frogs_of_war

 Yikes, it's been a month since I posted. I think of something nearly every day to post, but never end up doing it. 

The Floral manager is back for 6 weeks, so I'm only getting one day in Floral (the lady being trained to be manager is getting 3 or 4 and the manager said she was going down to 4 and using vacation days, but she hasn't done that yet). I'm picking up hours in the deli, so it's not horrible, but it's been two years since I had to do this. 

I just read (listened to) a book that I wish I'd read reviews for first. I spent over 20 hours listening to find that the author had decided the readers really didn't need the overarching mystery solved. The current mystery did get solved, but due to no one verifying the mastermind's age, the confession was inadmissible, so she walked. I got three other books on CD in this series from the library, but even though reviews say they get better, I'm not sure I'll ever read them. (The Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French).

The only interesting thing was that I learned combats are cargo pants. I assumed they meant boots until I got to "the hem of her combats" and had to rethink the whole paragraph.

I looked up other British/American difference for a story I'm working on (for S2B2 if I can get it done) and found several difference in words for parts of cars: bonnet/hood, boot/trunk and the like, but what about rearview mirror? My POV sits in the back because he's trying to keep his distance from the driver but their eyes keep meeting in the mirror (set in a Roderick Alleyn/Lord Peter Wimsey Britain). If anyone can help, it would be much appricated.

My sister is in the state for the summer and I took yesterday off to spend it with her. It was pretty nice. And it really hits home how much a child can change their parents POV. My niece got a stack of book store gift cards for her birthday so we wondered the aisle as she picked what she wanted and talked about the YA books. My sister and her daughter read/listen to stories together (niece is 16) and my sister says that when she gets to the parts with the boys kissing, she ask that they skip ahead. She knows that the relationship is important to the plot, but it makes her uncomfortable. A few years ago it would have made her angry and stop reading. That's a big step. 

I told my mother that someone had bought one of my stories. I didn't go into details about who. But then my sister asked what the story was about. I said something like: A woman's secrets isolate her, but when a man coaxes her from her shell, she realizes how close her dreams have always been. She said that sounded interesting and that she'd like to read it. I normally would have left it at that.

But I didn't. I told her that the story probably wasn't her thing. That the female lead is transgender, that she'd known she was a girl (even very small children know their gender) and has lived as a girl since she was old enough to explain her needs.

My sister hasn't responded to that text or the one I wrote later about my job. I'd hoped she'd ignore the stuff she didn't like and answer the second text. My family is good at ignoring stuff. (Or maybe she's busy and hasn't see it.)

But now I feel guilty that I told her at all. She's going through a lot right now between her disabled husband and her married-too-young daughter and her steals-things-from-people-he-likes-when-not-on-meds son-in-law. Adding worrying about me (because I must be in a bad way to want to write about someone like that) to the list is just cruel.

 My son graduated on Saturday at a sports venue in Portland. The school itself wasn't big enough to fit all the students and their parents and other relatives. There are fewer parking spots than members of the senior class. So we dropped my son off at school at 2:30 and then left home at four to bring him dinner at the venue before the 7:30 graduation, which was long. Reading the names of over four hundred kids takes a while. We got back to the car at 10 and crossed the nearest bridge to catch the freeway to get home. 

That part went fine, but the roads weren't open on the other side of the river dues to the Rose Festival. We needed to go east and south, but we could only go west. We tried again, going in a circle (more of a rectangle) and tried a different street. This one wasn't open either. So we thought we'd try 405 (which runs to the west of downtown) the first street  we tried (to the west) was so backed up that someone had gotten out of his car. Luckily we spotted it before we got to the intersection, so we turned instead. We tried again, this time on a different street (to the south) and ended up stuck in the far lane (which would have got us to the freeway if traffic had been moving at all). Finally the car at the intersection, two cars ahead, turned across traffic onto the one way street. We did as well when our turn came five cycles of the light later.

We tried going north. Maybe we could catch a road that would take us to a freeway. By this point we weren't picky. But no luck. The street we tried came to a standstill and someone got out of his car. Luckily an intersection was between us, so we weren't stuck. On that street, but we were stuck downtown. We gave up leaving and drove around once more as we looked for a place to park. We found one (and only that one).

Now that the frustration of trying to leave was off us, we set off to find things to do until the traffic was better. We picked Pioneer Courthouse Square, because someone had made a tattoo there out of potted flowers. Only the night was cold and I was in a tank top and my daughter wore a sundress. We hadn't expected to spend more than a few minutes outside. 

So we went to the Starbucks (luckily still open after 11pm) for cocoa. Only the place has four glass walls and no bathroom. So we had to find a bathroom. We headed for a new park, which had a bathroom, but it closed at 9:30. The city has some Loos at different parks and the Loos never closed. We could go to the nearest one right next to where the Wold Nude Bike Ride participants were putting their clothes back on. I expected the line there would be very long. But I knew about one about ten blocks away, far from the foot traffic in a residential area.

So we walked the ten blocks. Only when we got there, someone was already in line. He said that the guy inside always took forever. I declared it was the only place available, therefore we weren't leaving. How long could one guy take anyway?

Fifteen minutes later, he flushed. Five minutes after that he flushed again. A few minutes after that he came out. The other guy apologized and promised he wouldn't take as long. By this time we were inching up on midnight when the park closed. Five minutes. Two minutes. The guy finally flushed. My family got closer to the Loo. He had to come out sometime. About five minutes later a bicycle cop came by. It was probably his regular round since the park had just closed. He asked us if we were waiting for the Loo and if we'd participated in the ride (he looked so proud as if he organized the event himself). We explained being trapped downtown and I asked how traffic was. He said everything was moving now. And then he left.

I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a cop in my life, because as soon as we started taking to him, the junky in the Loo found somewhere he's rather be. Now if the second guy had just let us go before him, we would never have been standing around to catch the cop's attention and he could have shot up in peace (or whatever he was doing in there). Even after being used by two junkies, the Loo was spotless (or as spotless as steel and cement can be). Soon we were on our way back to the car and walked in our door at 1am. 

It was a long evening, but we saw:
- a middle aged couple on a tandem bike wearing silver paint and almost nothing else
- a guy standing at a street corner putting on his clothes
- lots of fairy wings and glo-bracelets
- quite a bit of flesh
- a well dressed young man leaning back into the car he'd just gotten out of to kiss the man at the wheel
- more clothed bikers than naked ones (the clothed ones had nothing to do with the ride)
- a tattooed roller-derby team (back near the graduation)
- and a headline of a local weekly for a story about how only the Canadian Navy was showing up for Fleet week: Maple Flavored Seamen 
(my daughter didn't get the pun until it was read aloud)

A comedy of errors. But a circumstance like this would be a wonderful premise for how two people meet whose paths might otherwise never cross. 

 I have a story that's almost completely edited, five interesting web pages to share, another chapter of Harmonies that only needs a reread before it's posted... and company for the week, so I don't have time to do any of this.

But I did have to share my incredulity. I just found out that my brother-in-law thinks that all wives take the opinions of their husbands after they get married, so he was very surprised that my mother, married 40+ years, has different opinions than my dad. He says that all the women in that he knows are like this. I think he is mistaken. I doubt his dad's new wife would change her opinion for anyone. I don't know what he's thinking. But this makes me feel even sorrier for my sister.

And I wonder if he thinks my opinion aligns mostly with my husband's because we are married, rather that over these last two decade we came to the same conclusions through very different means. Take gay rights: he met and worked with gay people and like getting to know anyone, they became people he cared about, whereas I read manga, some with very close male leads, the kind that makes you want to yell 'just kiss him already!' but you know they never will. X, I believe, was my finally turning point. I  tossed, figuratively, down the volume I was reading and put a hold on Boys Love instead. Not so messed up with happier endings. And I felt that I couldn't want the two men on the page to live happily ever after if I wasn't willing to give people the same rights in real life. Or the right to be happy for now or to hook up when they want to (whether they are gay, straight, or something else). What works for me isn't right for everyone. And so when people I loved came out to me later, I didn't bat an eye. 

So although I now agree with my husband's opinion, I didn't toss out the homophobia I was raised with because he had his. And I'd be upset if someone thought I did. I am female. I have a mind of my own.

Wednesday marked my twentieth wedding anniversary. I don’t think two people who really love each other can get this far without a lot of compromise (although I’ve seen people married much longer who don’t seem to even like each other).

In that long we’ve been in sync, out of it, and back again, like the year I would have done anything to get out of the house at the same time he just wanted to be home when not at work or now when I have a thousand hobbies I can do at home and he just wants to go and see and do, the times we finished furniture together, once reupholstering the couch, and the time when we couldn’t even hang up a picture frame together (I laugh when I remember this, it was so pathetic). We have our ups and downs, sometimes separately, sometimes together, but I am still glad I married him and consider myself luck, because he’s the best man in the world.



Title: Without Emil
Series: A Balance of Harmonies (Three)
Status: Chapter thirty-two of many
Genre: m/m romance, drama, city life, businessmen
Rating: R
Content: a talk, being less an enough, park sounds, stumbling over, a good attitude, the right thing, snowflakes, new condo, emptiness, manic, not-home, pain
Length: about 2,200 words
Summary: Emil is away. Kurt is lonely. And Peregrine stumbles over something he didn’t think existed.

Master list



( “This is nice? I’m dressed like a bank teller.” )