to the two gay men in Celebration, FL in '96

I'm sorry.

I know it's been 16 years since I saw you holding hands in Celebration, FL, but I have to admit, I think about you two a lot.  Probably a lot more than is considered normal or sane.  It's just that my mom and her boyfriend said a lot of shit about you guys that I'm sure you heard, and you ignored it.  And I laughed at what they were saying, because I was 12, sheltered and ignorant.

You would be justified in thinking that they were bigots raising bigoted children: I would think that, without doubt, if someone heckled me in such a manner while I was out just living my life.  I assure you, those two adults may be bigots (among other things, which I'm not getting into here), but the three kids you saw have grown to be fairly respectable adults.  We're not without our issues, which is another story entirely, but we're definitely not homophobic.  Hell, at least two of us aren't even religious anymore.  These apples, for the most part, fell pretty far from the tree.

I wish I hadn't laughed.  I wish I had known better.  I wish I could go back and shake my mother by her shoulders and demand an explanation; why did she think it was okay to act like that, to teach that kind of blind hate to her children?  But mostly, I wish I could tell you two that I'm sorry.

What happened that day should never have occurred at all.  Ever.  To you two or anyone else.

I'm sorry.

baby steps

It's no secret to anyone who has spent even a little amount of time with Spagett: he is a kid who loves the fiddly things. He loves to figure out how things work, how things go together, how things come apart. He is very curious. When he was a year and a half old, we had to change from simple child-proofing caps on the electric sockets to a full plate because he figured out how the CHILD-PROOF LOCK worked ("Child-proof my fucking ass," say the Mansons). He learned to fly a remote-controlled helicopter! Since he learned to walk when he was nine months old, he is constantly going, constantly doing, constantly figuring things out.

 But he will not learn to talk.

 He has made-up words for "cat" and "helicopter/plane," ("nu-nu" and "oin," respectively) and he will point to a keyhole and say "key." He calls me "mum" and Sid is "dad'n" or "dada." He calls Spongebob Squarepants "BobBob," and will not hesitate to tell you "no" if he disagrees with you. Recently he started saying "cheese," "bug," "candy" (sounds more like "nanny") and "ball." He does use two word sentences. He knows exactly what we mean when we tell him things. But this still puts him behind other kids his age.

 It sounds alarming, but truth be told, I feel like he is just so fixated on figuring out his world that language skills have taken a backseat. I don't know of any other kids his age that can fly an RC helicopter, after all. I don't know of any kids his age who have figured out child-proof locks. As his mother, who worries all the time about everything, I do not worry about his speech. He will get there in his own time. If he goes about talking like he did walking, he will wake up one day and just decide this is the perfect day for talking in sentences.

 However, when he went for his 2 year well baby visit at the clinic, I was told we would get a referral to speech therapy. Which I'm fine with. I know he's behind. And if I'm wrong, and there is a problem, addressing it is the only thing we can do. To ignore it would be terrible.

And so my beautiful, brilliant, busybody little Spagett is going to see a speech therapist.  As the saying goes, may god have mercy on that poor sap's soul.

making progress and hitting roadblocks

When I started running, I was horrible at it. I mean, really, really horrible. And I slowly started getting better, but Sid felt like I wasn't getting better fast enough, so I started the Couch To 5k program.

I had no trouble running nearly 3 miles today, okay? I've gotten better. I ran my fastest mile today. I've gotten a lot better. My average pace is definitely a lot faster than when I started. I've really gotten a lot better.

But I'm still slower than Sid. That doesn't bother me, though it seems to really bug him. My ultimate goal is to be able to run a half marathon, 13.1 miles, and today I did just under 3 miles, so the goal is still out of reach, but I'll get there eventually. I want to focus on distance. I don't care how slow I am, as long as I get there in the end. But Sid wants me to focus on speed. Who gives a shit how slow I am, if I can run 13.1?

Maybe I should just focus on speed for a while. It would be great to be able to go running with Sid, and keep up without difficulty. But he walks faster than me all the time, anyway, so why should I have to move faster than I'm comfortable with, just to keep up with the pace he sets? I do that all the time as it is. But I run to slow for him. The pace I set makes his ankles hurt. BITCH, THE PACE YOU SET MAKES ME HORK UP MY LUNGS. Needless to say, it's coming down to the moment where I am going to have to make a decision on what to work on next, because I'm a week away from finishing this Couch To 5k thing. Part of me wants to continue on with my own goal, and part wants to make this effort for Sid. But what if I work my ass off, run faster, and it's still not good enough? I would not be a very happy Landwhale.

get your nose out of my crotch

Sid and I agreed when we got married, we'd have one biological child. I felt like that was all I could handle, and if someday we wanted more kids, we would adopt. We felt like that was a good plan, one that was right for us. So now that we have our one bio kid, we've been looking at long-term contraception. I thought Sid was going to get a vasectomy, but he's had two years to get it done and is still dragging his feet.

So I decided I should get an IUD. Specifically Mirena. I don't want to deal with periods. Ever since Spagett, my periods are irregular and stupid, and I would just rather not have to deal with it at all. I cannot remember to take my morning Synthroid, so taking a birth control pill at the same time every day is beyond me. An IUD, perfect.

My doctor agreed that it was a good choice, and I am waiting for her to set up my appointment at the naval hospital to have the thing put in, but she's been giving me a lot of crap about my decision to only have one child, and it's totally unnecessary. It's entirely unwanted.

Quite frankly, it's horribly presumptuous. She tells me "oh, you can't stop at one!" Uh, yes, I can: this is primarily why I'm getting Mirena, after all. Like I don't know myself well enough to know when enough is enough. I should just keep on popping out the kiddos until I go totally crazypants, is that it? It makes me so angry.

holy crap, IT'S ALIVE

So. It's been quite a while. More than a year. And what a year full of bullshit it's been.

Don't get me wrong, it had it's good points. It was also full of crap, too. BUT. Spagett is still full of beans. Sid is still a butthead. And I'm still a bitch. And I never thought I'd see the day where I run more in a week than Sid does (and this is not a brag on my part, this is testament to one man's laziness). But here we are!

Now that I'm through boob feeding and Spagett falls asleep pretty much on his own at night, I have much more free time and should have time to spare blogging now and again. I've just been lazy and preoccupied.

some fucking bookends

I am lying in bed with a sleeping Spagett next to me, browsing the internet on my phone. More specifically, browsing my blog posts from when I was pregnant. And there is a picture of the very first positive piss test that eventually ended with... Spagett.

That's some fucking bookends, if you ask me.

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on being presentable

Well, I'm going upstairs to put on a bra, so at least when the mail guy comes, my tits are tethered.

--Starky, still in pajamas