tiny splash in an ocean of orange

i thought i would save my thoughts for a time when i was more rested and less confused, but at this point, that may never happen. lars, your blog entry inspired me to just write and get the thoughts and ideas outside of myself.

here's what happened: 

friday, march 29th:  my uncle glenn died suddenly and unexpectedly. he was gay, and like so many families, my family refused to acknowledge this. uncle glenn spent years in what conservative assholes call "reparative therapy," where they try to "cure you of your illness." fifty years later, uncle glenn reconciled his faith and his sexuality and embraced who he believed god made him to be. i'm so proud, and so happy they he and his partner george found and loved each other. however, glenn didn't receive that unconditional love and acceptance from everyone in my family.

saturday, may 4th: my last day as a clinic assistant in the abortion surgical hall at planned parenthood. 

monday, june 17th: dolly eats grapes. grapes can be highly toxic for puppies, and we take every precaution to avoid potential kidney failure. this means two nights in the hospital and over $1000 in medical fees. 

tuesday, june 18th: i join my fellow activists in 50's "mad (wo)man" attire in the texas senate gallery, where i witness the senate vote in favor of sb5. 

wednesday, june 19th: my mother tells me she is coming to my wedding in august. the wedding has been planned for over a year, but as of a few weeks ago, i thought no one from my family would be attending. now, somehow, they all are. if you know me, and you know them, this is beyond shocking. most of my family doesn't support my sexuality or my relationship with leslie. they have made that very clear. i think this change of heart has a lot to do with my uncle glenn. as it is in so many stories, it can take tragedy to put things into perspective. i don't know any more than you do what happens when we die, but if there is any fairness and compassion in the universe, i hope that glenn could hear me talking to my father on the phone last week. 

my family and i still have a long, long way to go. this doesn't mean that everything is better, but can i take a minute to cry and appreciate what a huge deal this is? 

thursday, june 20th: i join over 700 other citizens at a house committee hearing. we are there for a "people's filibuster." after being there for 15 hours, over 300 people are cut off from testimony. 

at almost 4am, i am the last of 4 people in line. the clerk tells me and the person in front of me that we won't be able to speak. we protest, she negotiates with a representative, and returns, saying, "ok, if you are registered, you can speak." our turn comes and chairman cook says that the testimonies are over. he calls representative laubenberg (author of the bill, now famous for her "rape kits are abortions" line) forward to close the bill.

it is my great pleasure to say that i now personally interrupt representative laubenberg as soon as she steps up to the podium. 

"NO! no, it's our turn to speak. we were told we would speak." 

laubenberg sits down. and the people speak. 10 hours and a million drafts after writing my original script, i can hardly remember what i actually end up saying. i only remember feeling like i'm on fire, and i remember looking into as many representative eyeballs as i can. 

meanwhile, three more people line up behind me. i read the last testimony on record before the microphones are turned off, the republican representatives flee, and the last three standing continue to tell their stories to the room "off the record." 

i go to sleep at 6:30am on the morning of june 21st. i am proud. i am exhausted. i am worried. 

sunday, june 23rd: i can't tear myself away from the livesteam of the house debate long enough to travel to the capitol. i am glued to the screen. plus, from my home i can follow along on twitter, disregard "decorum", and drink beer. representative jessica farrar kicks ass, representative senfronia thompson holds up a coat hanger, and representative jodie laubenberg makes a fool of herself. i watched until my lil' sleep-deprived eyes close, but my body wakes me up at 3:30am. i know something isn't right. i creep out into my dark living room and turn on my laptop. the vote has just ended. the bill will move on. 

tuesday, june 25th: SCOTUS votes to remove section 5 from the voting rights act. texas is already plotting how to reduce voting access with new id requirements and bullshit redistricting. 

you all know what happens in the texas capitol today. i've been to lots of protests, i've been arrested, i've fought hard....but i've never felt anything like this. i go with my fellow full-spectrum doulas, and after standing in a line that wraps around and around the capitol rotunda, we make it into the gallery. instead of the echoing chatter and laughter of the rotunda, the gallery iss quiet except for the strong, steady, angelic voice of senator wendy davis. at this point, she has already been speaking for 8.5 hours. it's tense. when the republicans (unfairly) stop the filibuster, the tension escalates a million percent. i watch with 500 people bitingnailsholdinghandscompulsivelycheckingtimeedgeofseattappingfeetwatchingthoughfingerslikeascarymovie. they stop letting people into the room. if we leave, there will be no witnesses. 

time. crawls. on. the vote is about to happen. i pray, in some vague, panicked way. senator leticia van de putte inspires a standing ovation that starts at 11:47pm. what starts as an organic response of support becomes our last hope. we realize that if we shout loud enough, we can run down the clock. 

i don't know if i have ever screamed that loudly.

i'm not sure where my screaming ends and my neighbor's begins. my hands turn bright red from clapping. below on the floor, chaos. the gavel doesn't matter. 

WE ARE RUNNING DOWN THE CLOCK.

 it is like the most epic, important new year's countdown ever. suddenly, there is hope! 

5...4...3...2...special session is over!!!! more cheering!!! wait...they voted? did it pass? what's happening? what did the timestamp say? enter 75 state troopers to clear us out. a woman is arrested, despite protests. the gallery clears. i walk, bewildered, into the 2000 person crowd, looking for a bathroom, telling myself not to complain because senator wendy davis held it way, way longer. i pee, more chaos, and i decide to catch my ride home.

i fall asleep 10 minutes before the 2:20am announcement that sb5 is dead. 

i fall alseep with my heart swelling with pride for wendy davis, my friends, my fellow texans, and myself. we were the underdogs. we were the people. we stood our ground. 

we still have a long, long way to go. this doesn't mean that everything is better, but can i take a minute to cry and appreciate what a huge deal this is?  

i fall asleep thinking about the bill that we didn't get to about minors serving life sentences. 

i fall asleep thinking about redistricting and voting rights, which ironically threaten the very seat of our hero, senator wendy davis. 

wednesday, june 26th: sb5 is dead. DOMA is dead. i'm getting married in august. i'm reading status updates from friends who talk about abolishing marriage and this sense of equality is bullshit and what a distraction this is from the movement, etc. i get all of that. i get it. our system is flawed. it benefits those with power and privilege. i'm getting married in august. i'm not stupid. i'm in love. i have many privileges. DOMA's death is not enough. 

we still have a long, long way to go. this doesn't mean that everything is better, but can i take a minute to cry and appreciate what a huge deal this is?  

i'm falling asleep thinking about everything. i want to celebrate today's small victory with my uncle glenn. i want to stop texas from making deadly laws. i want to keep being proud about being part of something bigger than myself. i'm afraid of negativity causing low morale causing burnout. we must let ourselves feel the little joys, even when the fight isn't over. if not, how will we continue? but perry has already called a new session. i don't have a voice today. i mean, i really don't have a voice because of all the screaming. i need to rest, but my mind is racing. how do we beat this? can we? I'M SO FUCKING PISSED. our system is hopelessly broken. really?! this is how our laws are made!? the bridge collective has been talking about setting up a rideshare/couchsurfing/childcare assistance program for people going to abortion clinics. can we do it? can we organize it on a statewide scale? would it help? i wish someone in my family had called to say "congrats." i don't have that family. but i have a chosen family who has been with me every step of the way. part of me wishes i lived somewhere friendlier, but most of me knows that this is where the fight needs to happen. 

we can't all leave. 

we stand together. 

  

comic sans god

i just rediscovered my old open diary and started re-reading entries from high school. that's right, folks; i've been blogging since 1999. and things on the internet really never go away; every word has been preserved in all its comic sans glory. 

                                    

we've gone from hamster dance to lolcatz. from icq to gchat. from ms paint to instagram. and from an online diary where most of my writing was about how much i love god, how much my life sucked, and how worried i was that  i'd never have a boyfriend to...

BEING ENGAGED TO A LADY!!!!

leslie and i are getting married next year!!! in seattle, where it will hopefully be legal and we will hopefully have a camping wedding in the rainforest and hopefully also a giant doughnut cake.

what even happened between point a and point b??? lots. mostly, i found myself, and possibly a god who is truer to me than my 1999 comic sans god.

telling my family was hard. really hard. i told my sisters first, which was mostly okay. but i put off telling my mother for weeks. and i get it. they're trying their hardest. i know what they're struggling with, because i was there before. but frankly, it sucks. same for leslie's family. i'm sure many of my high school and college friends disagree with our decision.

and then, of course, i have my own personal struggle about subscribing to an historically hetero-normative, oppressive institution. are we perpetuating something destructive?  should we wait until the benefits of state-sanctioned marriage are available for everyone (single people, unmarried people in relationships)? what does it mean to get married in a state where the state recognizes our marriage, when we live in a state that doesn't? probably a lot of our friends in the queer community wouldn't choose this path.

everyone's gotta go to through their own process. read the books and articles you need to read, think and pray the way you need to. we are doing everything we can to be thoughtful and intentional about how we go about this whole bizness.

come next summer, whether or not our families show up, we plan to celebrate our love with a group of people who genuinely love and support us.

stretch the writing muscles

the year so far: 

celebrated the new year with some of my dearest framily (that's a squird for friends who are family, if you didn't know). so much changes, even in five months. 

the composting toilet broke, quite a lot. we moved. we have housemates and a big yard. 

of course, as you've seen on facebook, we have a new puppy. 

in april, i cried in the bathroom at work. then i walked out in the middle of a shift. i should have done it much sooner. leslie left her job to pick me up. i walked out of the clinic and almost yelled "fuck you!" to the protesters, but the protesters were an 80-something year old man and woman, getting lawn chairs out of their trunk and i just couldn't. 

i was sitting on the curb eating little ceasar's crazy bread, still in my scrubs, when she pulled up. 

i know you're not supposed to quit a job "in this economy," but no paycheck is worth being demoralized everyday. anyway, i had a job interview the very next week, and one month later, back to the world of the working. 

after spending a month by myself, i became soft. an abortion clinic in texas is not a place for the faint of heart. i have to work back up to hearing the heartbreaking things, to keeping them out of my dreams. 

i'm helping to start a full-spectrum doula organization. that means that we support pregnant, pre-pregnant people, and post-pregnant people, whether they want birth, adoption, or abortion. whether they're trying to get knocked up, or they've miscarried. whether they're doing it by themselves or they have a partner. a radical concept, in every sense. last night, a celebrity of the movement came to my house!

one of my fellow doulas asked me why i was so interested in working in abortion care. "have you had an abortion, or something?" i've never even been pregnant (except in arizona). so what am i doing centering my whole life around supporting people through experiences i've never had? sure as hell ain't for the money. 

maybe it's some sort of penance for being such a conservative little shit for 20 years of my life? or being an especially empathetic, female-bodied person? a fascination with....new life? second chances? positive transformation? the right to control one's own body? 

who knows, but i'm enchanted and i'm here. 

there's been a lot to contemplate, and time for meditation. i've been thinking a lot about life, and death, and what the differences are. i've been meditating on "being with," and how hard that is. i've been changing the way i move about in the world, and how i make decisions. i'm trying to become less practical and more bold. 

i have not been writing. so pardon me while i warm up. 

i have not been biking.

i have not been exercising.

however, i have finished most of my new year's resolutions already. 

i went to ohio for a weekend so watch my little sister's musical. i surprised her, and she's a dramatic teenager, so her reaction was most satisfying. she played elle woods in "legally blonde: the musical" on the same stage on which i performed almost ten years ago. 

i saw my mamaw. she can't believe that people don't think i'm a redhead. i'm not sure she's happy. i know i wouldn't be, in a nursing home. she made fun of my nose ring and asked if i had a boyfriend yet. other grandma looked at me and said, "rebecca, you know we're praying for you for you-know-what." all i could do was purse my lips and say, "mmm." 

claudia took me to a cupcake shop called "to die for" that shares a store front with a shop that sells headstones. morbid, but clever. 

i love nasal irrigation!

i've caught my first texas cold!

leslie was sick earlier this week, and it was pretty much inevitable. which means this weekend i'm not able to do either of the things i had planned on doing: drink beer or go to a birth. not at the same time, obvs. but, alas, here i am, sitting amidst a dirty pile of tissues with only one more season of battlestar galactica left to watch.

the only consolation is that we finally got a netipot. it's something i've been meaning to do for a few years now, and i'm not sure why i haven't because it's the most satisfying thing ever! i want to do it all the time, and i plan on doing it even when i'm done being sick. i love shit like that! why haven't i used one before?!

life has been picking up. i'm already busy and somewhat sleep-deprived, which i see as a sign of building a healthy social life, yes? i've been making friends with some of my co-workers, and we've met some pretty swell people lately. i actually went dancing saturday and sunday night last week. yeah, that's right. and the sunday night dance party was at a vegan bakery doughnut party. larissa and liz b, we're gonna get you some goood vegan doughnuts when you come to visit. now that we've found quality vegan doughnuts, i think we can finally settle in here.

speaking of delicious food, thanksgiving is next week! in addition to my baby sister turning 17 years old, it means to break out the casserole dishes and the 'ol church cookbook. it means i need to stock up on sour cream, cheddar cheese, cream of mushroom soup, and crushed cornflakes: the staples for any decent midwest hotdish.

i planned on having our own 'lil tofurkey dinner here, but it turns out that we're actually getting invited places. whaaaa? our neighbors invited us next door, and described the menu in graphic detail. i'm pretty sure everything had bacon in the ingredients list, except for the turkey, but the thought was nice. also, my mom's childhood friend apparently lives in san antonio and keeps calling to invite me to dinner. it's a sweet gesture, but it makes me feel awkward all over. thanksgiving at a stranger's house? a stranger that may or may not know i'll be bringing my girlfriend and probably does not know what line of work i'm in? no thanks. so not all the invitations are super desirable, but it feels nice to be thought of anyway. i plan on fresh squeeze mimosas in the morning with our backyard neighbor, and some thanksgiving party hopping, hopefully resulting in either karaoke or a food coma.

in other news, i finally found some train conductor stripey pants. every time i go into a thrift store, i look for these pants. i've wanted them for years and years, ever since i outgrew some pink and white oshkoshbgosh overalls in third grade. finally, after a 16 year search, they are mine. ha! also, i found six amazing vintage hats, all feathery and nettingy. i tried them all on, but only allowed myself to buy two. now, i just need occasion to wear all these things. somebody throw a 40s costume party! i've got an outfit waiting to happen.

i have nothing else to report. back to hulu and cleansing my nasal passages.

drink your juice, shelby

i fear that the days when i used to have enough brain space to devote to creative writing may be no more...it used to be an outlet, now i just feel uninspired to write most of the time. my brain is just full of other things.

first and foremost, i got my birth! it was an all-nighter, and delightfully uneventful. mama labored with minimal pain meds, and mostly without an iv tying her down or a fetal monitor inhibiting her movement, so we got to work in all kinds of fun positions. i used my new rebozo and my new hot water bottle and the coconut water i put in my bag. within 5 minutes after popping a pretty sizable baby out, mama says, "i could definitely do that again." ha! ah, no love like the love in a room when parents meet the baby for the first time on the other side of the uterus. it's thick, sort of suffocating, but in a good way, heavy, like having the wind knocked out of you.

but the longer-lasting outcome for me is that i think i can finally complete my certification now, which has been two years in the making! yahoo!

and i decided that i like my rebozo more as a scarf. so i washed it, but i'll probably wear it as a scarf from now on, which was it's original purpose. but now it has magical powers.

my lady was finally hired, not once, but TWICE. she's working with youngsters and she's working with baked goods.

i tried to find an anne geddes baby-dress-as-cupcake...you'd think it would easy. it's not!

so we're now a fully-employed household...just in time for a major brake fluid leak in the truck that cost $600 to repair. that's like...a month's rent. more than a month's student loan payment. that would have paid for a plane ticket to be with my family for the holidays. 6x the business casual wardrobe i have now. pet food for more than a year. curses!!

but there's always something. this weekend i'm going in to wells fargo and closing my (modest) bank account, and taking my dollars to a local credit union. it'll be hard to give wells fargo the "fuck you" that i'd like to, since the tellers there are always so kind to me. but it's something, at least.

what else? we bought a juicer from craigslist. $10 (we could have had SIXTY juicers for what it cost us to fix our truck!). we watched forks over knives, then some movie about this guy doing a juice fast and turning his life around, and we decided to eat more whole foods. that, and make kale, celery, apple juice. among other things. having fresh squeezed orange juice in the morning sure is a treat. i was poking around on my lil' sister's facebook wall and she wrote something about how my mother would only let us drink a tiny glass of juice a day when i was growing up. we used to joke about how strict she was an how crazy that rule had been. in retrospect, i think it was because we were poor, and possibly because of the high sugar content in juice. but i realized it's just one more way i have gone against the values my parents worked so hard to instill in me.

just look at me.

look what i've become.

i'm a non-church attending, politically progressive GAY lady, living in sin with an unmarried partner, working at a babykilling factory, drinking COPIOUS, unmeasured amounts of JUICE!!!

what deadly sin will i commit next?

*sigh* the funny thing is, i never planned for it to happen that way.

just goes to show that if you start questioning why women shave their body hair, it's a slippery slope right into the depths of hell.

pious: out of the pew and into the party

this is the title that my brain came up with in a dream.

the dream was really long and mostly full of nonsense, including a part where gabrielle from xena knocked on my car window in the middle of an ohio wheat field and offered me a half eaten fudgesicle.

at the end of the dream i was in a room of people who didn't know each other very well and we were playing a horrible charades/20 questions/hangman fusion mixer game. each person had to go to the front and get the audience to guess the title of their life memoir as it would be titled at that particular moment.

gabrielle appeared because i've been watching too much xena before bed.

the title came from i don't know. talking about my sunday school feltboard halloween costume? recent conflict with my family? pressure to come up with a concise bio for the doula collective?

it happened right before i woke up. i googled it because i thought maybe i read it somewhere, but i didn't find anything.

i've heard that dreams are where you process what you haven't processed consciously. i've also heard that they're an alternate reality. and also that what we think is real is our brain tricking us. and that our whole existence might be controlled by another reality beyond us. like sims.

i don't know anything about sims, except that yesterday leslie told me that one of her sims characters was about to have a baby. which is funny, because i'm on call for someone to have a baby right now. "make her have it at home!" i shouted, moving closer to the screen. all of the other characters were freaking their shit, grabbing their hair and jumping up and down screaming. leslie took pictures. the mother-to-be started walking out of the house. "stop her! put her in the bathroom!" "i can't, haha, i don't have control anymore." we watched as the mother and father got into a car and drove to the hospital, where everyone the laboring mother passed also starting freaking their shit. we weren't allowed to see what happened in the hospital, but a few minutes later, a new simbaby was born.

"how long do they live?"

"well, it'll take a couple of days for the baby to become a toddler. they usually live about 50-60 sims days, but if there is a skilled gardener in the household they can eat something called 'lifefruit' and extend their lives an extra day every time they eat it."

meanwhile, leslie was deciding what personality trait to assign the new baby. "let's make him...a genius."

.....i can't help but feel like someone is messing with me that way....

anyway, no baby yet in what i think is reality. but it's a full moon, so we'll see.

i've been through the desert in a truck with no a/c...

a dry-erase fridge and a composting toilet!!

that's right, friends. but it feels good to be out of the rain.

just a little over a year ago i had my first desert experience when went camping with shana, idil, and alex in angeles national forest. but it wasn't really a forest. it was the desert. and i was terrified. we saw a scorpion within hours, i was sure we were being stalked by mountain lions, and i stomped on the ground where'er i walked, expecting a rattlesnake to strike at any moment. seriously out of my element.

as you can see, the sexy danger is "very high"

in the woods, there are hiding places. there is shade and water. there are little bugs under every rock that you can eat if you're desperate.

not in the desert. not during august.

the first part of the journey was smooth sailing. we booked it down I-5 all the way to l.a., with rowdy and a sedated t.k. (we decided to drug him for sure after the little shit ran away the day before we moved!) napping comfortably (for the most part) in the backseat.

sedated t.k. on a leash

a close-up

we left l.a. at 5am on friday morning. it started getting hot around 9am, somewhere in the arizona desert. nothing a few bags of ice and some dorky matching neck bandanas for the whole family (minus asha) can't fix!

and...it really hasn't really stopped being hot since then. at first i thought i was just being a baby, but it turns out everyone in texas is complaining about the weather, too.

so, here we are. now i live in the desert. practically. well, not technically, but there are still rattlesnakes in austin. i looked it up.

but the benefits outweigh the rattlesnakes and maybe even the heat:

tex mex food trucks EVERYWHERE.

a magazine called garden & gun??!!


an amazing food co-op. (everything is cheaper!!)



a local timebank.

two hip 'lil coffeeshops around the corner from my house.

shiner in a can. in fact, there is a place here that gives you free beer while they cut your hair.

a doula co-op.

and gays everywhere, apparently. our landlady, our neighbors, everyone we buy something from on craigslist. without even looking for them. gay!

there are plenty of great things to do, but not until we have jobs.

until then, aside from craigslist furniture round-up and ikea treasure-hunting, we've mostly stayed in for xena marathons and master chef (liz t. and amy, you should finish the season!). it's too hot to sleep in our loft right now and we don't have a bed anyway, so the entire family (minus asha) has been curling up on the living "space" futon in front of the a/c every night. i had a job interview at an abortion clinic (ask me how i re-worded that one for my mother another time...), am waiting to attend a birth for the co-op, and have sprinkled various other job applications throughout the city. leslie got tricked into signing us up to perform in a talent show to benefit planned parenthood at the end of the month. tonight we're going to see a free los lonely boys show at blues on the green.

so much to explore as soon as we're done with six seasons of xena.

friends, wherever you are in the world right now, we miss and love you!!