20, and holding

Where, oh where, has all the time gone? It certainly doesn’t seem like 20 years ago I was walking across the stage of the Myriad Convention Center in Oklahoma City accepting my high school diploma. It was funny, then, that I was even there. I thought I’d never make it. I’m not saying I was dumb, but my attendance of that last year of school was a little more than questionable. And back then, I never imagined I’d be where I am today.

Going to my 20 year high school reunion wasn’t something I had any interest in doing. I didn’t have (m)any friends in high school. Certainly not by my senior year. Most of the friends that I had in high school graduated the year before me, or went to a new high school that opened up a few miles away the summer of my senior year. Imagine how bad that sucked, a new high school absorbing half of a junior class, separating friends that had gone to school together for four years, making them rivals.

It goes without saying that Jimmy was my absolute best friend in high school. I think I may have blogged about him in the past. I met him my junior year, while he was a senior, and under the strangest of circumstances we became extremely close, best friends in a very short amount of time. To this day I still consider him one of the few people that I could count on in any sort of emergency, or simple vengeance plan. He is my brother, my sexless soul-mate, my confidant, my all. People often wonder(ed) if there was anything between the two of us, but the thought of any such suggestion makes me want to hurl a bit. And I believe if you’d ask him, he’d feel like hurling too.

I met Teresa (no “h”) in 7th grade at Highland West Middle School. This was the pre-gay, and I had a huge, ginormous crush on Teresa. She was everything I wanted to be…smart, beautiful, intelligent beyond her years, more stylish than Molly Ringwald. She was the entire package. I’m thankful, now, that she repeatedly turned down my advances, and instead became one of my closest friends. She helped me through a lot of emotional shit my senior year of high school. I stayed in contact with her for a few years after high school, after I had moved to Austin. She had moved on to the glamorous life of Europe, while I moved on to scraping cow shit off the bottom of my boot. I lost track of her decades ago, but through the magic of Facebook, I reconnected with her a couple of years ago. She sent me an email last week asking if I was coming to the reunion, cuz she wanted to hug me and drink with me. My “undecided” immediately turned to a yes.

There are a few others I’m hoping to see while I’m “home” this week. Jim C., I met in fifth grade. We were better friends in 5th through 8th grade and lost track of each other afterwards. He also contacted me a few years ago (via MyFace) and said hello and that we have A LOT of stuff in common still today (IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!).

I doubt she’ll be there, but another mutual friend of Teresa’s and I, Kristi, was very influential in my life at that time too. While I was going through “the gay” thing, she was going through her own “not gay” things. I lost track of Kristi after I left Oklahoma and, oddly enough, her sister-in-law found me on MyFace a few years ago and put us in touch. I talked to her once on the phone for about an hour, but other than that I’ve not been able to talk to, or keep in touch with her again. I hope to see her…but.

And, sadly (or is it?), that’s it. Those are the people I look forward to seeing the most this week. Like I said, I didn’t have (m)any friends. These were the ones who didn’t bat an eyelash when “the gay” came up. These are the ones that stood by me when everyone else called me names or hurled insults at me. 20 years have come and gone and I still have a little bit of anxiety about walking back through the halls of my former high school. But the one thing that I feel absolutely shitastic about is that I’ve seen MANY pictures of the people I went to highschool with on the message boards of how they look today, and they look like ass on wheat, while I still look fabulous. I can’t wait.

Gay Marriage: Get used to it

I'd like all the queers out there to please go check out this amazing post by my buddy over at Daddy Files. It's an amazing post from a straight ally in a fight for equal rights and marriage equality. I think it's important to give this man mad props for speaking out for the rights of all human beings. I want everyone to remember, when they're feeling frustrated about the pace of change happening right now that we're not alone in this fight.

Michael Jackson touched me

I have to admit that I was touched by the passing of Michael Jackson yesterday. I was never really a fan of much of his music, but I recognized his talent. I’m having a hard time reconciling the public outpouring of sympathy and sadness right now. For years the American public has done nothing but ridicule and vilify Michael Jackson. The amount of “shock and sadness” being shown doesn’t seem to match the treatment he’s received from the public over the last 6 year. While I’ve never been a “fan” of Michael Jackson’s music, I’ve also never made any assumptions about the man throughout his life.


When I was 12 I was fortunate to see Michael Jackson perform in Dallas at the Jackson' Victory tour. My oldest sister, Dana, had gotten 4 tickets to the show and gave one of them to me and drove me down to Dallas to see him. I was awwwwwwwed by the spectacle of the show.


RIP Michael. I hope you're finally able to find some peace. I also hope your children are able to have some peace.

I'm adequately prepared for hell

Folks, it's hotter than shit outside. Or, as my friend David said the other day, "It's hotter than a pygmy goats pussy in a pepper patch". I can't verify that, cuz I've never had a pygmy goat's pussy, but IT'S FUCKING HOT.

I did some screen caps on my idiot box the other night. This first cap is a monthly calendar of the temps, so far, for June. The temps in red indicate "record breaking heat". Keep in mind, these are "actual" temps, not "perceived" temps. Apparently the "perceived" temp, or the "feels like" temp is a good 10 degrees hotter than the actual temps. 105 isn't a temperature. 105 is Fairy Princess Holly's weight!

It's so hot outside that while I was walking home from the park yesterday morning with Adrian, at 1030 am, my flip-flop melted and stuck to the sidewalk. I'm not making that up. IT WAS 102 DEGREES at 1030 AM yesterday. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? It was so hot yesterday that when I got home from school at 10 pm it was STILL 97 degrees. BUT THE HEAT WAVE ISN'T OVER! They projected the temps today to be even higher.

Naturally I've been doing everything possible to keep cool. I've been taking the kids to the park at 3 in the morning so they don't over-heat. We've been in (and out of) the pool by 10 in the morning. We've been taking naps during the hottest part of the day (basically 9am to 11 pm). I've been going through ice so fast that the ice maker in my fridge can't keep up. I've been having to supplement with bags of ice from the market. While I know it's passe to have ceiling fans in your house, I have them in every bedroom and they are all on high blast. In addition to them, I've got "Vornado" fans (2 of them) in my 40 square foot living room blowing the air around. And, seriously, as long as you're sitting or laying in the path of the breeze, it helps.

My clothes have been completely saturated for a week now. I fear I'll be getting a fungal infection from my damp balls, because I just can't seem to stop sweating. BUT...there's a light at the end of this very hot tunnel.

When I opened last month's electric bill I noticed I had started using a bit more electricity from running my a/c a little more. I immediately walked over to my handy dandy programmable thermostat and reset all the "wake, leave, return, sleep" times and temps. I set the morning "leave" temp at 80 degrees and the "sleep" temps at 80 degrees. The wake and return temps were set to 75. I noticed today that I was actually chilly in the house and had to put some long pants on. Yes. When it's 106 (actual) degrees (at 2 pm)...111 (perceived degrees), 80 degrees is actually COLD! That's the good news! I'VE ACCLIMATED TO HELL!!!

GOD how I'm looking forward to the cold front next Wednesday!

Happy gay Fathers Day

I've posted a shout out to all my gay parenting friends I've met over the intertubes over at my OTHER BLOG! Hope you take a second to check it out...even if you're not gay...or a parent!

I'm #1

I'm not normally a paranoid person. But...

The other day I was driving around town with Adrian. He was upset at me for some reason. I'm sure it was something reasonable, like I didn't take him to Sonic, or bowling, or swimming, or Schlitterbahn, or some equally heinous act. I glanced over at him as we were driving down the highway and I swear I thought I saw him giving me the finger. But, surely I was mistaken, right? I mean, I don't use the finger. Jed doesn't use the finger. Nobody we know, really, uses the finger. I thought it MUST be the heat. The heat was making me see things.

Today we were driving around again. I looked over at him and he shot me NOT ONE, but TWO fingers. Yes, my son gave me the double-barrel finger-bang. I smiled at him and said, "Ummmm, sweety! What's that all about?" He let me know that some little girl in his class taught him how to do it. So I asked it what it meant. He replied, "It means you go to time-out".



I'm so proud.

(F)reddy got laid

Holy buckets of lead, Batman. When was the last time I posted??? Writer’s block? No, not so much. I’d like to begin by thanking each of my adoring fans (you know who you ams) for checking in on me to make sure I was still alive. My twitter and FaceSpace activity verify I am! Let’s catch up, shall we?

Since we last spoke, I got laid off. Don’t cry for me Argentina. I say this more as a point of fact more than a cry for sympathy. I was told by my mother decades ago that if I wanted sympathy to grab a dictionary and I could find it between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’. I have nothing bad to say about my former employer of 11 years. It was a great experience, I met lots of people that I consider to be “family”, and it was a good run. I considered the loss of a job an opportunity to catch up on all the things I had neglected in my life since Adrian came to live with us. To say it’s impossible to keep up with your house, school, relationship with your finger puppet, and raising happy, well adjusted children while working a full-time job is an understatement. I’ve, seriously, seized the opportunity to reacquaint myself with life.

My totally amazing sister, Dana, came down to San Antonio a few weeks ago for a business trip. While she was living in Oklahoma I got to see her quite often. Since she moved to D.C., I’ve gotten to see her exactly once (until dinner in San Antonio!). And we did it up Guy Fieri style. I’ve had this fantasy of taking over Guy’s job on “Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives” since I started watching the show. I’ve settled on following in his footsteps and visiting the restaurants he’s featured on his show. So we took my sister to the Tip Top Café and had the biggest, most delicious chicken fried steak I’ve ever eaten in my life.

We’ve spent some time in Galveston visiting family too. Just this last weekend we went down for a “just for the heck of it” trip and had a great time with the fam. We spent an afternoon at the beach picking up seashells and chasing waves and teaching Adrian to swim in Aunt Jan’s pool. He was a regular Michael Phelps…as soon as he grabbed on to the “fun noodle”! Jed and I even drove around looking at some houses.

I wrapped up this spring semester at school with 3-A’s and a B. It was a brutal semester, and while I mourn the loss of my 4.0, I’m proud of my 3.9. I earned it! I’ll be posting a blog in the next few days of some of the experiences, and assignments, from the semester that I didn’t want to write about during the semester (for fear of alienating peeps!).

As mentioned, I’ve been catching up on neglected household chores. Pre-layoff, I hadn’t mowed the yard in several months. The neighbors were starting to stare disapprovingly. Pre-Adrian, Jed and I had busted knuckles trying to fix up the house, replace plumbing, foundation, put color on walls, etc. I had started a remodel on the bathroom…and promptly stopped…midway…the day Adrian came to live with us. Our bedroom had become the lone room in the house that never got any TLC. So I’ve started in the bathroom again (anticipated completion early next week!) and FINALLY got some color up on the walls in the bedroom. I’ve become quite the Susie-homemaker (cleaning, cooking, etc.) since I’ve been home. I’m not quite sure I’m up to being a gay-at-home dad forever, but for the time being it hasn’t been too bad!

I’ve ALSO become quite the homeroom parent for ALL the schools the boys go to. In part because Adrian has been “having problems” with his teacher again and I’ve been wanting to get into his class to see what exactly the interactions between him and his teacher are like. I’ve also been wanting to get into Nathan’s school and see what and how they’re working on things with him.

That’s what I’ve got for today, folks. Nothing witty. Nothing insightful. I just wanted to let you know that I’m still around. While I’ve not been “working”, I’ve been busier than I was when I had a full-time job. I’m not actively looking for anything right now, but I don’t know how long I want to do this home gig. Summer is coming up…QUICKLY…and I’m looking forward to spending quality time with the boys doing fun things. BUT, I’m SURE after spending three months at home with them I’ll be more than ready for them to go back to school and get a job myself! We’ll see. Hope you’ve each been well, and thanks again for checking in on me. It warms me to know that there are so many people that read this blog and cared enough to make sure Jed hadn’t put antifreeze in my Kool-Aid.