Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Our new home is called the treehouse (or tweehouse).  We are finally all moved in, the old waco guest house drained dry and empty.  Someone new is moving in this week.  That's okay.  The new place is beautiful and much bigger.

Two days ago we went to Disneyland, having gotten free tickets through a friend.  Going in the thick of moving may not have been the best choice, as I really didn't have the stamina for all that walking.  But it was great fun, anyhow.

I should go make a list of all the moving-in tasks I need to finish.  Well, yes.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

And it is still raining.  The room is dark.  Last night, at the new house, we slept on the air mattress with the constant patter of drops and K's coughs.  It was cold.  Like the air mattress drooping to meet the floor, I missed the gas company and must wait till Monday to get the heat turned on.

At six am she woke me. "I can't stay here, let's go back."  I obliged, hauling upright fully dressed, pulling the coat around my shoulders.  We rustled the cat into her box and crept down the stairs to the glow of downtown.  Wet concrete squeals, cars and cars and who drives the 101 at this hour, I don't know.

Where she goes, I will follow.  What she asks, I will do. 

We drove back to Waco with the am oldies station hissing slow.  My love, I tucked her into bed with the mosquito netting and stuffed sheep, fell asleep beside her, my stuffed rat soft under my chin.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I was reading this article in Jezebel this morning, and started thinking about my relationship to gender coding and how it has evolved.  I used to be bisexual, but predominently dated men.  When I was younger, college in the nineties, the women I would end up with were usually just interested in experimentation, which gets a bit old.  In my later life there was never quite the right person, situation, or relationship, until now.  People assumed I was straight.

But I remember this problem the article speaks of, sussing out a potential friend/partner's orientation.  This used to matter to me far more.  In the past six months, since living at Waco, I have been part of a delightful streamlining and de-emphasis of this. 

Lately, I only socialize with gay men.  As a lesbian in a committed relationship, not having the tension of expectation or the built-in rejection after post-sex-awkwardness with my male friends, is so nice.

We have been having the most lovely little coffee klatches over here in the lezshack, with Stephen and his dates and various roommates and friends and whatnot.  I enjoy being a hostess, and having people drop by.

The other point this article brought up for me was the possibility that observers might think I was a married woman canoodling with a beautiful young girl, and not connect that we were an engaged couple.  That's their problem.

It really feels great, though, to know where my life is going to go from here, and to know that it's going to be awesome.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Every time I leave the house I fall on the stepping stones.  Perhaps I should change my shoes.  It is raining, it is January, I suppose I should be very glad it's not snowing.

It's a quiet day after a storm of activity.  Jaimie and his boyfriend came to visit on their way to Disneyland, Jonathan and his boyfriend came as well, and the house(s) were full of happy couples.

Is the cable guy always awkward, I think so.  I moved my computer to the Treehouse (tweehouse?), and am currently realizing how ridiculously internet-dependent I am.  Between that and VH1, it's pathetic, really. But it's that transition period, when the house is stripped of color and glee, and we sit drinking cheap vodka and looking at the blank walls.  That sounds much more depressing than it actually was.

Other realizations:  Los Angeles is a beautiful place, wow!  Today the sun came out and the sandbags around the french doors were bleeding rain.  I felt like running around Silverlake for the brief week we're still here: moving day slated for Saturday.
Rock of Love: Season 1
Moving from the past to present tense.  Tasks for the day: make mole, watch Rock of Love reruns, peruse list of things I should be doing, cuddle.

I am so excited about my love and I getting wed. We have been researching California domestic partnerships and the fact that gay marriage is actually a possibility is wonderful. I feel happy and lucky to be living in this time. 

Friday, January 15, 2010

Coffee! Coffee! And I'm watching the sun rise.

The most wonderful thing has happened, my girlfriend Katie proposed!. She is so amazing and beautiful, and I am in full-on gush mode, the sort of mood where one says things like "over the moon," and "ZOMG!!!11!!!"
Okay, I don't say zomg.  The over-proliferation of lolspeak....well, one could say that, like texting, it's ruining language, but, you know what, I don't care.  I'm in love.

Enter the wedding-industrial complex.  Like a shrouded figure in the night. "Hewwwooowww! I'm here to baffle you with strange must-haves, traditions, obligations, and debt.  Why hello.  Let me introduce you to my henchmen, the knot and Martha Stewart.  I'm sure you'll get along.  You're going to be spending lots of time together."

However, I think we two ladies can handle it. I am still euphoric and thrilled.

Monday, January 11, 2010

I am bearing the consequences of yesterday's manic burst.  Not in receipts and expenditures, but is having whacked my back out in moving.  So enthusiastic I get when something needs to be done.  Katie asked me why I was rushing things - I said, "Our lease starts today, it's 9 am, I'm moving things in!"  After one car load, up the winding hills to our sweet cul-de-sac, I came back, took half an ativan, and crashed out in bed next to her.

But it was not over yet.  I got up, three-ish, loaded the car again, and set off.  This time it was mostly clothes in trash bags, pillows, light enough.  The challenge was is figuring out the curtain rods - I think I broke one in the process.  Screwed in the crystal knobs we had bought for the hutch in the breakfast nook...library cards works as a screwdriver in a pinch.  As the sunset faded over Echo Park lake, the shimmering lights of downtown to clear beyond the window, I was seduced by the light and stayed.  Fiddling with what I could put away, fiddling with the shower curtain, emptying trash cans.

I love being domestic.  I think this comes from periods in my late twenties and early thirties where I either lived in crackden filthy apartments, with my parents, in the dorms, basically places that weren't mine to tend.  Since Katie and I have been living together, our dual domesticity meshes and encourages each other.  Call it nesting.  I want to cook her beautiful meals, and have our shared space be clean and full of light.  Hanging the white eyelet curtains in the living room, so that the rooftop (Mary-Poppinsish) was concealed in a lacy blur, I was happy.

When I really could not fiddle any more, I went looking for my car.  Up and down the unfamiliar streets with voices behind barred windows, barking, the afterglow of purple on the horizon, barking dogs.  I pulled the little suitcase full of plastic bags, dorky glasses on, like some sort of lost tourist.

When I finally got home, Katie answered the door in my plaid smock.  "Where were you?  We have Mrs. Porters."

Aie.  I wanted to go, it is this literary salon put on by Les Figues Press, an evening gathering of women. I lay on the couch in a stupor, wrapped in a quilt.  Worn out like a dishrag.  "Let's do it, come on."  "Ok."

So we primped and went, and it ended up well worth it.  I am really grateful to the Les Figues ladies for organizing and propagating women's writing.  I brought the poetic duo, and Katie brought an ekphrastic piece she was doing, also, for valeveil.

What I remember most, this next morning, as my bones pop and crack and I wish I had not carried quite so many boxes so enthusiastically, was the discussion of lists.  I have been working in the list format for quite some time, mostly as a humorous exercise, a fun, silly thing, but the post-sharing discussion scrutinized the form and made me see it in a more serious light. The authoritative voice that a list lends the reader, the possibility of reordering the points and it still being valid, the possibility that every list is a story, a narrative, but perhaps a non-linear one.  From Matias Viegener's 25 Random Things About Me series I remember the emphasis on on opposition of each line from the next. From the lists the zine "General Wuzhery", there is more an emphasis on building, one point to the next, variations upon the same beginning....but then a numbered line that diverts the narrative elsewhere.

The list is a form that both frees and limits.  How long can the the list be, and still be interesting.  It is a self-limiting form.  But the process of randomness eliminates the narrative demand for defined connections between each line, and opens up the structure for shock and wonder.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

The sun is rising over waco, and our new lease starts today.  I am preparing to charge.  The car is packed with books and files and miscellania.  I am burning my mouth on hot coffee, pulling the cat out of the sink, again awake way earlier then necessary, but: this I cannot explain. Why do I wake up so early?  It's an instinctual sort of cry to morning - "aiiieeeee!!!! I have things to do!"

Darling Katie, newly blond and shorn, sleeps like an angel.

Moving in pieces always has that quality of indecision.  It doesn't all go up or down at once, instead it's bits here and bits there.  K and I have had a few discussions as to what is the best method.  My preferred one is to take small things, small boxes, paintings and such, and move them by car, then when the place is somewhat cleared out, get a u-haul.  But the question of when to transfer residence completely - i.e. move the bed, computer and pets.

It's not exactly a life-threatening question, but it's affecting me lately.   The sun is rising out my window, and there will be many more sunrises out of bigger windows in the future.

I have realized that this blog's title is almost completely inappropriate to the content.  Neon and Concrete?  It was named in 2006, when I was fresh from San Francisco, where there was plenty of both, and languishing in a non-profit temp job. Now it is more like "sunshine and caffeine reflections, or, "domestic funtimes" "why being a lesbian is delightful."

Okay, that's a topic. I used to date men.  I dated many men.  While some were fine and dandy, the predominant sort, those I chose (or clung to me) for long-term relationships, were abusive, parasitic, and has substance abuse problems.  There are a few exceptions, but that is not the point.  The point is that the year and three months that Katie and I have been together has been amazingly happy and harmonious.  I fall more and more in love with her every day.

I give up on grandiose generalizations about why women are superior.  Also, because, I don't agree. Some of my best friends are men, gay men, and lovely people.  But - lesbian sex is so much better than straight sex.

Have I overshared enough?  Perhaps.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Resolution #4 is in effect.  We have found a place, a top-floor of a back house in Echo Park, with amazing views of the lake and downtown.  I am so very pleased with it.  After signing the lease, we spent a few hours cleaning it, as it was a bit dusty.  It is lovely, though.  Hardwood floors, 1930s fixtures, a wedgewood stove that we are going to have to figure out how to use.

Resolution #1 is forgotten.

Resolution #2 and #3, we'll see.

I am drinking coffee and waiting for Katie to get up.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

It's 2010 y'all!!!  And I suppose it's time for new years resolutions, although I have already failed at my first and most drastic.  New years eve involved absinthe, new gallery openings, kisses and the obligatory *secret someone* barfing out of the car window.  We won't say who.

Either way, it was jolly good fun, and now for the resolutions.  So tidy they seemed on the 31st, and now on the third so frayed.
  1. Master Cleanse:  Obvs, this lasted about a day.  The lemonade drink was not bad, but the shitstorm was unpleasant, as was the freak bitchiness that ensued between us.  K and I are usually about as cuddly as it gets, but upon eating nothing but lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne, whole personalities shifted.  I ended up deciding it might unbalance my meds, and ate a steak.
  2. Make some headway on my book: As it's the third, this has not happened yet, but here's hoping.
  3. Get fewer parking tickets.
  4. Find fabulous new apartment with my love: I am making good progress on this one.  We looked  at a nice, roomy one bedroom on sunset, near Cafe Tropical and it had the added bonus of wall-painting encouraged.  We really have not made enough trips to Home Depot, methinks. Now's the time.  This morning we're looking at a place with a study (!!!) the veritable room of one's own, also very encouraging.
That was it, I only had four.  They say (and who's they?  the intarwebz?)  Apparently that's where I get my information.  They say make the resolutions small and achievable, so that you don't feel horrible by valentine's day.