LesbianDad

Since I’m not doing one this year (alas), I’m acting as directional signpost. I’m hoping that Blogging for LGBT Families Day may take up some of the Mother’s Day thematic slack for me when I’m back to my regularly scheduled publication pracitces. (By the way, Vikki, does this count? A non-post post?)

What I want to do here is clue you into something from Harlyn Aizley: Who’s Your Mama? Very much worth reading, as is everything she writes, I’m sure including shopping lists. It’s first appearing at the Beacon Broadside, a blog they run for their authors. Harlyn, of Are You My Mothers? fame, was editor for Confessions of the Other Mother, which Beacon published. (Her other book, Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor, was published by Alyson Books).

Anybody else write something you like, on the occasion of Mother’s Day? Let us know, in the comments.

Now back to work.

[It’s a month o’ photos; no prose. Words froze due to work woes. Come June, back it flows.]

Chuck’s got nothin’ on her. Okay, so maybe he does, but he has a lot more practice. At least she can accurately identify most of the instruments pictured in the book. Try that, Chuck!

It’s a familiar routine, though. She’s quite well aware how un/underrepresented our family structure and her Baba’s gender are, in most of the media we consume. And she’s also learning first-hand how you re-write whatever it is you’re reading, so as to push yourself from margin to center. Her future English teachers are hereby forewarned: free thinkin’ maverick chick, coming down the pike!

This archival pic’s from last fall’s Halloween Block Party. She’s chilling, you know, in between terrorizing people with her fierce dragon breath or what have you. Slightly (but not that much) more revealing angle of fierce dragon action here. O, what I could do with a costume like that, in the right venue.

Now don’t get me started on my brush with lesbian celebrity I had at that cafe one time in the mid-1990s. Otherwise it would begin to smack of a post, and all this text is in that light colored font, just to remind me that I’m not actually writing a post, but a modest caption. But remind me sometime. I will let on that it includes none other than k.d. lang, and a corn cob. Umm hum, yup.

[It’s a photo a day for the rest of this month, whilst under a work-induced prose post moratorium. Back in full (wordy) gear Monday, June 2; my thanks for your kind indulgence.]

[Photo-a-go-go for the rest of this month, whilst on a prose post crash diet.
Logophiles are warmly welcomed to return Monday, June 2.]

Lil’ monkey blazes through the sound barrier. Training wheels just out of sight. But not out of mind.

A picture better be worth a thousand words, because that’s looking like all I’ll have time to post over the next several weeks. Pictures, I mean, rather than a thousand words. A month of pictures only, rather than the usual LD mix of words and images. I’ve got a cavalcade of deadlines in my work life this month, whether the work is pro, semi-pro, or amateur. And since this blog does not put the tofu on the table, it has to take the hit when the going gets gnarly.

Hey, don’t blame me, blame Looky, Daddy! He gave me the idea.

The month-long word diet will hurt me more than it will hurt you (sad, I fear, but true). I’ll be looking up from my work, peering over my shoulder periodically at the small herd of posts crowded outside my window, fogging it up with their eager breath. Among those waiting patiently wait ’til June are:

• A report back on the Reader Survey. You people (well, not all of you, but the 5-10% of you who did it) have been so helpful!
• “Waving not drowning,” our write-in blog post title, ever so evocative of the beloved’s and my parental condition now that we’ve staggered past the one year mark with the lil’ peanut. Or should I say dog-paddled past it.
• The two remaining in the nearly forgotten Ten lists of ten series I had going (You thought I forgot, eh? Well, list #9 is working itself up to be Ten ways the second kid knocked us for a loop, man. Therein explaining the precipitous drop-off of those lists around about when the impact hit).
• Some musing (coughing, choking, breathing slowly in through the nose & out through the mouth) about Princess Mania in particular, and Female Trouble in general.
• A little long overdue something about how (and why) I am indeed not chopped liver for the boychild, (see lamentation of long ago, re: second bananna status w/ the girlchild). This experience has caused much chat-worthy reflection and I can’t wait to hear what you all think about the whole business.

And yet. For the Greater Good in my household, I need to go on a strict post diet. Images with captions only! I can do it! I’ll pledge to keep the interest level up at least, by swapping the pictures daily during the week (Sundays off). By my calculations this means nineteen more pictures after today (twenty-two if you count the Weekend bonus shots). I’ll also dangle the fun tidbit that someone, somewhere, is at least contemplating a redesign of LD, and may just get it done in time for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 1. You know, or not. One never knows with these things. But, as I tell myself regularly about o so much, Hope Springs Internal.

Now, for those of youse who prefer the words to the pictures here, won’t you please come back as of June? Monday, June 2nd, is the Third Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day, spearheaded by Dana Rudolph at Mombian, and sponsored this year by the Family Equality Council. It’ll be an auspicious day for the word drought to break.

Speed demon, Berkeley, CA.