Oh Gurl...

Sean Harris, Sr. Pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C.:

"So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, 'Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,' you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you reign [sic] her in. And you say, 'Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.'"

Well he has a point about one thing.  If you let your son run around in a dress as a child, there's no telling what kind of horrible future may be in store for him.


Work the runway sweetie...

 

It's Just Emotion That's Taking Me Over...

Reminder...only 5 days left to enter the giveaway contest!

I thought of the title to this post and now I can't get that stupid Bee Gee's song out of my head. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so damn clever. Anyway, Kathryn asked me:

Are you guys ready for this? Are you completely panicking? Are you unbelievably excited??

Right now, I'm not sure how to answer that. Each day brings me something that I can't really quantify as far as emotions. There have been points in my life where I thought, gee, I could never be happier then this. But right now, I've never been higher on the happiness scale. I feel excited, anxious, nervous, happy...all at the same time. I find myself glancing towards the new mail icon on my toolbar every five seconds to see if we have an email from Lucy. I feel wonderfully confident when we correspond with her, then a sense of impending doom the next day because she hasn't messaged. I keep wondering how life is really going to change. I think it's finally settled on my shoulders, and as usual, the people behind that nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach are...The Human Resources Department. Yes, HR. The ones who suck every last ounce of fun from everything. How is HR responsible for this you ask? Simple. I asked our HR benefits director a question on what I need to bring to California with me to make sure the baby can see a doctor while we are over there. I got the following response:

1. Add your daughter on the benefits site. I have attached the user guide/link to the site.
   
2. I will need a copy of the adoption paperwork before I can approve the addition of your daughter to your coverage

My daughter. There it is, in print. Wow. Cold chills went up and down my spine, my stomach knotted, and I felt like I might start sweating. The same feelings you must experience at a Celine Dion concert. Dread mixed with sobering reality. Daughter. It would have been so much easier if she was on the same page as me and just wrote Finster (Finsterella?).

So yesterday I hung up a new curtain rod and painted the closet doors in the baby's room. I thought, ha you're doing "Dad Stuff". I smiled. Then I thought gee what if I turn into my father? Not a bad thing, I smiled because my father is a great dad. Then I started thinking again about the other worry--once this happens, am I giving up my Gay Card?

I'm admittedly a little conceited. I'm always very sure I'm right. And whenever I look at how straight people do things, I think "Man I'm so glad we don't do that". I'm glad we're slowly getting our rights, but I don't want to be straight. It's not who I am. I have nothing against straight people, I just don't think gays need to give up their identities and be exactly like them. That's my problem with a lot of the organizations that supposedly represent me, like HRC or GLAAD. They confuse equality with conformity. I mean, I'm glad they are out there fighting the battles, but sometimes I feel like the message gets morphed from "We want to be accepted" to "We want to be just like you", and actually, not all of us do. So I conducted an experiment. Last night I finished up my baby room chores, then informed Gregg I was going out to the bar. I took a shower, got dressed, and headed out to Charlie's, one of the more popular gay watering holes. It was packed. Pulsing dance music. Crowds of hot men. A few fabulous drag queens. And me, wondering how long I have to stay here. Normally I like going out. But something changed. I had one beer, hung around the dance floor area, and kept thinking it's time to go. All I could think about was...my daughter. Well and my husband. And how I can't wait the two weeks for this to be reality. So I guess I did have a good time. I didn't stay long. I thought about all the times I've come here, about all the things in my life I've done so far. The dance clubs, Pride Festivals, cocktail parties, other unmentionables...and I thought, that was fun. I'm glad I did it. But you know what? I stood back and looked over the whole place as I was going to the front door, and I thought, I'll miss you Charlie's, but not as much as I thought I would. It's time to move on. To our daughter...

Proper Bowling Ettiquette (Instructional Video)

The following video illustrates the facial expressions all professional bowlers make when picking up a spare, regardless of my boyfriend's comment that I even "bowl gay":

Now, isn't that what everyone does? Geez.

A Quick Update

So sorry I've been lazy this month. I thought for sure December would be pretty bloggy, if only to use posting as an excuse to stop eating holiday treats which seem to be everywhere. As usual this year Gregg did most (all?) the holiday shopping for the family but at least I've been wrapping stuff. I don't get it. Whenever I wrap gifts they come out horrible. They look like someone wrapped them and dropped them down the stairs. As gay as I am who'd figure it? Oh well at least I can throw together a fabulous dried pasta gift basket with my eyes closed. Here's a hint for the straight readers: As I realized this weekend, you know you're gay when you're holding up the line at Cost Plus (that store alone is a ringing gaydar alarm) while you and the cashier, who you can tell owns at least one cat, discuss the fact that lately a good malbec is your favorite Argentinean red and you wish the bulk of German Rieslings weren't so darn sweet. Oh and my gratuitous we'll have a baby someday ending to this post it that hopefully next year we can add another stocking to the fireplace. Now that's sweeter then a Riesling!

"Typo-ver" It

OK I'm in slight panic mode...
The stupid cards again. The back side has the IAC's phone number which is
1-800-877-OPEN
"OPEN" is 6736. I put 4262, which is the last four of our toll free number! Ugh I can't believe I didn't catch that with the amount of obsessing I did over them. (None of you caught it either!) Now what to do about it? Gregg says stop worrying if they really want to talk to us they'll just call our number. I guess I could just get out a Sharpie and blot that part out. Take a moment and comment on this quickie poll:

I should:
A. Use the Sharpie and stop worrying
B. Reprint the cards
C. Print a sticky label with IAC's information and cover it up.
D. Stop being so gay and get over it; leave the cards alone.
E. Puns aren't funny and the title of this post is way out in left field.

So, can they all fit in one closet...?

This just in...

NEW YORK — There won't be much "livin' la vida loca" for Ricky Martin these days _ he's now the father of twin boys. The Latin superstar had the children via a surrogate mother, and the babies were born a few weeks ago, according to a statement from his representatives.
"The children, delivered via gestational surrogacy, are healthy and already under Ricky's full-time care," said the statement. "Ricky is elated to begin this new chapter in his life as a parent and will be spending the remainder of the year out of the public spotlight in order to spend time with his children."
A representative said there was no further information on the details of the children's birth.

Gee, see how easy it is for straight people?

Darkest Before the Dawn?

OK, the title of this post is a little dramatic. Maybe even over the top. But hey, I'm gay, I can be dramatic if I want to! But I have a reason. I've really not discussed the giant pot hole on the road to adoption that we could possibly hit. As you know, we are still waiting for our home study to be approved by the court here in Arizona. But I haven't addressed what happens if the home study is not approved. Well what if? If the judge denies our petition to adopt, we'll have to wait until next year and then start all over again. That's an entire year wasted. I guess if we were in our twenties I wouldn't care so much, but yesterday I turned 41 and Gregg is 42. Now being vain, gay, and well, gay, I have to say we of course look fabulous. However, I've been hoping to be daddies before 2010. Also, I just can't wait another whole year. Don't forget, once the home study is approved that just means we can start waiting to get contacted by a potential birth mother. So you could be looking at over a year or longer.

Today I called our Arizona social worker Windsor to see what was going on with the home study report. She said she's already turned it in to the court. However, two hitches. One, we've been assigned a new judge who Windsor knows nothing about. She was very familiar with the last one, but has no history with this one. So we have nothing to judge the judge with. (Is that a dangling participle, ending a sentence with "with"? I have no idea. Interesting though huh? OK not really.) So that starts stuff running through my mind. The biggest thing is, what if he's a Christian? If he is, we could be screwed. Funny how through this entire process the thing that I'm most worried about is what if someone we need along the way, someone who could either move this process along or stop it in its tracks, is a Christian thinking they are doing God's work and keeping a child out of the hands of heathens. If you're reading this and you're not gay, I'm sure you think this is a stretch. Well let me tell you it isn't. A judge can approve or deny a home study for any reason and that's final. There is nothing in Arizona law that says a gay person can't adopt a child, but the judge doesn't need a reason. Personal prejudice can be an unspoken reason to deny a home study as long as they don't say it is. (Another dangler? Dunno.) On this new judge we don't have a clue.

Second worry is that out of the five references we've asked friends and family to complete, only three have come back. Windsor says this is the only thing she's got as a concern (she's not worried about the judge thing, but then she isn't gay and has not seen the unspoken bigotry I have). I'm not going to say who didn't respond to our requests, but I will say I'm a little disappointed. We picked the five we thought would be the best ones. This is the most important thing we've ever asked friends/family to do and two of them blew it off. Maybe not, maybe not, I don't know. But I guess I expected a little more. Anyway, Windsor said we could just give her phone numbers and she could do interviews that way. So we'll inform those people and I guess do that. I've started thinking of backup references just in case.

So, your thoughts? Am I being totally gay about this, or do you think I should be worried? Gregg is telling me to just relax, everything is fine, but that's what boyfriends are supposed to do. What do you think? And feel free to tell me I'm being a fag about it if you think it fits, cause that will probably make me feel better. Just tell me the truth!

Dinner at Fez

Last night we got together with Dan, Anton, and Dave. We haven't really done that for a while now; we've been really busy and lately Gregg has not wanted to really go out at all. But we haven't been hanging around anyone but family for a bit and we really wanted to see the guys so out we went.

We met at Kobalt in central Phoenix for happy hour first. It's kind of a nice no attitude place. From there we popped over to Fez for dinner. The guys are really interested in our adoption plans. I think all of them would be great fits for being fathers. I know I want them to really be connected to little Finster because they've all got great attitudes and would have a positive impact on it. (Um, I don't know if it will be a boy or a girl, and typing "it" is shorter then "him or her". So, "it" it is.) I think everyone is excited for us, but it seems our gay friends are really connected to the idea. I think it must be because in our community becoming dads is rare, and not that easy. But it's so cool to hear them talk about that way. The other thing that strikes me is even though these guys are talking about following us in adoption, they are doing just what Gregg and I did and are being very methodical about it. Anton talked about how they need to get things squared away with one or the other of the houses and was comparing the schools and lifestyle between central Phoenix and Goodyear. Just the way they all want to get things in order. I think you have to get into a mindset for this. We talked about it for so long and just needed to have everything fall into place. For us once the remodeling of the house was almost finished that just seemed to click it. I also think the guys are watching us with interest to see just what happens here. I don't blame them it's a huge step and I wish we had someone to follow. The online forums and the IAC counselors are great, but besides reading everything we can online and in books, having a friend that went through it would be so much nicer.