Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: bumblebee on boneset

CW: INFANT DEATH, STILLBIRTH



A lot of Midwesterners seem to just have a cabin up north. (It's always "up north," too. I don't know what people at the top of the state do? Have a cabin in Canada, maybe?) At any rate, we have never been those people. I mean, statistically, we must be the majority? There are famously a LOT of lakes in Minnesota, but there's no way that we're somehow the only ones left out of this phenomenon. However, a shocking number of my friends have inherited or bought some lakeside property somewhere north of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Luckily, my friends are very generous. Right around this time of year, almost every year for the past twenty or so, we've managed to finagle an invite to our friends Gerriann and Barb's place on Crooked Lake in Wisconsin. Today is a good day for Shawn and I to be away from home. ( see content warning, but there are only a few specific details below )

I haven't checked in since the anniversary, so here's a full report of my weekend, starting with Friday, the big anniversary.  

Mason, as I think I've mentioned, is in debate this year.  The debate team has the craziest tournament schedule. This last Friday? They were in Eagan until sometime after ten. I didn't get him home until almost 11:30 pm, and then they get up to be on the bus again, Saturday morning, at 6:45 am.  

The only upside of that, for Shawn and I, was that we had the whole night together.  Va-va-voom, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. That's right. We got take-away from Vina (a Vietnamese/Thai restaurant in Highland Park) and binge watched "Longmire." I don't expect my nerd friends to be terribly familiar with "Longmire" as it's the type of show that I tend to associate with the "wine mom" set.  It's a Western/Police procedural that takes place in a make-believe county in northern Wyoming. The hero is a manly-man of few words and (supposedly) sterling character. There's nothing about what I've just describe to you that would normally make me say "OOoooHHHH! SIGN. ME. UP."  Except, the story telling is very compelling, and I'm fascinated by the intersections between the county Sherif's Department and the various tribal police (Cherokee and Crow nations). I have no idea how accurate it is or what the American Indian community thinks of the show, except I do know that the actors are all Native. 

It was, however, a grand way to spend the evening with Shawn.

Saturday, while Mason was away debating again, we made a lot of Solstice cookies.



I love making these because I love mixing the color into the frosting.  (I'm still very much a little kid in this regard.) Not shown are the date cookies... with are also favorites because I have a strange weakness for warm fruit.

Sunday, we intended to keep baking but, after I made an amazing yeast-based plate of cinnamon rolls, we kind of topped out.



This is a new recipe that Shawn found for "easy" cinnamon rolls. They were, actually, fairly easy for me, though that's said by someone, like myself, who makes a LOT of yeast breads and has done for decades.  So, if you're not super-confident with yeast, I wouldn't necessarily call this recipe "easy."

I can post it in the comments, if anyone asks for it.

Then Sunday night, Mason and I hopped on the light rail and headed into downtown Minneapolis to see "Brain Candy" with Adam Savage and Micheal Stevens at the Orpheum.  That was a good show.  It was basically LIVE science, but Adam Savage is very much the same sort on stage that he is on MythBusters (impish, vaguely dangerous, funny...).  We watched Adam build (and explode) things and Michael (a science You Tuber that Mason loves) explain things.  Even though it meant another LATE night for Mason, it was well worth the price of admission.  

We actually had really nice seats, too. We sprang for the middle-range price tickets, and so got first balcony, front row. We had ZERO leg room, but we had no one sitting in front of us.  The house was packed, too.  We were cramped knee to cramped knee with a full row, but the show was entertaining enough that I didn't actually mind at all.  Mason had never been to the Orpheum and said, "Wow. I feel under dressed," because it's the kind of theater that has a giant chandelier and fancy architecture (being historic, and all.)  

I hope we can keep doing things like this. That was a lot of fun.  A friend of mine at the coffee shop this morning said that the University of Minnesota puts on some kind of science show in January that's worth seeing. I'm going to see what Google coughs up about that, and see if Mason is interested.  These things get expensive, but, with luck, we can do them now-and-again.

That's the weekend.  Onward.  I'm planning on doing even more cookie-making today, because holidays. We're not even having guests, but Shawn and I love to celebrate Solstice with lots and lots of treats.

 Like a lot of GLBT couples, Shawn and I have made up our anniversary.  It's a fictional date, convenient, easy to remember.  It doesn't mark anything, other than the fact that we're PRETTY SURE we went on a 'date' to Target to do Christmas shopping together.  This was 1985 and I don't even think we were on each other's Christmas lists even, yet. We probably actually met months earlier at one of Michael J. Batman's D&D campaigns, where I remember very clearly telling Shawn she had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen.  I'd been sketching people's D&D characters for them and Shawn told me to make hers have blond hair and brown eyes, and I said, "No one has that combination!" (Keep in mind I was 17, what the hell did I even know? At that point I was sure Chicago was in Wisconsin.) She said, "I do." And I looked up... and, yeah, I'd say that was the moment fate was sealed.

But, in all honesty, I wasn't even out to myself yet that December. I still thought I was a straight girl (kind of... ask me about how I was already reading Gay Comix I bought at a head shop in LaCrosse my senior year).  Thing is, I would go on after December 1, 1985, to have a couple of more boyfriends and a several girlfriends. Shawn, too, had boyfriends post that fateful meeting.

Yet, we count December 1, 1985 as our anniversary because we were certainly already living together at that point (and having sex).  I moved in, and never, ever moved out.  By the end, my girlfriends would look at me and say, "How can I compete when you're living with the one you love?"  

They were right. I was cheating on all of them with Shawn.

The story would have been pathetic and sad, if Shawn didn't also finally have the same realization when we were living in our first apartment on Franklin Avenue.  After a friend of ours visited and regaled us with the stories of his gay single life and his heartaches, we looked at each other over the top of his head and knew.  We knew it was time to make things official.  Why keep seeking when we'd found love already? If we could remember the date of that day, that would probably be more accurate in a very strict sense.

But, relationships are messy, so why not just count from the real beginning? Why not skip the mess and embrace that first wonderful moment?  So we do.  Your rules do not apply to us.  Or, at least, before we were mainstreamed by marriage, there really were no rules, no sense of how any of it was supposed to work, so we just made things up as we went along.  I think most people do, anyway.  It's just that the majority of people have... well, I guess, traditions and institutions to fall back on.  Marriage dates. First dates.  We never thought to mark any of those, either. I'm sure we eventually picked a date because people asked us how long we'd been together and we had no idea.  

Ask me when Shawn and I were married, and I'll say, "It was a Monday!  Oh, and hot!"  I'm sure it was in August because that was the first month it was legal and we did the official thing in front of a judge as soon as possible because I'd gone over a decade without any decent health insurance. 

Of course, I'm generally terrible about dates.  I feel like I must be the only mom in the universe who hesitates when health professionals ask for Mason's birthday.  I've finally got it down, but for a while I used to switch the last number of his birthday with the last number of the year he was born.  I also have memories like this, "It was hot."  (Apparently important things in my life always happen on the hottest days of the year.)  

So last night we celebrated our made-up anniversary the way we have been for decades.  Actually, maybe more like a single decade, since we started this tradition when Mason was an infant and Shawn and I were too exhausted to even consider dressing up and doing something fancy.  I remember complaining to my friend Ember about how it wasn't going to be romantic with a baby, and she suggested that I surprise Shawn--that I get take out from a favorite place and fancy up the table with candles (and the high chair.) It was PERFECT. I picked Vescio's in Dinkytown.  Vescio's was one of the first restaurants I remember taking Shawn to when we did finally become 'official.'  And, miraculously, it's still there. It's still EXACTLY the same and has the EXACT same menu.  Bonus: Mason loves it and always has, even when he was in his toddler "I will only eat noodles" phase.  

We had a lovely night. 

Here's to another thirty-two years!