The Best Start to Another Year

Without a doubt, this has been the best birthday I've had in an incredibly long time.  I have never had anyone put so much care and detail into planning my birthday and it was fantastic. In fact, for the last several days, I have struggled with not having enough people I can tell how awesome my birthday was.  Because it was awesome.  So you all get to read about it. Yay, you :)

First, I woke up with white chocolate banana pancakes- my favorite :)- and a bottle of Starbuck's sugar free hazelnut syrup (my favorite.).  It's pitiful, but I loved playing barista again!

 And then we headed to Vintage Wine Fest 2012, which was incredible.  I baked, by the way, way sunburned, but it was a ton of fun.  If the wine fest comes around again next year, you should go.  You pay $22, get a tasting glass, and then walk around to a few dozen wineries and sample some 200-kinds of wine, eat some kettle corn, you know, the fair/festival deal. It was great!

Then it was back to the apartment to cool down and then surprise reservations at the Melting Pot. I hadn't been before, but all I can say is cheesy, chocolatey, gooey goodness- from start to finish!

the Melting Pot

When I was in school, my roommates and I turned Psych (from USA) into a tradition.  Nearly every Wednesday we set aside the hour, had people over, made snacks, and paused from school and stress and life to watch Psych. I love it. It's still one of my favorite shows- and it reminds me of my friends (especially the ones who are now far away.)  Anyway, all of that is to say that Mimi was not around for that the first time around, but... she bought me the seasons.  All of them :). So now she's in.  Seriously, an awesome present :)

Anyway, there's so much more to talk about. A Sunday full of relaxing, watching Psych, and sipping wine.  Flowers delivered to work on Monday, dinner with my best friends... The long and the short of it is, it was an incredible birthday.  Every day and every detail was thought out and made for me and... it was amazing :).   I don't know that I've ever had someone think through my birthday so completely.  And I feel really, really loved.

I'm a year older, and the way it's going so far... I think this could be the best year yet :).  I can't wait.

Life as Usual

First- an apology.  I have been exceptionally negligent, and for that I apologize. Life has been both over and underwhelming as of late, and all the same- quite busy! Anyway...

It is sad to say, but not much has happened since my last post! Just living, I guess.  Which has proven interesting on its own, though not necessarily in the ways it used to. Now we're experiencing those things that come only with relationship duration... and anyone who's been in a relationship longer than 2 months or so probably knows what I'm talking about. Those things that were super cute after a month, aren't so cute after 8 or so, and those things that were kind of annoying in the beginning are... well, you get it.  With each passing day the differences between you seem to outshine the similarities, and part of you wonders if the "learning about each other" part wasn't more fun, than the knowing it part.  When you "wonder" it's romantic and fun.  When you "know" it can just be frustrating to think that your understanding hasn't resolved your issues.

I can tell you without a doubt that Mimi and I are quite different.  We think differently, we act differently, we value different things.  And, without putting too fine a point on it, I worry, on a regular basis, if she won't wake up one day and realize that she's not quite so fascinated by me as she once thought she was.  Our differences were endearing in the beginning, but now... I worry sometimes.  I know I have to be frustrating.  I am obsessive, exact, critical, chaotic... all words that should probably be labeled and summed up as "stressful."  I tend to worry and involve others in my worry as well.  I obsess over my size and shape, but I keep doing the same things... hell, I have annoyed myself while writing this post.

The cool thing though is that while I have no doubt my idiosyncracies would drive myself crazy, luckily, she seems to want to stick around :).  I mean we conflict sometimes, and our differences are a big part of that, but at the end of the day- so worth it. Worth it every minute of every day. So nothing going on here, just living.  But the living feels good.

I think I was blind

On my second date with Mimi, I made her dinner and she brought me a mixed CD. Yep, a mixed CD. I've only been made one other mixed CD by a suitor and this is the only one I accepted ;-).  The thing about me with music is I like it, I really do, but I'm not passionate about it, I'm not going to seek it out.  If I hear something I like I can fall head over heels in love with it, tears streaking down my face, the whole bit, but for whatever reason I don't generally go seeking out new music.  Mimi does.  I've hung out with a whole lot of different kinds of music geeks, but she might beat them all.  When the right song is on her whole demeanor changes.  Her body tenses as she waits to hear where the song will take her and then she practically explodes as it takes her through the song- only halfway through of course, because halfway through she's perched on the edge of her seat, biting her bottom lip, looking for the next song- and she tenses up again.  It's adorable. And infuriating, actually. Truly infuriating. I don't consider myself self-centered, but by the 3rd song in my nose flares like that of a petulant child- because clearly she's paying more attention to the music then to me, and that is simply not acceptable. But it's a hard sell because I have to say I am never more in love with her or more infuriated by her then when she's bouncing from song to song to song to song.... (you get the idea.)

But back to the mixed CD.  On our second date, only a couple of weeks into us talking, she made me a mixed CD.  The CD was full of songs that were fun to listen to, some I'd heard before.  A whole lot I hadn't.  But hidden not too far into that CD- 6 tracks to be exact- was The First Day of My Life, by Bright Eyes.  I found out later that it's the track her friends almost talked her out of putting on there, but it was absolutely the track that made me fall in love with her- or at least willing to fall in love with her.  I was pretty beat up and bruised from my last bout with love, but the song... well, you should all follow the link if you haven't heard it before because it's incredible.  It'll make you fall in love.

A few Sundays ago I made a little addition to my person because I felt like I had to. It was too true to not want to capture the sentiment forever... I hope you like it :)

Courtesy of Voluta

New Adventures: Part I

(Please consider this post from last Sunday... we have been internet-less until yesterday, so I'm way behind.  Sorry!)

I may have mentioned before (on Twitter, if not here) that I’m essentially 67 years old.  Mimi’s not quite as old as I am.  Together we probably average out to a content 55 year old couple.  We drink red wine. We go to bed by 10:30.  And our normal night time line up involves some combination of Golden Girls and Everybody Loves Raymond.  Anyway… it means we have very many completely content nights, but we run the risk of letting our dating life become stale.  To avoid this tragic fate (our technical age, after all, is half our functional age… ), we have committed to doing new things.  So each month, we are going to do one completely new thing (not necessarily something we’ve never done before, but something we’ve never done together), and eat somewhere new (we are, after all, in the midst of many, many great restaurants/pubs/so on and we have yet to discover nearly enough of them!).

For April, we’re already two for two.  Over Easter, we went target shooting… yes, shooting.  If you don’t know me, that probably doesn’t sound nearly as alarming as it really is—I shot a gun.  Quite a few times.  100% Democrat; 67% Pacifist; 100% terrified of guns, me, went shooting.  Eek! I was trying to lose some of my fear of guns… I’m not so sure it worked.  I could shoot the 22 I was given without too much issue, but each time I heard any of the guns around me go off I jumped, and when my uncle convinced me I really did want to shoot the glock he was using—I nearly cried.  My whole body jerked with each shot (major kick on that thing) and you could practically feel the fire coming out of it.  Mimi on the other hand looked like she’d found her calling.  (Seriously… I was a little terrified!) BUT that’s hardly the point.  We did something totally new, and to be frank, something I was terrified of, and it was great!  We can call April a success.  As for May… we’ll keep you posted!

Trademarks of a Lesbian Household

So I was looking around our apartment the other day, and realized that we probably have some distinctly lesbian themes and I never thought about it...

So for a twist on the classic "You Know You're a Redneck", we proudly introduce: You Know It's a Lesbian House If....

1. You have hundreds of hair ties and tampons....somewhere... but you can't find a single one of either.
2. Instead of discarding old shoes, you now put them in their own pile and designate them "spider-killing-shoes."
3. Someone cries, at least once every other day-- not necessarily because their sad, or  angry, but because there's so much estrogen floating around, people just cry spontaneously.  
4. All 7 seasons of Golden Girls are sitting on the shelf (to be fair this could be applied to a gay household as well.)
5. There are shoes everywhere. Not just a few shoes, not some shoes, so many shoes, and everywhere.
6. Your primary criteria for a new home is the closet space.
7. Your coffee table is compiled of a conflicting mix of feminist and chauvinistic magazines (hey, if Kaley Cuoco is on the cover, it's worth buying...)
8. You have at least a dozen movies no (straight) person has ever heard of.
9. Most of what comes into or out of the apartment is packaged in Trader Joe's or Whole Foods Bags.
10. You can't wait to be wrapped in the arms of the woman you love :-)

Happy Monday everybody!

Shifting Diversity

More than once, as of late, I've been sitting in a room and suddenly realized, not only is the room around me incredibly diverse, but I am just as diverse as my surroundings. I know, I know, I don't look like it. Trust me, I get that all the time. At my job, I am the only Caucasian person in my department.  And I was told once, not in so many words, that given that, they didn't expect me to "be the way [I am.]"  It is true, I am very very white. And as far back as you go in my history, you won't find anything else. But in this world, "diversity" can involve so much more than race.

Last week, Mimi and I had St. Patrick's Day dinner at P.F. Chang's (not even kinda Irish, but what can you do!).  Dinner was wonderful, by the way, but I am a chronic people watcher and I couldn't help but look around.  In our little area, there were a half dozen combinations of people.  Immediately to our right was the 100% typical nuclear family-- white mother, white father, one son, one daughter. But to our left was a couple (clearly newly dating), black female, probably early 20's, white male, early 30's.  Across from us, Arabic male, white female, beautiful mixed child-- all speaking Spanish. Across from them a young black man and his (probably) Hispanic girlfriend.  And then of course there's us.  White female, Asian female.  If you want to dig deeper, we both have dual citizenship in other countries- for me, Canada, for her, Turkey. She's half-Korean, half-white, and oh yeah, I mean, we're gay, if that counts.  And in those things we are both different from each other and different than our surroundings and that makes us diverse as well.

And more to the point-- it gives me hope. Being an abomination myself, it gives me hope that what was considered just as abominable-- an interracial couple seated at the same table, even more, an interracial couple having children-- not that long ago is now commonplace at P.F. Chang's on a Saturday night.  And we're there too, maybe a little more secret than the other "different" couples, but we're there. And someday soon our waitress will look at us the same she does the others- like nothing's different.  Even though it's all different. We're all different.  And despite the cheesiness of the sentiment- that's what makes the world go round.

Let Me Get This Straight

First, I would like to apologize, this is far more political then I generally let this blog go. Second, this has nothing to do with me and Mimi-- except, it does.

As a non-heterosexual female, I generally stay away from issues of birth control, abortion, and the like.  I don't figure it's very fair-- my odds of an accidental pregnancy are... well I just don't figure I have a lot of room to cast a vote.(Once in a social entrepreneurship class in college, during a conversation on the morality of abortion the one non-female person in our class tried to defend a strictly pro-life argument... he was quickly informed he was not allowed to weigh-in on that particular discussion.)  The point is: I don't feel it's fair to weigh in on a situation I could never be in. And I stand by that.

But that's not the point.  I looked up the info on the Planned Parenthood website because of all the hullabaloo that's been going on lately across the country.  I've read the tweets (@PPact) and followed the stories, but I wanted to see how the #s play out.  This is what I see for 2010:

Service Breakdown:

• 38%    - STI/STD testing and treatment
• 33.5% - Contraception
• 14.5% - Cancer Screening and Prevention
• 10.4% - Other Women's Health Services
• 3%      - Abortions
• 0.6%   - Other Services

From my understanding, the argument/defense of the Republicans fighting to end funding for Planned Parenthood (and other family planning services) is that they are not making birth control (or other services) illegal, they're just making people pay for them on their own... hmmm... on their own.  Is this with the health care that (those same) Republicans are trying to take away my access to? So as a young female, early in her career, who may/may not have access to good health care I'm supposed to... what? 

We're not talking about selfish services here.  STI/STD prevention/treatment has a distinctly positive effect on a large-scale. Contraception gives us as a society, and specifically women, the chance to chose when we are or are not ready to bring life into the world-- again, a distinctly positive impact on a society that cannot afford to have more mouths to feed than food to feed them.  Breast cancer screenings... they have nothing to do with sex.  Nothing to do with anything anyone could dare cast a moral judgment on and yet we are so quick to deny care.

We can't have it both ways.  We can't spend day in and day out pushing the vital, undeniable importance of the nuclear family and then toss women to the curb and hope they survive.  I've realized in these last few months that the entirety of the women's health debate is so much bigger than sex.  This is so much more than abortion.  This is about priorities.  It has been proven in study after study, where women go their families go.  And now the same party that has fought for "perfect" families, is fighting to cut funding for women's health, and further to make it harder for any of us- male or female- to have access to the health care we need to pay for those services for ourselves.

I just don't get it.  The entire matter ridiculous- but they're doing it.  They're winning. States are agreeing to cut funds, and casting their vote that women aren't all that important.  I disagree.  We are important.  And I shudder to think what the impact will be on us as a society, male and female, if they are successful.  Less screenings means more stds; less birth control means more ill-timed pregnancies; less care means more preventable deaths. Personally, even though not all of those services apply to me- they're worth my tax dollars. Are they worth yours?