I’ve been trying so hard to find things to keep The Boy™ busy during the afternoons after camp. Since he doesn’t have alot of his own stuff here at the apartment yet, he gets pretty bored. And there is only so many movies or video games that either one of us can stand.

The last time I was at the library, I remembered the Museum Adventure Passes offered through the Metropolitan Library Service Association. It’s a no strings attached free pass for either 2 or 4 people depending on the museum. We can check out one each week, and I fully intend to take advantage of it every single week.

This week, we went to The Bakken. It’s a pretty amazing, if small, museum dedicated to electricity and magnetism. I think we actually learned quite a bit. And had a damn good time doing it. We got to see a theremin, which honestly has been something I have been interested in since hearing one on NPR’s This American Life. I was absolutely horrible at playing it, but The Boy™ did surprisingly well.

I think that our favorite exhibit was the Frankenstein’s Lab presentation.  One of us (*cough* me *cough*) emitted a rather loud scream, which I’m sure the entire museum could hear.

All in all the visit was definitely worth it.  Ok so yea, this is a crappy entry.  It was much more interesting than I’m making it out to be.

An avalanche of blogging thoughts came into my mind this afternoon and I kept sending them via text to my email address here at home, so forgive me if they seem incredibly disjointed.

I went to the library on Tuesday afternoon.  I had my list of books and subjects that I planned on looking up.  Most of the titles I was searching for had to do with co-parenting in two households.  Now that we’ve officially talked to The Boy™ about our situation, I want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to do it right.  But every single book on a list of over 20 titles was so damn negative!  Every book had a subtitle like “How to Keep Parenting When You Want to Kill Your Ex”.  ( Really?  Kill your ex?  What the hell were you doing having sex with them in the first place?  And procreating?  Come on now!  If you cared about this person enough to have a child with them, it’s time to buck up and deal.) So finding a title was more difficult when you are in our situation, when you absolutely do not hate the other parent, when the other parent is your best friend, when there is nothing in your mind that has anything resembling hostility toward the person.   I honestly was hoping to find a book titled just that….”How to raise your kids with your best friend, even when you aren’t a couple anymore”.

My next topic search was a little easier to find some information, but it just wasn’t exactly what I wanted.  Damn the library for not knowing my every want and need.  I wanted to find some help in talking to The Boy™ about my sexuality and our family and what not.  There are 856 gazillion books out there for gay parents.  There are even some books out there for gay parents who are coming out of straight marriages.  But I have yet to find one that is inclusive of the ex-spouse.  There’s lots of glossing over of the “other parent”.  If anyone finds anything, please feel free to pass on the titles.

I’m starting to believe that maybe I just need to write my own damn co-parenting book.  There has to be a need for something like that.  We can’t be the only family in the world that is trying to make it work like this, are we?

I left the library with six or seven books and a couple DVDs for perusal.  I’ve been spending some time reading Families Like Mine by Abigail Garner. Abigail is the daughter of a gay father, and a self-proclaimed culturally-queer, straight woman.  Her book is a straight forward conversation with adult children of gay and lesbian parents.  I think I’m finding it very…refreshing.  Mostly because she really takes the stand that GLBT families are just  like any other family.  They’re health and happy.  The kids are honor roll students.  The kids are in trouble and fail out of school.  The families fight.  The parents stay together for 40 years.  They split up after ten.  They are just families.

Not much excitement on the home front today.  The weather threatened to storm on and off through most of the morning, so The Boy™ and I spent another afternoon in doors watching movies.  Today’s selection?  The third installment of Back to The Future.  Oh yes, the wild wild west edition!  You know you’re jealous!  We also watched Ghost Busters and both ended up craving roasted marshmallows at the end.

I’m dying for a trip to a decent craft store.  Michael’s just isn’t cutting it.  I have finished up both projects that I was working on and now I have absolutely nothing to keep my hands busy.  The most recent finished project had sat around W’s apartment for awhile and I just couldn’t resist stitching it……

The 90 minutes a day that I have to kill while The Boy™ is at his cartooning day camp is quickly becoming unbearable.  Yesterday was beautiful and comfortably warm outside, so the dog and I pulled a sleeping bag out of the truck and napped under a tree while we waited.  (Thank god that W and I have been intensely lazy and haven’t cleaned the truck out since our camping trip.  IN MAY!)   This morning though, the sun was already threatening an uncomfortable heat wave when I left the house at 8 o’clock.  The dog had to stay home in the comfort of the air conditioning.  I ended up floating willy nilly between a bench next to Lake Como and the truck listening to The Current, depending on my current level of heat stroke.

Once The Boy™ finished learning how to draw noses and speech bubbles, we were incredibly grateful to W for turning the a/c on before she left for work this morning.  The apartment was comfortably cool and we settled in and watched not only Back To The Future, but Back To The Future II.  Back to back.  While playing Uno.   He is getting far to grown up for me!  Used to be that when playing games with my kid, I had to hold back a bit so that he wouldn’t feel bad when I completely trounced him.  Not that I let him win every time, but I hated beating him by over 100 points.  Now?   There is no more knitting while playing, or quickly checking my email while he makes his move.  Now I have to actually pay attention!

Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of completely expected drama. It was inevitable. But it seems now that things are good and solid and will only continue to get better. W has been my rock through the entire thing and amazes me more and more every day. I can’t find the words to really express how much I appreciate and adore her.

Today was the first day of the new arrangement with my son. I picked him up at his dad’s house at 8:30, took him to camp, and now we’re back at the apartment playing video games and eating lunch. It’s so n ice to have the boy here with me.

Things were rough for a few weeks, but for now, everything is right in the world.

Spent the night with W again last night. It just seems the natural thing for me to do, as I feel completely lost and cranky when I’m not there. I’ve been sick the last few days with a horrific summer cold and laying on her couch watching Tivo is all I wanted to do.

I woke up in an off mood and, from what it seems, so did she. I ended up gathering up my stuff to take back to my place so that I could do laundry and she got ready for work. It was fairly quiet in the apartment and kind of awkward. BUT it felt completely normal. Bad mornings happen. And I didn’t feel bad about having a bad morning with her.

Is that utterly sick or what?

Just found out that my best friend in the entire universe is going to be here for Pride weekend with her partner and their children! I’m thrilled beyond all belief. I’m going to drive down on Friday to pick them up and they’ll be here for the pride and festival. Most importantly her partner R is going to stay with the children on Saturday night tso that she can go out to dinner with me and out to the bar. S and I have never gotten to go out since we’ve always had kiddos to sit with, or one of us has been in the depths of mental health crisis. The Saturday of Pride weekend is my birthday. And I’m so excited that I will get to spend my birthday AND Pride with my best friend AND the most wonderful girlfriend I have ever had.

I must admit that I am a bit nervous about S and W meeting. S can be protective. And they are really very different from each other. They’re both amazing women in their own way, but just differently amazing.

I keep saying that I’m going to fix my level of blog concentration and actually post every day. Or atleast more than once a week. But I must admit that I am incredibly distracted and consumed by this new relationship. I’m going to attempt to write atleast once a day this week. We’ll see how that one goes over.

I have never been this way over a woman. Generally I am someone who craves frequent "me time" and cannot stand to be clingy or clung to. But with W, I feel like all I want to do is lay on her couch with her. All. Day. Every. Day. Nothing would make me happier than if we could just barricade ourselves away for a good long while. We are absolutely perfect together. We can talk about anything and are open with everything. We laugh so much that my stomach muscles hurt. Sex is fantastically amazing. We have fun no matter what we are doing. Hell, grocery shopping is even an adventure with her. I am utterly twitterpated.

Last week was fairly consumed with preparing for camping in the Wisconsin woods over the weekend.

Friday morning, I dropped W off at work and took her truck so that I could continue the preparations. We hadn’t completely packed the truck and there was still some last minute errands to be run, so it seemed to logical for me to spend the day doing those so we could get on the highway as soon as she finished her day. The day seemed to drag on. I took the dogs to the park for two hours, went on a half an hour walk, made a trip to the market to pick up an extra flash light and sugar-free tang for a mysterious alcoholic beverage. I’m surprised that I could concentrate for long. I was so excited to be spending an entire weekend with W, sleeping next to her every night, and waking up with her every morning.

I got to her office parking lot about ten minutes early and spent some time using my mad Tetris skills reorganizing the truck to give her some better rear driving vision. The dogs were settled in on their mound of blankets and pillows that covered the back seat. The pups road in high style all the way to Wisconsin.

The drive was perfect, as it seems that everything is with this woman. We have those wonderful conversations that just continue to flow from topic to topic and it doesn’t seem as though either of us really mind the random tangents that we head down quite often.

The weekend had too many highlights to cover them all.

• Much drinking
• Cheddarwursts over the fire are SO much better than in the microwave.
• I cannot seem to cook over an open fire after dark, but charred bacon cheese burgers aren’t half bad.
• Picnic table dancing
• Mid-afternoon naps and laughter filling the tent
• Erectile dysfunction
• Pomegranate juice, malibu, vodka, and triple sec is amazingly tasty.
• Our future children Amstel, Coors, and Brosephus, and the unnamed triplets, as W is officially carrying sextuplets. We’re gonna give John and Kate Plus Eight a run for their money.
• Our gay matching breed dogs
• Boxer puppy!
• Falling on your ass while looking at the stars is only embarrassing when everyone around you is not as falling down drunk as you are. Since everyone was…no embarrassment for me!
• We were evacuated to the ranger station on Sunday when the tornadoes rolled in. It was a bit scary for a few minutes, but everything faired well. The dogs were a bit worried all day and kept trying to dig under the tree to find shelter. The ranger station was the most boring place in the world, but atleast we knew we were safe.
• Cornell, Wisconsin must be one of the most gay friendly small towns I have ever encountered. We went in to pick up bug spray, ice, and after bite one afternoon and the pharmacy staff was super friendly and the locals didn’t even bat an eye. A rarity in small town midwest and very very refreshing. We’re buying a summer home there. With a jacuzzi. And a half pipe in the back yard.

I do not intend for this blog to become overloaded with twitter updates. Bad timing for starting a blog equals good timing for me personally.

Two years ago, I met an interesting woman online but things being as they were in my life, we just never managed to connect. We tried to talk for awhile again last fall, but the crazy "only kiss you when I’m drunk" girl happened and things fell to the wayside again. A month ago, I had a date with one of way too young for me women that I seem to attract and we ended up heading to the bar for a drink after dinner. I saw W immediately and watched her throughout the night. Obviously, my date was going wonderfully. *wink* After I’d finally had a few beers, I used the excellent line of "Don’t I know you from the internet?" It was truly genius.

Things are fantastic. Scary fantastic. So wonderfully, amazingly fantastic that I find myself afraid to really write about it. Not that I would be able to find the words, but I’ll just leave it at that. Wonderfully amazingly fantastic.