Since it is November 1, and the lovely PoppyMom has requested that W and I complete:
And so, here I am at 6:30 on November 1, typing away on the blog.
Halloween went fantastically. I really started panicking on Wednesday night when I realized just how little I had completed on The Boy’s costume. Truthfully, I am usually on my final fitting and have done at least one full dress rehearsal by a week prior to the big event, and here it was two days before and I had yet to finish cutting out pattern pieces. I spent most of the day Thursday sweating and near tears thinking about it, but not being able to do much as I had picked up a few freelance projects and had a deadline to meet. Friday morning I woke up and immediately began working. I didn’t move from the kitchen table all day. What came out of it was not nearly as technically marvelous as some of my previous creations, and I ended up giving up on the arms and legs portions, but I realized about 3/4 the way through it that *any* homemade costume now-days makes me an incredibly awesome mom. And the fact that while we were trick-or-treating, I saw a number of children with no costume at all? Yep. I feel ok about my half-assed costume design this year. Besides, I’m a makeup supergenius, so as long as I had a clean pallet to be able to coat The Boy’s face with gorgeousness, all was well. Of course, I realized now this morning as I’m uploading photos that I didn’t seem to get a single decent shot of the entire body of the costume and that the lighting outside was not particularly flattering, but you’ll get the general idea.
He really isn’t as miserable as he looks. The makeup makes him look particularly pouty.
We spent about an hour wandering in our neighborhood, which has changed significantly in the last six years! We lived here with The Boy was five and moved away until this last summer. Back then, one of the first Halloween nights he can remember, there were virtually no children in the area. It’s an artsy, trendy area that has been gentrified to hell and back, but then it was all young hipsters. Based on last night though? Hipsters are growing up and having babies! There were quite a few ghosts and ghouls, and a number of pirates and butterflies, wandering the neighborhood with bags of treats. The Boy was obviously among the older kiddos, but it was nice to see families in this area.
The Professor stopped by on his way home from work to check out the costume and walk a block or two with us, and then we headed down to W’s best friend’s new house. They were pretty excited about getting trick-or-treaters for the first time and we loved the fact that they had candy for kiddos and cocktails for the grown-ups! Pumpkin coffee syrup and tequila make a delicious little beverage. While W sat and chatted with friends, The Boy and I finished off two more blocks (both sides, as he insisted). The amount of candy that kid accumulated is truly amazing. And not a single sticker, pencil, or toothbrush in the lot! He did get a bag of Doritos, but we all thought that was kind of cool, considering the amount of sugar you injest on Halloween. Who doesn’t need a salty little snack at the end of it all?
Ok, even though I’m titling this post with Ministry lyrics, it is such a mommy blog post that I may need to shoot myself when I finish.
This week has been the total panic of “Oh, Gods! Friday is Halloween and I have done little to nothing to prepare my child!” Generally I am a Halloween fanatic. I have costumes planned months in advance and by the week before I only have a final fitting and makeup trial to complete before everything is perfect. My house is decorated. I have plotted and planned the best candy acquiring route for The Boy. This year, for some reason, things just fell to the wayside. And here it is Wednesday, with the big day falling on Friday of this week, and I am just now getting things figured out.
I’m not going to wreck the surprise of the costume until the day of, but let’s just say that this is our most challenging costume to date.
The first few years of The Boy’s Halloween adventures were pretty standard toddler costumes, but starting at age 6, he began dressing as the Universal Studios monsters.
Age 6: Wolfman
Age 7: Invisible Man
Age 8: Mummy
Age 9: Dracula
Age 10: Frankenstein’s Monster
Age 11: Can you guess it? It’s hard. It’s fancy. It involves extensive make up. And the following supplies:
Camo footie pajamas, two yards each of two different green faux-leathers, and a yard and a half of green lycra. (Ignore the nosy dog. He’s not part of the costume!)
A white swim cap that was hand painted forest green (the picture makes it look much brighter than it is). This was originally supposed to be a bald cap that I would either paint or use sponged makeup to change to a lovely shade of green, but three stores later, I gave up and purchased a white swim cap instead.
A the final photo of my hand with various makeup mixing techniques being tested out on the back of it. The top one obviously won.
And no, The Boy’s costume has absolutely nothing to do with the military or really being camouflaged at all. It was just a great base for the costume and was an easy way to keep him warm.
Stay tuned for Friday when I’ll post photos of the actual costume and all our secrets will be revealed.
I’m not from California, but saw this video over at Lesbian Dad and had to post it here.
First of all, these kids are FANTASTIC! And NORMAL. I want to rub this in the face of every person who has ever questioned whether my son will “be ok” as an adult. I want to jump up and down and point and scream,”SEE! He’s not the only one!”
And then I want to sit down and cry for a bit, because really, how can you look in the eyes of those kids, of my son, of anyone’s child and tell them that their family is less deserving of legal protection and comfort and the right to yell out to all of the world that they are a family that is recognized.
We went to the last Lynx home game of the season last night. It was fan appreciation night and we weren’t about to miss out on the glorious free wrist bands! Little did we know that we would be leaving with essentially an entire souvenier shop full of things.
About ten minutes into the first quarter, one of the Lynx interns sat down behind us and asked if we wanted to play some of the time out games. We finally decided that I would take part in the Candance Wiggins Match Game, while W and The Boy™ would ride tricycles in a race during the fourth quarter.
Of course, immediately, my nerves started to rattle. I am not into public appearances. They scare the begeezus out of me. And yet, I was going to be standing in front of somewhere around 5,000 people (if the averages shown on the WNBA site are even somewhat accurate). AND displayed on the stupid megatron. I *hate* videos/televised images of myself. So pretty much all I could think of for the remainder of the game was the stupid quiz during the third quarter.
It was, honestly, the most fun we have had at a game thus far. I won my contest and received a Lynx prize pack which was two t-shirts in a fancy bag. W and The Boy™ took third place and won three t-shirts. And they caught a sixth shirt at the end of the game from one of the players. Grand total: Six T-shirts. One game. Nice.
See? There I am sitting on the floor in the green shirt waiting patiently for my turn!
With B96′s B-Right reading the questions
So, the Match Game works like this: They show you a video clip of Candace Wiggins giving you the first portion of a phrase, and you have to write down what you think is the second half. If you match what the player has on their board, you win. My phrase was 3 _______. The answer was pointer. That’s my answer sheet on the megatron up there!
One more of me on the big board, cause I think my 15 minutes of fame ends here.
I’m realizing this morning that my weekends now officially start on Wednesday. The new arrangement with The Boy™ is that he is with his pops from Saturday afternoon until Wednesday morning before school, and then I pick him up Wednesday afterschool and he is with me until Saturday. It’s perfect for all involved really. He attends a school which is only in session Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday he is homeschooled with direction from the school via the internet. Since The Professor™ works during the day, it would be virtually impossible for him to be home with The Boy™ for those homeschooled days. My job gives me the freedom to be there with him. It is the perfect 50/50 split of the week, allowing both of us as parents to get half of the weekend for grownup life, while still having the kiddo with us for a weekend day. It’s ideal.
And so, today, being Wednesday is the start of my weekend.
I’ve begun attending the Twin Cities Women’s Choir on Wednesday nights as well, so W and The Boy™ will be on their own. From what I understand, tonight that means they are watching television and making calzones. She is really adjusting beautiful to having an 11 year old child around half of the time. Ninty percent of me knew from the beginning that she would be great with him. Hell, she’s a kid herself some of the time. But I never figured she would just jump right in and become such an integral part of his life. I am so grateful and thankful for that. It has made the transition so much easier on him.
Or really, when you thinking about it….1 league is about 3 miles, so more like .5 Leagues Under The Mall of America.
Back over two months ago now, W promised The Boy™ a trip to Underwater Adventures Aquarium for his birthday. This weekend was the first of the last eight which was unscheduled enough that we were able to get out there! It hasn’t changed much since the last time I was there, but it still instantly brings a deep level of calm to me. Something about watching all the slow and graceful fish floating around above me just slows my heart rate and leaves me ready for a nap
They even sat still on this lovely brass tortoise long enough for me to snap a touristy photograph before they ran off to go t-shirt shopping at Old Navy. It’s definitely an addiction they share. Old Navy t-shirts. I believe they both walked out with two new ones on Saturday.
I dropped W back off at the apartment and headed over to Saint Paul to take The Boy™ to family dinner with his dad. We had Culver’s and I got to taunt W the rest of the weekend about my experience in the Land Of Butter Burger. (I can’t stand the things, instead I had a fantastic ham and swiss sandwich.)
That night we played homebodies. Neither of us was up to going out, though I kept asking W if she wanted to meet up with her friends somewhere. Instead, we ended up sitting at the coffee table, drinking our respective beers (Leinenkugel’s Berryweis for W and Grainbelt Premium for me) and playing Trivial Pursuit 90s Edition. Oh yes. We partied hard on Saturday. Oh yes. So hard.
The Boy™ finished up his fencing camp today. Seems as if he really enjoyed it. Personally, I loved the gear. It was among the best of the sports costumes he has tried out thus far!
He and I had a little “mom/kid date” at Arby’s before we headed downtown to meet up with W. (She really needs a better pseudonym on this damn blog!) We got down there perfectly on time to walk from the parking lot at W’s work to the Target Center for the Lynx Game. It was Pride Night and we all got free Lynx t-shirts. Now I know that free t-shirts given out at the games are not necessarily the coolest of shirts, and this one is particularly douchey, but it is my first official “sports t-shirt”. *giggle* I will not take on an official sports fan title though. Just the Lynx. During the game, this incredibly sweet woman next to us gave The Boy™ a ticket to the after game autograph session. I was impressed that he was so excited about his Pride Night shirt as it was, but he was really excited to have the shirt autographed, even when we had to wait an extended time for the players to come out.
It was after 10 o’clock by the time we got home Friday night. (A post-game trip to Sebastian Joe’s for ice cream will do that every time!) The Boy™ was absolutely exhausted. We have been letting him fall asleep by watching a movie during this transition time to the new apartment. Seems to help him shut down his brain a bit in unknown surroundings. His movie selection for the evening? The Dog Sitter Volume I. This is not a video about how to become a dog sitter. Nor is it a silly romantic comedy where Ben Afleck falls in love with Christina Applegate when he becomes her dog sitter after quitting his multi-million dollar a year CEO position in order to get in touch with the little people. It’s a video FOR dogs, not ABOUT dogs. “The original Dog Sitter Video was the first video exclusively produced for Dogs to watch. Dog’s hearing is extremely sensitive and the video has 8 layers of sound with some that only your dog can hear. Add to that the sights of flocks of geese, raccoons, squirrels, mice, cats, pigs and more. Your faithful friend will feel like they are enjoying the outdoors from the comfort and protection of their home.” Direct from the website that is. And The Boy™? He was asleep within ten minutes of pressing play. Seems that videos made to keep dogs calm, also work on 11 year old boys.
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.
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This Woman
32 year old wanna-be everything who hasn’t a clue about what she wants to “BE” when she grows up, lesbian, collector of quotes and lyrics, mom, baby luster, survivor of sexual assault, militant defender and outspoken advocate for mental illness
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