A Splendid Idea

Your good friends at LeslieCo have been working diligently to bring Peace to the trans community. Apparently the generous offer of shelter from weather is resented by an elite few, who would prefer getting damp to standing alongside those that should be following silently four paces behind them.

So, LeslieCo's think tank has been feverishly working to find a solution. We ran several ideas up the proverbial flagpole. We vetted these notions through our extensive legal department. Our marketing division drew up plans and packaging. Truly, the best minds at LeslieCo have been fine-tooth combing like a camp counselor during tick season.

The LGBT Umbrella is beyond redemption. The concept, while lovely, has been sullied by the fighting. Some deny its existence, others run screaming at its mere mention. A new metaphor is needed, and your corporate servants at LeslieCo have one at hand: The LGBT Hat Rack.

The LGBT Hat Rack is a place to hang your stuff: wraps, boas, fedoras, and yes, umbrellas. The entire community is free to store their accessories together. Or, if they wish to opt out, they take their stuff and go. No formal commitment required, no tangible linking of parties. After hanging one's things on the hat rack, one can go to any part of the community and hang with their favorite cliques.

We fear there may still be a few bugs to be worked out, but we hope to have a beta version available in the very near future. LeslieCo feels that imperfect worlds can be made better through hard-sell tactics and warm, fuzzy marketing for the masses.

Public feedback is expected and welcome. LeslieCo believes in the virtue of free speech, no matter the price of buying it.

Slice of Life

Just finishing up the first work holiday I've had since New Year's. There was MLK Jr.'s birthday in January and President's Day in February, but my employer chooses not to recognize these. So, I had Memorial Day off with my family. A very hot and fine day it was.

We all spent the afternoon doing housecleaning, and the kids pitched in very well. In particular, my boy seems very intent on making the home visitor worthy. Whatever inspiration works is fine with me. I should mention that my wife hates to begin running the air conditioning as summer rolls around. She feels that it is surrendering to the elements. (Have you noticed her stubborn streak?) We hit 90 F today, which is about 34 or 35 C, I guess. Bloody hot for housework, I have to say. I told her that I thought she would relent by Wednesday afternoon. The weather is not due to break till after the weekend.

After the cleaning stopped, the missus wanted to have a meal out on the deck. She made mojitos for us, my first one. Not bad at all. Lots of good convo with the kids, and our fill of tofu hot dogs.

Mrs. Leslie also had the terrific idea to make ice cream after dinner. Rather than the conventional way, she filled gallon Ziploc bags with ice and rock salt for each of us. Then in a smaller Ziploc, we mixed sugar and half & half and vanilla (or in my kids cases, peppermint or maple). We put the sealed smaller bags into the large ones with the ice, and shook the bag for about ten minutes. It worked splendidly, and the ice cream was terrific.

We all took a half hour walk, with the dogs, after all that. And then, my wife insisted that I do aerobics with her (Yes, I mean literal aerobics: deltoids, hamstrings, etc. What did you think I meant?!)

I made a point of praising her efforts over the course of the day, and how I thought she had created some great family memories. I just don't have a brain that conjures these sort of ideas. I'll just stick to my own strengths, and feel lucky that she has a talent for planning things like this.

Less Than Magical Mystery Tour

Hadn't really intended to write tonight, so I'm not sure where or how this will go. Come on in, the water's fine!

I told y'all that I screwed up Mother's Day, but left it hanging. I got some very helpful comments in that regard. I did purchase flowers the next day, but the apology was not forthcoming. Our schedule issues made an intimate conversation impossible. I didn't want to wake her when I came home from work, as that is unfair to make her lose sleep (something I don't want done to me!), and she is busy home schooling my daughter when I get up.

I arranged for us to go out to dinner as a family on Saturday. She was being very difficult about this. She complained that she had managed to lose a couple pounds in the last week, and didn't want to put it back on. She finally agreed to go somewhere and get a salad. Oy! I thought it went really well. Au contraire!

Later that evening, in the wee hours, after she got home from work, she told me that she had written down some stuff. It seems that the dinner was not a success. There were some silences that she found very awkward, ones that she felt I should have filled. She told me that she feels alone most of the time, unconnected emotionally to me. Like a single parent, she said. *sigh* She didn't say these things in anger, and she managed to hold back the tears.

I let her have her say, and I gave her a sincere apology for my shortcomings on Mother's Day, and as a husband in general. I know that I suck. I know that I am not a raconteur. Truly, the interesting things in my head that I might share with her are the things you read here in my blog, or in those of my friends. She does NOT want me to start talking up this stuff in order to mask the silences. Truly, though, those are the anecdotes that are in my head, and they crowd out other things that might be of interest to her. Maybe it just isn't meant to be.

After she made her points, I did tell her that I had something to share. I told her that I am trying to connect with her, trying to build bridges. I start feeling like we are getting somewhere, and she informs me of the shortfalls, and reminds me that she isn't feeling it. I can't build a bridge in one evening. I am way out of practice in playing the loving husband role. I may need some remediation before I can play it well. Burning the bridges as I build them does not help. If she wants this to work (and she says she does), she will have to start accentuating the positive. I suspect that her stated desire to work things out are merely lip service. Time will tell.

Life on the Sidelines

When Sylvia and I were taking one another's pictures at our Saturday meeting, I had a tiny epiphany.

Syl was suggesting that outdoors had nice light, and she wanted some shots of herself out there. Now, I step outside a couple times each meeting, as I store my boy things in the car during the meeting. I don't think much about those trips out to the car. Yet, when it came time to pose, I felt very conscious of my presentation, and how I might be noticed by passing motorists.

I bit the bullet and went out, but as you see, I stayed in the shadows, away from prying eyes. Sylvia, on the other hand, wanted to pose on the hood of her car out near the road. I managed to stay out of sight next to a van, and zoom way in to take the pic. I hope that the result was okay for her, because I feel rather silly today.

I have two real public outings in my history, the most recent being in November of '09. I am suddenly very aware of just how far removed I am from that date, and how much I've lost in the way of confidence. All modesty aside, I am much more polished in my presentation today, and should have the commensurate confidence that would naturally follow. Alas, I do not. Going out with my girlfriends is an impossibility at present, so practice is out of the question. Even as my skills improve, my social capacity is withering. I don't see a solution, but I am now conscious of the problem, and I will try to walk freely in the parking lot at the very least.

I made a muck of Mother's Day in my house. I failed to rise in a timely fashion to help the kids make breakfast for their mother. I failed to make sure they had signed their cards. I failed to make any sort of plan to take my wife out and celebrate her maternal accomplishments. In short, I failed. She let me have it, too, when she came home from her work in the wee hours. Some tears, a raised voice, deep disappointment, feeling unappreciated. I am not good at this sort of thing, especially making plans. I'm not sure how to make it up to her, either. Anything I do now will seem to be in answer to her outburst, and will be perceived as insincere. I have created a no-win situation. Now I have to find my way out of the minefield.

Bringin da Noise, Bringin da Funk

I have brought the funk with me, in the form of a nasty cold. Took the day off work Friday, felt worse on Saturday. Yet, I mowed my yard that day, because it was the second of two predicted sunny days after the ten day deluge, and before the next one. It needed to be done, but I was weak as a kitten by the time I was done. Now I'm dealing with a very runny nose and periodic coughing spasms. Welcome to my world.

Early last week, when I let the dogs out in the wee hours, I started hearing short urgent yips, not the usual baying. As I got to the back door, I could hear things being knocked over in the shed, and much barking. My dogs catch small animals from time to time, but there is little commotion then. My wife and I went running down into the yard just about the time that Ruby exited the shed, holding a possum by the neck and giving it a shake. We got her to put it down, and hustled the dogs indoors. The possum lay very still, but then that's what possums do. Ruby didn't seem to have gotten any injuries. We went back out to check on the possum, but he(?) was gone. I suppose Dame Edna took care of it. I was hoping for some yummy possum stew.

I was awakened Saturday around noon by my wonderful neighbor revving his truck. It's a monster truck that has a clearance of about three feet, an early 70's vintage Ford pickup. I guess that means it has a carburetor that he was adjusting. If his goal was to make the thing louder, he was doing very well. This went on for at least two hours, gunning the engine over and over. Perhaps he was doing research for a new movie franchise about high-powered parked cars to be called The Still and the Spurious. There oughta be a law, I tell ya.

And with that, I am only minutes away from a big dose of Nyquil and a good night's sleep.

Tornadoes and Weddings

The scenes of devastation in Alabama and Mississippi are heart wrenching. We've had a fair number of twisters in Kentucky, too, this month, though not of the fatal variety. I heard on the news today that there have been around 600 tornadoes reported this month in the US. Normally there are about 150 in April.

This barrage of tornadic activity takes me back to my childhood. In 1974, there was a similar event in early April. Deadly storms in Kentucky and Ohio and all through the South. It remains a vivid memory for me. I was one day shy of my tenth birthday. I remember my father and brother and I sitting in a dark house with no power, lightning flashing incessantly, listening to a crackling AM transistor radio. The reports were continuous, the newest scarier than the last. Tornadoes were touching down all around us.

My mother had it worse. She was flying out that evening on a business trip. Her flight was canceled, but she was stuck with many others in our tiny airport terminal. There was no power there either, and everyone spent the night hunkered down against the walls. More than once, they heard the distinctive train-like roar of a twister that night. We didn't have any contact with her that night, cell phones being a bit of science fiction at the time. Dad never let on, but he must've been worried sick.

With daylight, the damage was evident. I remember that a small community called Jett was hit especially hard about 20 west of Lexington. The town was literally wiped from the map. It was never rebuilt, just gone. Tornadoes were a major source of fear for me long after that, joined by great white sharks the next year (thank you, Steven Spielberg). I've always loved a thunderstorm, just sitting at a window and watching the lightning, but talk of tornadoes was another matter. That fear is largely gone now, maybe due to the doppler radar immediacy and accuracy. I feel that a twister isn't going to sneak up on me now.

It looks like the Royal Wedding coverage has started while I've been writing. I confess to not really caring, though I could look at Kate Middleton all day long. I suppose I do want to see her in her bridal outfit, though a bridle outfit would be more exciting. I think those pics will stay a state secret. I am sure that many of my friends will be watching. I just fear that envy will hit me in a big way. Not the bride necessarily, but all the comely women in attendance, dressed to the nines. Guess I should go find a TV. Television, I mean.

Ignore That Little Voice...

...at your own peril.

My social anxiety is largely a non-factor online, especially as my space here became well-defined, fairly popular, and largely respected. I am confident in these waters. Yesterday, I ran smack into old feelings.

My primary email is on Yahoo. I decided a few days ago to try out their new mail beta version. It's a bit more versatile with a sleeker layout. After a few days, though, I was suddenly without the usual indicator of my friends' presence online. I don't chat much, but I do like to see that I have friends engaged in parallel play. And when I want to chat, they are right there. Without that graphic, I felt like one of my senses had been shut off.

Well, if Yahoo Chat is not going to be available to me, I had better get serious about Yahoo Messenger. I set about importing my contacts, a simple task. I checked off a few that I had no current relationship with. This left another twenty or so, some of which I may never chat with, but I am accustomed to seeing them in my sidebar. I hesitated. Each of these people were going to get a request from me, an opportunity for rejection. Maybe I should remove a few more names, folks that are fairly peripheral to my life. Nah, let 'er rip.

Within ten seconds, I had a rejection. This is from someone that I greatly admire, though we haven't corresponded more than a couple times. Okay, maybe she didn't recognize the user id, maybe she gets these requests all the time and rejects them out of hand.

I went off to take a shower. When I returned, I had a note from someone local, asking who I was and why I wanted to chat with her. Specifically, the absence of a profile photo was of great concern to her. Well, I have sat and spoken with her at meetings at least twice this past winter, lengthy personal conversations. My heart sunk. Was this going to me the norm? I went off to work, but this bothered me all evening. I felt stupid. I had overreached socially, crossed lines of demarcation unknowingly. This had disaster written all over it.

As usual, I was overthinking things, doubting myself and my place in the community. When I got home, I wrote an explanation and apology to my acquaintance. I hope she responds and understands.

As for the rest, there are still a few outstanding requests, but it seems that everyone else has simply clicked the Accept box and gone on with their lives. Maybe it's time for me to click the Accept box and get on with life.