in the 'tween years and think that wouldn't be as fun as when they were babies. But it's much more enjoyable as they get older - the struggles grow, too. Not being able to protect my son, seeing his friends' influence outweigh ours, realizing that there is nothing I can do to make him a popular kid or the leader among his peers (that they have something to say about that), is not easy. It was certainly much easier to dress him in something adorable and ask him to smile.

Now, he has awkward moments and goofy moments. He is silly in that funny way boys have as they figure out how to tell a joke and then practice being un-enthused (oh. cool. -- I hear that a lot); they do that thing where they act like they are nonplussed and unimpressed. There are moments when I want to be able to punish him the way I used to and still punish Wilbur, sitting on the steps and taking a time out. But by the age of 9 and certainly now that he's 10, that just doesn't cut it anymore. The consequences require thoughtful consideration for every infraction, and every infraction can't warrant punishment. If I punished him every time he rolled his eyes at me there would be no 'time in' -- it would all be time out. So, I choose my battles and focus on the heinous deeds; a particularly nasty tone, complete refusals and uncompleted but required tasks (homework). And I try to stay the one he wants to talk to about hurt feelings and disappointments. Someone told me once that with boys you should be doing something alongside them to open up a conversation about feelings and needs - and she was absolutely right. If I'm not looking at him, he'll open up and tell me about the hard time someone is giving him, his first crush on a girl way out of his league (two years older, a 6th grader!), and how he wants to be part of a tougher crowd of boys at school but he's not quite making it.

It's not really something I could imagine 10 years ago as I labored for 36 hours without so much as a Tylenol, asking for street drugs or a sledgehammer. And truthfully, it's better that we don't really know what we're getting ourselves into, what we'll feel, how we'll struggle. You wouldn't have the energy for that journey at the start of the trip, and you'd set yourself up to fail. The only way to do it is the way we have to do it, a day at a time.

TEAM me

Bicycle Built for Two - Tintype
Originally uploaded by photo_history

Doug and I have this thing that makes us laugh and it happened this morning. We imagined we were teamed up on that old game PASSWORD. I would be giving clues that I thought clearly indicated a word or concept and he would answer with something completely out of bounds, something that would make me think he was from another planet.

We first laughed and got hysterical about the concept of us as Le TEAM when Doug said one time that we'd never make it on a bicycle built for two. I would be all the time trying to wrest control from him although I wouldn't want to be the front rider. We said I'd be saying things like, "SLOW DOWN! You're going TOO FAST!" Doug would be sure we should go one way and I would know we should go another. The idea of that made us fall apart with the giggles.

Doug and I are a great team if we each do what we do best. But we aren't a real work-together kind of team. We are both really stubborn about how we want something done and we are complete opposites about how we approach even the simplest task. Doug is thorough, plans before he begins, is painstakingly methodical and does things in a certain order. I am quick, dive in without a plan, impulsive and impetuous and do things in no order at all - I may have to stop in the middle to preheat the oven, know what I mean? I hardly ever follow a recipe completely, to great acclaim at times and alternately resulting in disaster. It's why I can't bake. I start a crossword in the middle. I start things and tire of them and quit. Doug doesn't stop because it's dark out and he'll weed tomorrow - he stops when he gets to a logical stopping place. That is not me. If I don't want to do something anymore, I don't.

The way we are is good. Sometimes it's good to be a quitter like me (If something's not working for you, get out of it, move on). Sometimes it's good to have stick-to-itiveness. Sometimes it's advantageous to have a plan. Sometimes it's nice to go off the grid. But, after 15 years together, we know the couple we are. We couldn't go on Password and we would never make it on a bicycle built for two.

Don't forget your mother! Give her Jesus!

The Mother's Day Gift To Make Her Say Hallelujah
Originally uploaded by sudergal

I used to think Mother's Day was a nice thing to do. Now I realize what mothers really do, what they set aside, what they give up; and how much they love doing that. It's hard to explain how you give so much of yourself away and that you find you want to do it - it's hard to say that without sounding like some kind of martyr... or sounding like you think your Jesus.

I remember my first week of motherhood after Emery was born. I was so overwhelmed with love for him. And sadness for the loss of myself. I kept thinking, I will never be just me. I thought, I will never just do something I want to do or go somewhere I want to go without considering this child first. And that is a loss, particularly for someone in her 30s at the time who was accustomed to going and doing where and as she pleased.

Maybe all mothers don't feel that way, but I certainly do. I would walk through the hottest fire blah blah blah, as any mother would. I would lay down my life. And I do it in little ways each day. This is not to say I don't want to - it makes me aware though, the commitment you make before you have any idea what you're getting into.

There is a kind of vulnerability, too, that comes from loving a child so much and realizing how you could crumble into nothing if any hurt or ill came to that child. It was difficult for me, in the early days of parenting, to feel so raw and vulnerable. That is something I've adjusted to over the years. I used to have this insane vision each time I pulled into our driveway that I would run over one of my children. I think the true nightmare of worrying over your kids is that you might be the one to hurt them and cause them pain. I still have that vision but only now and then...

So don't forget your mother.

This flickr image reminds me of a time when my Poppa was alive but ailing in the hospital. Mother, Granny and Garland had been visiting him. It was around Christmastime, and they left the hospital to grab a bite to eat at a Whataburger across the street. The Whataburger was decorated for Christmas, but in a haphazard and half-ass way. There was a manger scene, but it was divided up and distributed over the entirety of the restaurant, as if they didn't have enough decorations so they decided to split the members of the scene up and have them take their places all over the restaurant. They made the entire restaurant the stable. But the thing that made Granny and Mother and Garland laugh, made them actually get hysterical (the way you do after death or suffering when you are so tired and sad) was where they had decided to put the baby Jesus... He was laying face up on the cash register - no manger, no straw.

TA$TE

My mother has always hated to go shopping. It was one of the anomalies I experienced as a child growing up in Texas -- my mother was not a typical Texas mother. Other people's mothers loved to shop, shopped on vacation even. My mother couldn't fathom shopping on vacation! Why, that's what you went on vacation to escape, mundanities such as shopping. She didn't like to shop (a bore, it made her feet hurt), didn't want me to be a cheerleader (it's silly, beneath you), begged me not to join a sorority (all that singing together and iced tea), and offered to give me the money she'd spend on my wedding if I'd elope (buy a house! are you sure you don't want the money?). My mother is a pragmatist.

So, when we went shopping we always got tickled about something in the dressing room and completely lost control of ourselves. Regardless of whether she enjoyed shopping or not, my mother, like my grandmother before her, would not buy cheap clothes. And never, NEVER, buy cheap shoes. My mother would rather go barefoot than wear cheap shoes, and she got that from my Granny. Granny never told me that I could learn a lot about a person by walking in his shoes, she said, "You can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear." I think she was wearing Ferragamo's when she died.

When we went shopping, it seemed that we'd look and look for something (we were always shopping for something specific; my mother didn't just shop for no reason, she hated it too much) and I'd invariably find one single thing I liked -- and it was always the most expensive thing in the store. My mother used to always say, "Well Paige, you've got good taste" or, "Paige, you sure have expensive taste" or finally, "you have your father's taste."

My father always said you couldn't buy taste - you either had it or you didn't, it was either bred into you or it wasn't. He grew up not rich, but his father had a college education and was a teacher and his mother loved the finer things, she adored china and silver with such a passion that I have full sets of china and crystal for any occasion. Dessert teas, ladies luncheon, you name it: I have a specific set of china for the occasion. Daddy used to point people out at our country club who were rich rich rich but whose taste was all in their mouths. Those were the people about whom he said, "Squirrel, money can't buy taste."

I have those same eyes now. I see these awful, gargantuan houses and I hear my father's voice in my head, 'money doesn't buy taste.' I hear my mother's voice in my head when I browse online at Nordstrom.com and finally see something I think is cute and it's always like $498 bucks. "Paige, you sure have expensive tastes." I'm not saying I spend that on a wear-to-work dress, I'm just saying, that's what I like.

La Bikina

My father loved mariachis. The first time Doug met my daddy we were in San Antonio. Daddy had it in his mind that we'd go to Paisano's but I was thinking La Margarita and if you knew my father you knew that he was pretty stubborn. So he agrees to go to La Margarita for 'a drink and let's see', he says. But once we get there, there is one of those incredible mariachi bands - one of those with like 20 guys - and the lead guy, the singer, he can really sing. Really. And, to top it off, there is an engagement party going on at the next 2 tables and they are paying these guys to play over and over again. So, it was a good night. My father sat back in his chair, across from Doug, and chewed his ubiquitous cigar and kept saying things like, "They don't make 'em like that anymore Squirrel" -- his pet name for me.

Fast forward to this past Christmas and my mother gives me this Luis Miguel CD, with La Bikina on it. Now La Bikina was my daddy's favorite mariachi song. He requested it if he felt like the mariachi singer could really sing it. And it's the song he requested that night at La Margarita when he started paying the mariachi band. We ended up closing La Margarita that night and my daddy and Doug became as thick as thieves. So, in preparation for Cinco de Mayo, and in honor of my father, I share with you, "La Bikina!"

Lichen a Challenge

Sysiphus
Originally uploaded by k4cay

People always say that they like a challenge. They often say it when they are interviewing for a job. They claim to work well under pressure, better in fact than without any pressure. They say they like deadlines. "I work well on a deadline." "I like a fast-paced environment," they'll say.

I have discovered that I do not like a challenge. I really don't. And I'll tell you what else, I think there are more people out there like me than you'd think. And, I bet other people like me SAY that they like a challenge, but they don't. They say it because they think they are supposed to like it.

But why would I want to do something the hard way if I could have it easier? Wouldn't I rather have the luxury of time? I am often lamenting to myself, as I hurry around my house trying to leave on time, that haste makes waste. I'll admonish myself for trying to yank on pantyhose only to ruin them with a run, or practicing some clever step saving that costs me extra time in the end (once I went through this whole elaborate routine to try to get out of washing my hair and I just had to go all the way back to step one and get in the damn shower)... I don't work better under pressure or deadline and I don't like a challenge. When I have the luxury of time and a pressure free mind I come up with a great comeback that I would give anything to have said to that boorish colleague who has been irritating me for months.

The next time I interview someone for a job (and that's going to be soon, I'm hiring) when they say that they like a challenge, as they invariably will, I'm going to say, "Really? Do you really? Because I don't..."

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste. Goethe

"Der moderne Buchdruck" - Modern book printing, Berlin

I often think that Goethe's statement that there is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste is a singularly perfect thing. More of that has been seen in this country during our most recent boom times than perhaps anytime in recent history; what with our McMansions (ugh. shudder at it) and big toys (I never refer to any purchase of mine as a toy. Toys are for tots); the gross and exuberant displays of bad taste and absolutely no taste have been flaunted as shamelessly as a coed at her first Mardis Gras.

So, when I consider another famous Goethe quote, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free" it all knits together so nicely. It's almost as if Goethe knew us, intimately.

I write about these things so the children will read this later and be reminded of How To Do Things. Some things are not ok and never will be. Exercising some bad taste option that entails more than $1.59 is not worth it.