Looking Back and Moving Forward

A friend recently posted a blog about what you eventually or should outgrow once you’ve reached your mid-thirties. Items and activities which held such fascination as a teen or twenty-something just look pathetic once you’ve reached 35. I can think of a handful of things that fit this description: participating in Ren-Faire, dressing up and staying all weekend at Sci-Fi Conventions, Rocky Horror Picture Show and going clubbing downtown. All of these reek of youth as they should for they are opportunities to explore and seek out untried experiences without regret; to participate with wild abandonment and act with irresponsibility. Things an adult with a home and children should not do save for Vegas where it is expected.
I think back on my younger years and I did have a wild, untamed life that brought new delights every weekend: parties, clubs, concerts, friends and I hardly cared where I woke up as long as I had fun. That is not to say I would take off with some stranger for a weekend in Mexico, but I would not come home in favor of staying out with friends until 4:00 and crashing on their floor instead. It was a life beyond the fringe and I loved every sometimes painful moment. Nowadays I don’t care to stay out late, hopping from apartment to apartment and bringing a stranger home for empty loving. I want the stability of a home and a wonderful husband, parties with friends involving wine instead of tequila and drunken slobs throwing up in my purse. The laughs are just as loud and the topics just as bawdy and the events I host involve more than leftover pizza and dirty floors. No, there is no way I want to go back to those times, but I do look on them so very fondly from my 40 year old view and wouldn’t change a thing.

I've come to terms with my anger that prop 8 passed, but I'm not happy about it. In fact the idea that supposedly forward thinking/diversity accepting California would let such a back-water belief be put in our constitution is embarrassing. However I feel conflicted on the stance a judge can overturn the voters' decision. Don't get me wrong, I want this overturned and it should be, but what if this was something I believed in? The people were given the right to vote on an issue, made their thoughts known and now it may possibly be overturned. If the voting decision was so wrong why was the proposition put on the ballot? That is what bothers me, there is no oversight on ballot measures. There should be a council which decides to not allow discriminatory measures put out for vote no matter how many signatures are asking for it. Asking for a decision from the people then saying, "uhm, yea, I don't like what you chose. I'm going to change it to what I think is the best." is not the way to have a democracy. If a proposal is wrong from the get go then don't let it on the ballot. Period.

With that being said, I cannot wait for the judges to overturn this idiocy.

As My Mind Turns

Only a month after complaining of not being in the Halloween spirit I find myself fully into the Halloween scene. I blame Stuart. And society. And pumpkins, (dammit I love pumpkins and their warm snuggly orangey color). But mostly I blame Stuart.

For most of Stuart's life he has dreamed of creating a Disney-esque place where children and adults can lose themselves from their everyday world and have some fun. The best time for this fantastical adventure is Halloween as it is already ripe with costumed possibilities and haunted shows. This year his show is aimed at the younger crowd and the town his crew created is perfect for the little ones, but in desperate need of actors. Hence his call to me to please play a witch. Combining my love for dressing up in costumes and my love for Stuart I could not help but heed his pleas with a resounding, "yes, I will help out in your show."

I'm in the 2nd week of the show and it is not always fun coming home from work and immediately going back out to stand in the cold and hand out candy. I am tired after work, but once I've had my nap I have nothing else to occupy my time and there is the rub. So when the question of "why am I doing this? I don't have to go, it is voluntary" comes creeping in on sticky little guilt feet my answer often is, "what else am I going to do?" Trying to explain to Stuart how I cannot possibly commit because my ass has made a permanent indentation on my couch and I would hate to destroy its meger attempt at impressionist art is just lame. I know once I arrive in costume the excitment in the air will energize me and being part of a small child's Halloween memories is very cool too. Plus I love seeing the joy on Stuart's face when the magic all comes together and let's face it no matter what I've said before: I love Halloween.

Keep Your Religion out of My Government!

I am just so angry and fearful proposition 8 will pass this November. It makes me sick and it doesn't even affect me directly. I have tried (really I have), to wrap my head around why anyone would deny people the civil right to marriage. Unfortunately what I've discovered is the reasons are nonsensical and come down to two things: it is against the bible, it is different from me and I fear it. The latter is not said out loud, but it is implied. The first one bothers me for its hypocrisy. The fervent religious believe this to be an abomination because a 2,000 year old book that was not even written by God or anyone who personally spoke to the deity told them so and they choose to ignore the other items also listed as abominations. Most of us have heard that also listed in Leviticus as abomonations are things such as eating shellfish, a man shaving off his beard, and of course the ever popular act of masturbation. So with all these chances to hate large groups of people why don't I see anyone protesting outside of Red Lobster or the local barber shop? However mention 2 people of the same-sex wanting to be happy and you get a whole mess of forked tongue protestors spewing their hate. It might be because clean faced men are familiar, people like the all you can eat shrimp and steak dinners or because the church no longer consider them valid. So it seems the bible can be updated, but apparently only when it pleases the masters who run these Kool-aid cults and as long as it doesn't involve 2 men wanting to marry (the bible does not mention 2 women marrying probably because the bible still considers women to be worthless).

As much as that ticks me off, the thing that angers me even more is the idea that some fucked up religious groups feel they can dictate how our civil laws are written. I thought religion is, by the Constitution, separate from Government. Marriage need not take place in a church or even performed by a priest/minister to be valid. It is a civil union endorsed and recognized by the state and not by God unless you invite him/her to the party. Allowing this proposition to pass means a religious moral code is the foundation of our state’s marriage law and that is only the beginning. People wake up! Let them have this one and what is to stop them from going on down the checklist and changing all of the other rights, privileges, and freedoms you currently enjoy that they don’t agree with? It is a slippery slope and you are on it unless you do something now.

The Way I See It.

It’s all how you look at things- That is how the saying goes, right? I never considered the impact of that statement prior to this weekend. I went to Reno with my mother for a few days just to get away. Getting to her place requires a drive down a 2 lane county road flanked by dairy farms and open fields. A routine drive and I'm about 20 minutes from mom’s house almost to Hwy 5 when I hear a loud POP. I blew a tire. I knew it from the sound and had no doubt when the rubber started to tear away from the rim. Not far, just around the corner a ways was a mini-mart so I kept driving until I got there and pull over into a dirt lot. I wander in to the mart which is populated by the farm workers: they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Spanish. Fair enough, I make the motion of speaking on a phone, they point and I call AAA. Fast forward 45 minutes the truck arrives, change the tire and I’m on my way.

Okay, first off I don’t want to hear about me not having a cell-phone. I had a pay phone and was able to make my call and … that is when it hit me: of all the places on that practically deserted road I blew out a few blocks from an open mini-mart with a working phone. It could’ve been on Hwy 5 at 75mph instead of 45. It could’ve been miles from a phone or a friendly face. All that could’ve happened in the situation didn’t and for that I said “thank you” to whoever may be out there. I realized that the experience was annoying, but I did not consider this to be a horrible ending to a wonderful week. In fact it now gives me the opportunity of telling a story about my dad and while I was in Reno he lovingly changed a back tire wearing thin on tread in order to avoid a blow out and in my determined head-strong way I had one anyway on a front tire with good tread.

So fate had this tire escapade destined to happen, there was no way to avoid it, might as well look at in the best light and in that moment I realized that many of our problems can weigh much less if we looked at them differently. Now, I’m not saying you can’t get upset or annoyed or even peeved, but it doesn’t have to be tragic. It just is. A different view can lighten the load even just little and sometimes that can make it easier to carry. This is my epiphany, oh yea and I also love pumpkin cheesecake.

Holiday blues

Does one become officially "old" when the process of decorating for a holiday becomes more of a bother than fun? When the prospect of gravestones, poster cut-outs and pumpkins fill you with dread rather than delight does it signal the onset of the twilight years? Wandering through Target's harvest display yesterday I saw so many things I wished to own, but yet had no desire to purchase. It wasn't because I was short on cash it was because I just didn't want to put forth the effort. The effort of hauling box after box out of the attic. The effort of taking down my normal decor and putting up the Halloween pumpkin-y stuff just for a few weeks. I have no party planned and in fact I most likely won't be home for Halloween anyway.

Normally Kurt and I go all out decorating for this festive night of nights with elaborate designs that wow the neighborhood kids. I love the creative time spent with him and all the 'oohs' and 'aahhs' we get from the children and parents alike. I love the ego boost from being the best house on the block. Unfortunately my idea of how "cool" I am was dashed last year when I did not decorate. I decided to protest last year because the year before some punk kids stole decorations from my front porch on Halloween night. The pieces were strewn about the neighborhood, shoved in bushes and generally ruined. That pissed me off and in retaliation I did not decorate nor did I hand out candy. I kept the house in a black-out. Yea, that showed them all right. Ppfft all it did was save me money spent on candy and the up and down all night from answering the door. It turned out other people like to decorate as much as I did and had their houses covered in store-bought decorations that rivaled my home-made items. In fact no one seemed to notice that my house remained dark.

I don't know what I expected. Did I think kids would line up at my door waiting to ask me why I did not have my pumpkin tree out and lit up in all its scary glory? Were the children supposed to hang upon each other wailing for my annual graveyard, refusing to dress up and chanting outside on the lawn until I relented? Is this what I thought would happen? Instead I was an aging has-been holed up in her dark house stewing in her own misery. Who suffered beyond my ego? The kids did not, only me. They got candy while I nursed my wounds. Now this year comes with its promises of fun and I'm having a hard time believing it. I can hear the Pumpkin King whispering my name. The witches and ghouls beckoning me to return to their dark bosoms: "carve the pumpkins, put up the skeletons, hand out the caaannndddyyyy....."

I suppose some gravestones wouldn't hurt, maybe I could put out some spiderwebs. I do love those ghostly window clings and jack-o-lanterns are cool. I can always project old black and white Vincent Price movies out of my front window and invite the neighbors to join me. Maybe I am not old, maybe Halloween could be fun again.