An open letter to the people in cars from the people on the bus
You're not invisible. Quit doing gross stuff.

frog and friends

Happy Halloween!
This morning, I woke up slowly, with Kissa snuggled in with me on top of the covers, SamSaki burrowed under them and resting with her belly along my leg, purring and kittening like a little maniac, and Lychee kittening and purring at the foot of the bed.

When I arrived to work, I had a little email exchange with Small Friend O.

It's a good morning.

Dream
Last night, Angelina Jolie was in town to go trick-or-treating with me. We had a wonderful time, but she won't be in town again.

Sadly, this dream was pretty much wasted on me, as she's not really my type. Figures.

What I know
It's been hard, this last stretch of time, a week, ten days, two weeks. I've got some kind of upper respiratory gurk that won't go away. I'm on antibiotics, but I'm still not feeling that great, and it's hard to tell anymore what part's physical and what part's emotional.

I've told my brother and SIL that turtle and I have split up--they weren't completely shocked, as they figured something was up when I told them I'd be coming to visit for Thanksgiving by myself. They've been their usual loving and supportive selves about the whole thing.

I've told my parents, who have been surprisingly kind and concerned. As long-time readers know, my mom's not that skilled when it comes to thinking about people other than herself, but she's actually called me a few times just to see if there's anything that I need.

I've told the Village. I know I'm in their prayers, which helps tremendously. Telling the Small Friends (or in the cases where they already knew, fielding questions) has been almost as hard as coming to the decision to split up with turtle. The Small Friends absolutely adore her and the feeling is utterly mutual. Everyone hopes that they'll continue to be part of one another's lives, but no one's pretending that nothing's going to change.

I told Small Friend H over the weekend--of all the Small Friends, she's probably closest to turtle. They share a birthday, they're both Dragons and they just recognized something in each other from the moment they met. At that first meeting, H asked of turtle, "Are you going to stay in love with my Aunt Terri?!"

When I told her that turtle and I split up, her little face just fell. "But I don't WANT you to split up!?"

I know, sweet girl. I know.

How not to impress me
Upon seeing me for the first time since turtle and I split, ask me if, now that I'm single, I'm going to lose some weight, since you think I look better when I'm thinner.

Truth be told, I weigh approximately what I weighed when turtle and I met, though my breasts have forced me to go up yet another cup size.

Seriously, people, think before you speak. Does it seem like I need another thing to feel like shit about?

No on 8 auction
A friend of mine is running an auction using one of the pieces from my shop. All proceeds go to support same-sex couples' right to marry in California. Bid here.

A note about tiedye
I've been busy building up stock at the store for the holidays--there's some cool stuff in stock, including some book covers and kid-sized aprons. A few of you have asked if I'll do custom work--the answer is yes! I can dye something you already own, or find something that you want to have dyed. I can do custom colors on whatever I have in stock, as well. Shoot me an email if you have questions.

You can see some of my recent custom work here.

Sometimes love just ain't enough*
turtle and I have split.

I figured there's no graceful way to build up to that, so there it is, right there in the first line of the post. We'd been growing apart fairly steadily for the last year and a half or so, but it took both of us a long time to acknowledge that while we love each other very much, we're not good as romantic partners.

I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that there's not the animosity this time that there was with toad. In fact, turtle and I plan to continue on as housemates, at least until she's finished with school. The transition from partner to housemate hasn't been without its challenges, but most days we're both happy with where we are, what we're doing, and where we each hope to go.

In anticipation of at least one of the questions, there's not much I really need at this point. I have really amazing friends--davi's been a wonderful sounding board for me, pronoia has given me fantabulous advice, and my friends have really gone above and beyond as I've worked through where this was going and what I want.

Anyway, I wanted you to know.

*With nods to whatever hairband was responsible for that.

Helping mamas in need
As many/most/all of my readers know, turtle and I tried to get me pregnant for a few years and we were not successful. Because I am who I am, while we were trying, I was also squirreling away clothing and toys and diapers and all manner of things for the tadpoles.

Every year, the women at the MDC boards run a Holiday Helpers program, which is exactly what it sounds like. People who have items/money to give have the opportunity to look through lists posted by mamas in need and we do what we can to give those families happy holidays.

I have a lot of stuff that could do other people some good. What I don't have is money for postage. There's a "postage fairy" at MDC that can help, but I thought I'd appeal to my readers for help on this. If you have a little cash to spare and would like to help me get this stuff to people who can use it, please PayPal me at dyetyke at gmail dot com. In the notes area, please indicate that it's for postage.

Thank you in advance.

ETA: If there's a good response and I don't use all of the money for shipping, I will donate the balance to my church's food shelf, which is open to the public and does not require proof of need.

Swiped from magdalen
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now (even if we don't speak often or ever), please post a comment with a completely made up, fictional memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - but it has to be fake.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your blog and see what your friends come up with.

Why Roseanne Cash should Run for VP
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081027/cash

I'd like to formally submit myself to replace Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket. I feel confident that John McCain will see that the very attributes he desired in his VP choice can be met, and even exceeded in some areas, by me. For your consideration, my big, fat résumé:


Why I'd Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin Presidential Election 2008

Rosanne Cash: I've got the ethics, the family values, a passport and, like the Alaska governor, am perfectly aligned with God's will.

1. Focus on the Family

I am the mother of five children, just like Governor Palin. I have known the demands of managing a full-time career and motherhood at the same time. I have juggled a breast pump and a BlackBerry, and I know when to put the BlackBerry down. (To be perfectly honest, I did once send a text to the baby and tried to nurse my bass player. You learn from your mistakes.)

2. Reproductive Issues

I also believe that a teenager's pregnancy is a "private family matter." In fact, I believe that every woman's pregnancy is a "private, family matter." (I bet the GOP never thought of making that leap!)

3. Church and State

Like the Governor, I now also believe that my will is perfectly aligned with God's will. When Governor Palin said that it was God's will for the Alaska pipeline to be built and asked for people to pray for that to happen, I was really inspired by her confidence in the absolute, seamless integration of her will and God's will. I have begun practicing this kind of supreme confidence on a smaller scale, but I am sure that I can quickly move to national issues. Starting with the sartorial, I know that it is God's will that I have the entire Chanel collection for the fall season, including those adorable high-heeled booties that were all over the runway shows.

(A couple things I'm still having trouble with regarding the will of God: I knew it was God's will that I win the Grammy in 2007 for my last record, but Bob Dylan won. This is clearly the work of Satan, but shouldn't my will/God's will have been strong enough to override that? And this Alaska pipeline--if it is God's will to have the pipeline built, then why isn't it built already? On a related topic, I don't own a single piece of Chanel.)

4. Environment

Along with Governor Palin, I don't believe that humans cause climate change.

(Okay, that is a bold-faced lie, but I've been paying really close attention to the campaign stump speeches, and I feel certain I am allowed a generous allotment of bold-faced lies.)

5. Foreign policy

Here's where I really shine. Governor Palin got her first passport in 2007. I got my first passport in 1970, when the Governor was only 6 years old! Not only do I have a passport, I have actually been outside of the United States, dozens of times. I have had relationships and conversations with real foreigners, in their own countries, in restaurants, shops, flea markets, museums, nightclubs, spas, hotels, all modes of public transportation, and even in their own homes. My foreign policies are fair, inclusive and sensitive to cultural differences. I don't ask for English Breakfast tea when I'm in France. I never call foreign currency "funny money" (even though it does look funny.) I don't shout at people to help them better understand English and, finally, I act on God's will when in Paris by going to Chanel, and to all the great boutiques, which is just an extension of God's will, as you can surely extrapolate by the above explanation of my will/God's will.

I know Governor Palin has one distinct advantage in living so close to Russia, in that she can keep a close eye on nefarious activity across the Bering Strait, but I, too, live very close to a foreign country. Canada is less than 400 miles from my home in New York City, and you never know when it might become necessary to invade a sovereign nation that has not attacked us, as we learned the hard way. Not only that, I have a girlfriend in Austin, Texas, whom I'm going to ask to keep an eye on Mexico.

6. Legal Experience

My understanding of the law is extensive, but here are a couple of cogent points: a photographer who thought I had used his photograph of me without his permission sued me. (I absolutely didn't use the photo without permission. When McCain does his meticulous vetting and background checks on me, I will explain the whole story. It was all a big misunderstanding.)

More importantly, I renegotiated my contract with the Sony Corporation in 1987. That was huge. You should have seen my legal bills. I negotiated an all-new contract with Capitol Records in 1995 and that, too, was an exhausting, contentious, but ultimately lucrative enterprise. Entertainment law is a blood sport, people. (Speaking of blood sports, I have to give it up to the Governor on the hunting issue. I have never shot a wolf from a helicopter, but I have thrown my cat off the bed. Hundreds of times.)

7. Higher Education

Governor Palin went to five different colleges to get her BS in journalism, but none of the colleges had entry requirements, whereas I went to a university that required a trigonometry credit before they would admit me. I had to take it the summer before school started. I don't remember a frigging thing, but I got a B. The other disparities in education are too numerous to mention, but suffice to say that I bet she never met Lee Strasberg.

It is true that I have no background in constitutional law, but I have read the Constitution, except for the amendments that don't have anything to do with me, and I watched the entire John Adams mini-series on HBO. Twice.

8. Ethics

I really think this whole investigation into the firing of the top state law enforcement official in Alaska, who wouldn't fire the state trooper who was mean to the Governor's sister, is just overblown. I once fired my assistant for making a pass at my husband, so I can totally understand this! And I would have fired an assistant who made a pass at my sister's husband, too. I love my sisters. Governor Palin loves her sister. People need to get over it.

But speaking of family, I've also had my fill of no-good boyfriends to my daughters, and boy, do I sympathize with the Governor over this Levi fellow and his MySpace page, with the guns and the cursing. My husband once took a broken chair out into the street to chase away a no-good boyfriend of my oldest daughter, and we didn't see the likes of him anymore. I have a zero-tolerance policy for miscreant youth, and I know I could help the Governor sort out her obviously conflicted feelings about setting limits for teenagers, just for her own peace of mind.

9. Iraq

The Governor says she hasn't "focused" on the war in Iraq, but I think she's just joshing us. No person in an executive position in the government of the United States could be so lazy that they would not familiarize themselves with every angle of what is potentially the greatest American debacle since the nation was founded, including all the terminology, like "Bush Doctrine."

If she's not kidding, then I respectfully submit the hate mail I received in 2003, at the beginning of the war, which came after my press conference with Musicians United To Win Without War, as proof of my "focus."

10. Executive Ability

Governor Palin was the mayor of a real town of 5,000 people. I have never been mayor of anything, but I have performed for crowds bigger than the population of Wasilla, Alaska, and I can tell you it's no picnic getting the monitors just right, working with cranky and egotistical musicians, changing clothes in dirty dressing rooms and eating bad backstage food, handling the hecklers and technical problems during a show, and then getting on the bus to go somewhere else and do it all over again the next night. Also, my last record sold about the population of Wasilla times forty, and they all seemed to like it. But dealing with the public is really difficult and they all have opinions about you, which are usually all wrong, so I've developed a thick skin, another requirement for life as the VP. Lastly, and the importance of this cannot be over-emphasized, the guy's head on the tail of the Alaska Airlines planes looks like my dad.

11. Maverick personality

Finally, there is one subject in which I find I am even more conservative than the Governor, and that is in the area of neo-natal responsibility. The Governor was eight months pregnant and in Texas to give a speech, when her water broke. She reportedly made her speech and then traveled eleven hours, dripping amniotic fluid, bypassing Seattle and Anchorage (major cities with world-class hospitals) to travel to a small hospital in Wasilla that had no neo-natal intensive care unit, and gave birth there. Call me a wimp, call me insecure, but you had better also call me a maverick, because I would have said "Damn the schedule! Damn the speech and the airline ticket!" If this had been me, as soon as my water broke, I'd be at the closest hospital and that baby would have been born in Texas! Just like my mom!

In summation, I present myself to the GOP as a woman, and I repeat, woman, who has held a passport for thirty-eight years, a lip gloss-wearing soccer-volleyball-softball-gymnastics mom of five, who can carry a six-pack home to her husband like nobody's business, whose will is firmly aligned with God's will, a neo-natal conservative and legally savvy public figure, a border-watching, trigonometry-credited, breastfeeding, BlackBerry-tapping, cat-throwing maverick whose daughters are out of their teens, therefore immune to teenage pregnancy (although this is a private, family matter), and whose dad's head (or an eerie facsimile) adorns a state airline.

I could offer more to recommend me to the job of vice president, but one last special quality that I share with Governor Palin is the fact that I also have a husband who wants his state to secede from the Union. Ever since the 2000 election, my husband has been all for the secession of not only New York, but the island of Manhattan! And I have to tell you, if Sarah Palin becomes vice president of the United States, he says we have to personally secede from the whole country. So please, people, write me in on the ballot in November, or write me in New Zealand, where I'll be making my new home.

Rosanne Cash is a singer-songwriter, and even though she has met Presidents Bush and Clinton (who appeared to note her décolletage with great appreciation), the ambassador to the Czech Republic and George Stevens, who produces the Kennedy Center Honors awards show, she does not think her knowledge of world leaders should be held against her, because her experience in Washington is limited to three days during the Million Mom March.

How outlawing second-parent adoption hurts Michigan
My mom’s first cousin is this totally cool guy who I’ve loved since I was a teeny little amphibian. His sibs tease him that he’s the “golden boy.” He’s the first-born, he got awesome grades and his whole life he wanted nothing more than he wanted to be a priest. He even had an altar in the basement where he’d practice when he was a little boy.

When he was in Catholic seminary, he realized that he’s gay. He finished the program but couldn’t in good conscience go on to be ordained, because Catholics don’t ordain the openly gay crowd and he just couldn’t lie about who he is. He met a fabulous man. On their 25th anniversary, they had a commitment ceremony at their Episcopal church.

Sometime around their 30-year mark, they adopted a small boy out of the foster care system. They’d been a licensed foster family for a good long time and had kids in and out of their lives, but J was special and they adopted him. Also sometime around the 30-year-mark, my cousin decided to go to seminary again, this time through the Episcopal church. He and his partner had been members for years and he was finally ready to move ahead with his life-long dream.

He was ordained as a priest a bit less than a year ago, now. The week of his ordination (which was on a Saturday), a social worker showed up at their house. The phones were down due to ice storms in the area and she desperately needed to contact them: A woman had just given birth to preemie twins and the social worker wanted to know if Cousin and his partner wanted the kids. They didn’t hesitate even for a moment. Boy Twin came home on Thursday, Girl Twin came home on Friday, on Saturday Cousin was ordained and on Sunday, the roads were impassable due to another storm and Cousin said his first mass in their living room, surrounded by family, friends and their children.

They’re closing in on finalizing the twins’ adoptions, now.

Last summer, the Bishop of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was tragically killed. The search committee has contacted Cousin and asked him to join the search process as a candidate, but he’s declined, because the laws in Michigan don’t allow same-sex parents to adopt and he and his partner won’t risk their family, even for something as wonderful as a call to be Bishop.

And for that, I grieve.

ETA: I never actually got around to talking about all of the ways this hurts the state in which I live. I ran out of steam! Sorry about that. Extrapolate, will you?

Mleh
I hab a code.

Boneless kitten chases tail
Do you remember the Far Side cartoon about the boneless chicken ranch? I swear, SamSaki's the boneless kitten. The other night I was photographing tiedye for the etsy store, so I'd pulled one of the dining room chairs out a ways from the table. I turned around and she was balanced on the one-inch back of the chair, chasing her tail through the chair. Hilarious!

Update from here
I've been doing a lot of tiedye as I cope with fall malaise and related bs. Most recently, I whipped this up for Small Friend H's birthday.

Other than that, there's been a fair amount of sleeping in between running around like a crazy person. If you've not done so, yet, please swing by Name That Mama to congratulate Brooke, Emily and Sanna on the birth of Karl Robert.

Scenes of feline bliss
Mason in the top of the cat tower in the sun room.



SamSaki asleep on the back of the big purple couch.


Sevyn being his regal self.


Kissa sacked out on frog.


Lorenzo grooving on turtle singing "Senor Lorenzo was a cat, on a high red roof Lorenzo sat..." and then getting distracted by the bird action in the backyard.

In which Small Friend H consults on my next tatt
This morning when I walked into church, the first person I saw was Small Friend H, who ran straight to me and jumped into my arms. I'll tell you, THAT is evangelism of the best, purest sort. I was just as happy to see her as she was to see me.

Small Friend O had Official Responsibilities during the service, so I didn't see as much of her, but I will admit to making a few faces at her across the congregation.

Anyway, H was snuggled up with me and had her arm around my neck--I have a mole that she and O dislike greatly. Her hand hit it, she commented on it, then looked at the tatt on my neck, noting that she'd seen THAT one before and did I have any new ones?

"Well, I'm going to get a new tattoo for Christmas this year."

"That's so cool! Are you getting a Christmas tree?"

"No, I'm not..."

"Oh! I know what you should get! On your left arm, you should get a big H and on your right, a big O!"

Like mother, like cat
Mason's okay--just needed antidepressants. He'll have a follow-up x-ray in a week to make sure that nothing structural is causing his urinary angst, but it's likely that stress is what's making him unable to pee easily. Poor little mancat.