Lesbian Dad

Whistle-stop housekeeping tour

It’s happened again! The beloved opened another show (per usual: a runaway smash hit; this one is Once Upon A Mattress), and our family life is beginning to find its equilibrium again. Granted, equilibrium is preceeded by both kids having various breakdowns all over Mama, but veteran parents such as we are now (don’t laugh) are totally ready for this. It’s the babysitter effect. The kids hold it together for the duration of the crisis, and then after calm is restored (parents returned; whatever), they go all to pieces.

Come to think of it, this effect holds true later in life, too.  It might be more drama-worthy to show people panicking in crises, which is why we see this in movies. But the shit usually hits the fan when the dust is settled and everyone thinks it’s safe to get back in the water.  To mix a metaphor or three.  Like the never-ending half-life of big grief, the truer aftermath of crises – the slow-mo, quiet, solitary breakdowns; the displaced/misplaced catharses –  will rarely appear on the big screen. The rest of us know better, though.

But so. Mama is now home again, rather than 24/7 at the theater, Baba gets a morsel of childcare furlough, and business can be gotten down to! (*Sound of palms rubbing enthusiastically.*)

First order of which is, holy moly! LD is a finalist for the Lesbian Lifestyle Best Parenting Blog award!  Yahoo!  And thank you whoever you are, for nominating this thing!  As do so many, I aspire to greatness, and whether or not I manage to get this thing to achieve it, or do so with any reliability, it is an enormous honor to think that one or another of you-all’s believe it might be noteworthy or voteworthy.  In fact, please go vote if you feel so inclined! Daily, evidently, ’til midnight March 2nd. There’s email confirmation of vote, etc., etc., to keep people’s noses clean, so watch your transom and follow up by clicking the vote confirmation link.  Etc., etc.

Now I have to hastily note that the other co-finalists up for a Lezzy for Best Parenting Blog (yes, you read right: a Lezzy) are written by women that I love and respect, and I have a hard time in good conscience encouraging you to vote against their blogs. Fortunately our gal Vikki, of Up Popped a Fox fame, is also up for Best Personal Blog, so I feel fewer pangs there.  Love Vikki? Make her Best Personal Blog of ’09!  Oops! Unless of course like me you also love Best Personal Blog co-finalist Deborah, of Peaches & Coconuts fame, in which case you’re back in a quandary. And even though I’m not a regular reader, I can’t claim any objectivity about other Best Personal Blog gal Jesse James, either, because her Valentine’s Day picture of her dog (here) is a near-dead-ringer for the last picture I posted of my soon-to-be-dearly-departed dog (here).  Damn lesbian community: everyone knows everyone, and everyone’s either an ex or dated one. Or their dog.

(I can’t say I’ve dated any of the finalists or their exes, by the way, but I can say with no small amount of pride that Vikki once forked over a dollar to smooch me at a Lesbian Avenger kissing booth.  Yeah, yeah, business was slow and she was a fellow Avenger shilling to get me more customers. Still I think it counts for something.)

Now Dana, over at Mombian, is ridiculously, preposterously, deserving of Best Lesbian Parenting Blog honorifics. Her service to the lesbian parent community, nationally/internationally, is beyond compare. Seriously. I think anyone who is both a lesbian and a parent at the same time (or even considering it) would be a complete idiot not to read Mombian every day.  I do. And am I a complete idiot?

Don’t answer that!

I rather think Mombian escaped Lesbian Lifestyle Blog honors last year only because some folks might regard it as a website, or a critical life reference point, or oxygen, more than a blog, per se. But now it’s in the spotlight, and deservedly so. So go vote for her blog right this very instant. Unless you can’t help yourself and you want to vote LD. In which case, I love ya baby.  Always have.

In fact I had occasion to reflect on how much I love you, you dedicated LD reader you, earlier this afternoon. For the second time, I had the honor of speaking to my old friend’s class at the neighboring university. Other Voices is a lecture series in which writers from diverse, emerging literary cultures come talk about their craft and their work.  I got to talk about what I do here at LD, how I do it, and why.  It was a thrill.

(Here are some notes about what I said last year. This year’s chat followed suit, more or less. I thought I’d post some of the questions I got from students in advance but didn’t have time to address in the talk or the Q/A afterward. Stay tuned for that in an upcoming post.)

Before I roll the housekeeping cart to the other recently and woefully neglected parts of my life (childcare! furlough! so! much! to do!), I do want to say this. When I was preparing the chat for today, I did a search on my computer for what I thought I’d titled the talk last year. One of the pages that popped up was one of the LD Reader Survey results pages I’d long ago downloaded, marvelled over, and then rapidly lost the time to reflect upon further here.  I will one day when I have time, because it deserves a lot more than a quick note (that’s my problem: I think EVERYTHING deserves a lot more than a quick note, yet all’s I have time for often is just a quick note, so a great deal of stuff gets a quick NADA from me instead, or postponed into perpetuity, a big problem).

Still: wow.

Re-reading what many of you said, particularly in the last, freestyling question (“Anything else you’d like me to know or consider?”) made it so easy for me to say to the clutch of college students I saw earlier today: this blogging stuff is amazing. I get back so much more than I give, and I have a hard time imagining a better way to do writing (oh, sure, I can imagine more lucrative ways, but that’s not what I said).

Blogging is about dialog, I told them as I closed the chat; it presupposes, creates, and strengthens community; it can and does speak across barriers of difference; it blurs the distinction between reader and writer, in a very good way (that is: it is very hard to be a credible blogger if you’re at a remove from your community online).  I can’t imagine the time when I’ll happily walk away from this. There may come a time when propriety, or the overwhelming need to spend time earning more of a buck, or some unforseen calamity requires me to shutter this thing.  But for the past 47 months and 879 posts (!), I have been so lucky. Lucky to have the fingers and the time to type with.  Lucky to have found my way to people like you to communicate and commiserate with.  Lucky to have the kids I have to help me find my way through parenthood and personhood. That right there is reward enough.  So though I’ve said it before, I haven’t enough recently, and doubt I can too often: thank you, gentle reader (commenter and lurker alike!) for making this whole ride possible.


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