It's Official . . .

Tonight, my parents and my brother came over to Susan's place for dinner (for the first time ever) and we informed them that we're engaged to be married. I actually managed to announce my engagement in the newspaper (via a letter to the editor opposing Proposition 8) before telling my parents, which is definitely not the order things are supposed to happen in. But it didn't matter, because it wasn't my parents' local newspaper (or mine - it was Susan's local newspaper instead) so they didn't see it. I have since submitted a similar letter to the editor of my parents' and my local newspaper, but that one hasn't been published yet.

I told them, "Susan has something to say to you, but I don't think she's going to say it, so I guess it's up to me . . . This [the ring on my finger] is what we invited you over to see. It's an engagement ring." Then they both congratulated both of us.

Susan's dog Boston barked her head off at my father and my brother (Boston seems to be terrified of men and not of women), but my father was determined to make friends with her, and Susan says he made more progress with Boston than any other male guests have done. Susan's other dog, Taco, somehow managed to politely refrain from stinking very much at all; normally he releases toxic gas nearly constantly that causes anyone within 50 yards of him to keel over, holding their noses and gasping for oxygen. So both the dogs behaved as well as could be reasonably hoped for.

I showed my parents my gardening efforts in the back yard and asked them to help me identify the weeds. Their first reaction was, "What garden? All I see is a lawn," because currently there is so much unwanted grass growing up between my seedlings that the first thing you see is the grass. Unfortunately, it's frequently impossible to pull out the grass without accidentally uprooting my seedlings along with it. Anyway, the desirable seedlings currently in the yard seem to include California golden poppies, something that's probably yarrow, and one tiny lupine seedling that I just discovered this weekend. I'm not sure yet which kind of lupine it is, since I scattered seeds of both Lupinus excubitus (which was part of a seed mix) and Lupinus albifrons var. collinus (which I bought individually). I'd prefer the latter, but I'll be thrilled to have either one, because I'm crazy about lupines. The undesirable seedlings include grasses, dandelions, and large-fruited amaranth. And there's one mysterious kind of seedling that's coming up in various places throughout the yard that doesn't look like anything I planted and doesn't look like any common weeds, but does look very much like a native checkermallow species (Sidalcea malviflora) that I'd love to have, yet it seems too much to hope for such a nice native species just volunteering here.

Susan made tarragon chicken with baby red potatoes and white corn on the cob, and brownies for dessert. We ate dinner with my engagement corn boats and engagement corn holders. (I'm going to call them that forever, just because Susan happened to buy them later on the same day she proposed to me.) We also watched the Angels' playoff game, which has gone into extra innings, and if the Angels lose it, they're eliminated from the playoffs. Susan's team, the Cubs, was already eliminated from the playoffs yesterday, in a three-game sweep. The Angels are my team, and they've already lost their first two playoff games. And they're the visiting team now, so extra innings put them at a huge disadvantage. I keep telling them to win this one for me, but if they're going to, they're certainly taking their time about it. It's now the 12th inning!

And . . . the Angels just scored! They're in the lead! They're trying hard not to be eliminated from the playoffs on the same day I announced my engagement! And . . . two outs in the bottom of the 12th . . . and . . . the Angels won!!!

Mood: thrilled
Music: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Stardust

Stardust seems to have resumed being litter-trained now. I'm not terribly sure what brought this about, though. Buying the cat tree didn't cure her, at least not immediately, and I never did get around to buying Feliway. I did try buying a cheaper variation of Feliway that uses "simulated" feline pheromones instead of real ones, but the simulation didn't seem to be good enough to fool Stardust, because that didn't cure her immediately either. Then I happened to catch her in the act of peeing on the carpet, and ran to fill a glass of water, and attempted to pour it on her. I mostly missed, but I got a bit of her tail wet. This was probably not really a good idea at all, because punishing a cat who's engaging in stressed behaviors is just likely to make it all the more stressed. Nonetheless, later that same evening I caught her in the act of actually peeing in her very own litter box, for the first time in over a month. I then ran to give her canned cat food immediately. That was about a week ago, and I've resumed leaving her unsupervised in my bedroom ever since then, and as far as I can tell, she's been behaving perfectly ever since. I guess B. F. Skinner was right after all!

Well, either him or my decision to drug her with catnip. I'm not generally a big fan of giving cats massive quantities of catnip, so I'd previously only offered her very rare and very brief exposures to small amounts of it. But since the vet suggested that if nothing else resolved her Incontinent by Choice issues, he might prescribe anti-anxiety drugs to her, I concluded that she was sufficiently in need of being drugged that it made sense to try just giving her massive doses of ordinary catnip. Large doses of catnip actually seem to affect her less than the smaller doses, but maybe giving her more frequent doses has some sort of calming effect. I hope so.

Meanwhile, she's getting a little more comfortable with the cat tree, but she's still a little afraid of it. She climbs on it, plays with the toys dangling from it, and uses it as a scratching post, but she doesn't sleep on it or even relax on it for more than a minute or two. She sleeps under it constantly, but never on it. She also still doesn't usually venture up to the higher levels of it. I think the higher levels are just too narrow for her; she can squeeze either under or into the tunnel on top, but neither is really very easy for her, because she's a little too large to fit comfortably.

But with the help of catnip and toys, I persuaded her to pose for pictures on the parts of the tree she's most comfortable on.



( Six more pictures! )

Mood: tired
Music: silence

Pee on My Bed, and I'll Buy You a Castle

My cat, Stardust, who is two and a half years old and had never once in her entire life peed anywhere other than in her litter box until that vet appointment July 30th scared her out of her wits and caused her to pee in my car, has since taken to peeing everywhere other than her litter box. She first did it (other than for the vet appointment itself) on August 13th, and hasn't stopped since. She pees on my carpet, she pees on my bed, she pees anywhere and everywhere other than her litter box.

I've already taken her back to the vet to check for any medical problems that might cause this. She obligingly did not pee in my car for this second vet visit, and she obligingly did pee on command for the urinalysis test. But the urinalysis results showed that there's nothing wrong with her. She has no bacteria in her urine, no crystals in her urine, no sign whatsoever of the slightest medical problem. She's merely, shall we say, Incontinent by Choice.

Her kitty litter and her food were both the same brands she's had for ages, and her litter box was plenty clean. The vet wanted to know what stresses she might be feeling that could drive her to "express herself" in this way. I came up with nothing at all other than boredom. It would make a great deal more sense if she started behaving this way after being moved to a new household, having to share her home with Susan's two dogs and two tanks of fish and a temporary hamster. That's the sort of situation that often leads cats to behave this way. But I haven't moved yet! Stardust hasn't been anywhere near the dogs in something like six months. She's living in the exact same place she's lived since she was eight weeks old. Nothing has happened that should have upset her in any way, unless it's the fact that I leave her alone for eight hours a day on weekdays and then I leave her alone all weekend too.

It was unclear what I could do to fix this, since she already had ten million toys (not that she seemed to take much interest in any of them, most of the time). Bringing her with me to Susan's house every weekend would mean subjecting her to hour-long car rides, dogs, and regular uprootings from her territory, while running a high risk that she might pee in my car again, or pee all over Susan's duplex. And Susan can't easily come here for the weekend instead, because of her dogs. But we certainly didn't want to stop seeing each other because of our pets! So I tried all the standard approaches, like pouring cat pee enzyme cleaners all over everything and replacing her kitty litter with Cat Attract litter. Stardust was distinctly unimpressed. She showed no attraction whatsoever to the Cat Attract litter, and continued peeing anywhere and everywhere other than the litter box.

The vet mentioned that indoor-only cats seem to do this more than indoor-outdoor cats, and that turning them into indoor-outdoor cats usually solves the problem. But I'd have to get her some extra vaccinations to make her an indoor-outdoor cat, and then she'd have the vastly shorter life expectancy of an indoor-outdoor cat - and anyway, she's been indoor-only for so much of her life that she's now utterly terrified of the outdoors. If I take her outside, she just huddles up next to the door and mews plaintively at me until I let her back in.

My mother said that various pet-training shows she watches on TV have resolved the behavior problems of indoor-only cats by presenting the cats with elaborate cat trees to alleviate their boredom. So an elaborate cat tree is what Stardust now has. I found a huge cat tree unusually cheap ($83) on eBay, which arrived today, and I spent this evening assembling it. I also tied a bunch of cat toys (purchased separately, bot from eBay) to it with twine. It's supposed to go all the way to the ceiling, but currently it doesn't because there are some minor issues with incorrect screw sizes at the very top of the tree. For the most part, though, it's functional. Stardust is not quite sure yet what to make of it. She's a great big fluffy 12-pound cat, and she seems not very confident that all levels of the cat tree can hold her weight, so she's avoiding the higher levels of it so far.

I hope she decides she likes it. I hope (rather desperately) she loves it so much that she goes back to being Litter-Trained by Choice instead of Incontinent by Choice. But if nothing else, I guess this purchase has at least made it now abundantly clear that I'm not a big follower of B. F. Skinner. With this sort of precedent, it's a wonder if you people don't all show up at my door tomorrow, invite yourselves in, and pee on my bed, just to see what expensive gifts I might buy you if you did.



Mood: non-behaviorist
Music: silence

Garden Update

Another of the plants I bought in early August has died, though - my blue flax is dead. Other than that, though, my garden news is mostly good. There are seedlings coming up in various places, and although I can't definitively identify any of them, I increasingly suspect that most of them are from seeds I actually planted. My best guess is that the seedlings include desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua), black sage (Salvia mellifera), golden yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum), and some unidentified penstemon (I scattered seeds of Penstemon centranthefolius, Penstemon palmeri, and Penstemon spectabilis, which would have red, pink, and purple flowers, respectively). I don't think they're anything else I planted, anyway. I'm slightly disappointed that there's no sign of any golden poppies sprouting, but any seedlings that aren't weeds are very much better than weeds. [Edited: I found two golden poppy seedlings this morning! Finally, something I can definitively identify!]

The weeds did not grow anywhere near as much in my two weeks' absence as I had feared. It took only an hour or so for me to remove all the foxtails (none of which had developed seedheads yet). I also removed a few broad-leafed plants that I'm fairly certain were thistles of some sort, rather than anything I planted. I then spread some more mulch (coarser mulch than in the past, because I took zdamiana's recommendation) and transplanted my potted rosemary, oregano, lavender, and delphinium seedlings into the ground. Well, at least the ones I brought with me - there are still a couple of pots at home on my balcony with tinier seeds that there didn't seem to be much point in trying to transplant just yet.

The neighbors are at this very moment flooding half the yard again, which might even be what killed the blue flax - it's used to a little more water than it would get from rainfall around here, but it's not used to nearly the amount of the neighbors' flooding. I'm still very pleased that I had the foresight to plant water-loving plants in the most flood-prone portions of the yard, though; if not for that, I'd have lost even more plants. The currant and grapevine I planted are thriving in the puddles.

In the drier portion of the yard, the monkeyflower and California fuchsia are struggling, but after I piled rocks around the fuchsia two weekends ago to try to keep the weeds away from it, the fuchsia has grown a new flower and is looking healthier than it had been. I think it will make a full recovery. I'm not sure what's going on with the monkeyflower, because it isn't being attacked by any weeds. It has a lot of brown patches, while other parts of it are still green. I'm not sure whether it wants more shade, or whether it just got accidentally splashed with herbicide on the brown patches. It hasn't gotten any worse than it was three weeks ago, though, so I don't think it's going to die.

The coffeeberry is looking exactly the same as it did when I planted it in early August, and the Douglas iris is looking almost exactly the same as it did when I planted it last spring. The Douglas iris isn't very well adapted to growing in the Central Valley, so I'm pleasantly surprised that it's still alive at all. I think I should try transplanting it to a wetter and/or shadier area though; then it might actually grow bigger and flower.

Best of all, my redbud tree has three trunks and is now slightly above knee height. It's getting big enough that I think it will give us a gorgeous purple flower show next spring.

Mood: accomplished
Music: someone pounding on metal outside

Yosemite Photographs

Last weekend, for the second year in a row, Susan and I went on a geology class field trip to Yosemite National Park. We went with the same professor as last year, and she took us to most of the same locations as last year, but we went in a slightly different order and one of last year's locations was blocked off by roadwork, so she substituted a new location. Also, Susan caught a cold on Sunday, so we skipped the final stop at Hetch Hetchy reservoir this year and went home a little early.

Since we went to so many of the same locations at the same time of year as last year, I expected a lot of this year's photographs to be indistinguishable from last year's. But I've found them to be more different than I had expected.



( The rest of this year's Yosemite photographs! )

Mood: accomplished
Music: kids outside

No on Proposition 8, California

I'm at Susan's place for the weekend, and it's in a rather rural area compared to where I live. An old man, maybe 65 or so, just rang the doorbell. I grabbed Susan's two barking dogs by their collars to restrain them and then answered it. The following conversation ensued:

Him: Hi, I'm here with the Proposition 8 campaign.
Me: Are you for Yes on Proposition 8?
Him: Yeah.
Me: I really don't appreciate you doing this, because I want to marry my girlfriend.
Him: [wide-eyed, looking vaguely sympathetic and sort of impressed as if he'd never met a real live gay person before] . . . Oh.
Me: I really care about this.
Him: [silence]
Me: [shuts door]

Susan says my voice got extremely high-pitched when I was talking to him, as if I was about to completely lose it. I told her I was.

I've seen several annoying lines of argument on the Internet lately too, from heterosexuals who are planning or considering voting for Proposition 8. One said it isn't hurting anybody for her to vote for it because domestic partnership already provides the same legal rights and responsibilities as [state-supported, federally-unsupported] marriage anyway. But I really don't think most heterosexuals realize that the responsibilities are the same or think of it as having anywhere near the same degree of seriousness. So isn't it horribly unfair for us to take on all the same legal responsibilities and yet have most heterosexuals (including our relatives and so on) treat our legal contracts as having none of the same serious commitment that they actually have?

Another, who hadn't made up his mind how to vote yet, said he thinks that same-sex couples are rushing into marriages right now with no understanding of the potential legal ramifications of divorce because they haven't had to experience it before. To that I have two replies. First, domestic partnerships in California already do have the same legal ramifications; Susan is enduring them right now while she waits for her domestic partnership dissolution to be finalized. Second, this comment shows just how ignorant many heterosexuals are of the pressures that actually are driving same-sex couples to rush into marriages right now. How many heterosexuals find out on a random day in June that they have until the following November to marry whoever they're currently dating, and that if they don't marry that person before November, they may have to wait a decade or two or even forever to ever have that opportunity again? Do they have any idea what that's like? What are couples supposed to do who only just started dating in May or June but find that their relationships are going fantastically well and they really do want to get married, they just wouldn't do it a mere five or six months after they first started dating except that if they don't, they know they might lose the opportunity to marry at all? That is the situation that California same-sex couples find ourselves in. Except for Susan and me and others like us, because Susan's domestic partnership with her ex isn't going to be dissolved before November. It could have been dissolved long ago if she'd filed for it as soon as she moved out of her ex's place, but since she is not rich and did not have a lot of money to spare on a lawyer right away, and since she is kind-hearted and was not eager to deprive her ex of health insurance immediately, she postponed the filing for two years. Which is perfectly understandable and reasonable and should not be costing us what might be our only chance to legally marry each other. But it is costing us that, because of people like that man who rang our doorbell this morning.

One argument I actually haven't seen on the Internet so far in regard to Proposition 8, but that I would like to respond to anyway just because I'm in a particularly good position to answer it, is the argument that we chose to be queer in the first place so if we want to get married we should just choose to be straight and marry somebody of the opposite sex. To this I would like to say: Yes, I chose to be queer and I chose to fall in love with Susan. Susan says she didn't choose to be queer, and I have no reason to disbelieve her, but let's consider this only from my perspective. Let's also assume for the sake of argument, although I do not believe that having chosen to turn queer implies that one must necessarily also be capable of choosing to turn back straight again, that I could in fact choose to turn straight again if I put my mind to it. So I have this amazing wonderful girlfriend who is madly in love with me and treats me unfailingly wonderfully; could someone please explain to me how in the hell anyone can think the moral thing to do would be to dump her, break her heart, and go find myself a husband? Furthermore, what kind of crazy person thinks that love is such an easy thing to come by that one can just throw it away where one finds it and expect to be able to find it again wherever one chooses? No matter how much I might choose to fall in love with some man or even numerous men, I will never, ever have the ability to choose for them to fall in love with me. That would have to be their own decision. None of them ever chose it in the first 32 years of my life (at least not thoroughly enough for them to be anywhere near as good to me as Susan is), so why would I imagine that they would suddenly start doing so if I dumped Susan? Love is not an easy thing to come by. Anyone who finds it, who really finds the real thing in all its perfection, would be not only cruel and heartless but also a complete idiot to throw it away.

Mood: infuriated
Music: lawnmower outside

Yosemite, Restaurant, and Non-Gardening

At this time tomorrow, Susan and I will be driving to Yosemite! Or rather, Susan will be driving and I will be sitting in the passenger seat admiring the scenery. We're going as part of the same geology class we went with last year (and the same professor we went to Point Reyes with last spring), but since we already took this class last year, we're just auditing it this year. That means (1) it's slightly cheaper, (2) we don't actually have to take notes this year since we won't be graded - although I suppose one could say we didn't actually have to care at all about our grades last year since we didn't need the credits - and (3) we still get the park entrance and camping fees paid for us since we're still part of the class. Yay! Susan is shopping and packing for it right now. I am not being any help at all, because her home is an hour's drive away, and she's there, and her truck (which we'll be taking camping) is there, but I'm here where I can't do much to help.

On Tuesday I took her out to dinner for a rather belated first anniversary dinner, since she hadn't felt like going on our actual anniversary. I took her to a Florentine restaurant in a Marriott hotel near my apartment, because she had read about it and thought it sounded interesting and the food sounded like something I'd be able to handle. The food was indeed good. Also, I learned that whenever possible, it's best to find a girlfriend who is absent-minded! This is because when you take her out to dinner and she takes her leftovers home to your apartment and puts them in your refrigerator, she forgets to take them back out again the next morning when she goes to work. Then it's inconveniently far for her to drive back and get them, so you get to eat them yourself! They were delicious. The only bad thing is that when you get to eat them yourself, your absent-minded girlfriend doesn't get to eat them, and if she's a beautiful and unsurpassably sweet absent-minded girlfriend like Susan is, then you really want her to be able to eat them.

Since we're spending this weekend in Yosemite, I'll be going two whole weeks without seeing Susan's home. I'm a bit terrified of what the weeds will do with two whole weeks of not being weeded. But after making that last post about my gardening frustrations, I've been trying to focus on the positive results of my gardening instead. The western redbud tree I bought last spring during our trip to Point Reyes is now at least three times its former height and is obviously very happy in its new home. The deergrass clump has expanded to at least twice its original size in barely a month. The currant that looked half dead when I brought it home has grown new leaves and now looks perfectly healthy. The grapevine looks like it might be growing slightly, too. And last weekend I brought home four packets of non-native seeds to plant in containers on my balcony: rosemary, oregano, lavender, and delphiniums. I'm planning to transplant them to Susan's back yard the weekend after this one, but in the meantime, I wanted to keep them in weed-free containers and coax them to sprout. Well, some of them have! The oregano and lavender have sprouted all over the place, even though the instructions on the seed packets claim that the lavender shouldn't sprout for another week still. I think I may have the very beginnings of a few delphiniums, too. No sign of any rosemary yet, but it's not due for another two weeks.

I should probably be packing whatever I can of my own stuff for Yosemite right now, so I'll go do that.

Mood: anticipatory
Music: cars outside

Gardening Frustrations

My gardening efforts are not going well. The fuchsia, blue flax, and monkeyflower that I bought most of a month ago all look like they're on the brink of death now. And the yard remains full of foxtails, no matter how many of them I pull. I'm having fantasies of somehow hauling several feet of rocks and sand and mulch and anything else that I know for sure has no weed seeds in it already into Susan's back yard and just completely burying everything that's there right now and starting over. I don't know how else to get rid of the stupid weeds! The dirt is wonderful, but I think maybe it's too wonderful, because the weeds love it too much. I think I want to try gardening in adobe bricks instead. Or serpentine. Or any of the other soils that practically nothing in the world can grow in. I think the change would be refreshing. Short of that, I think I need so much of the strongest, most horrible herbicides available that I could flood the whole yard with herbicide in a huge pool up to the height of the fence and just let it wallow in that for a year, and at the end of the year maybe I could have the yard classified as a toxic Superfund site so the federal government would clean it up for me and then when they were done I could finally grow plants other than weeds.

Mood: frustrated
Music: none

Weekend Gardening and Pet Door Installation

As part of my preparation to eventually move in, a few weeks ago I ordered a pet door insert for Susan's sliding glass door. She set it up this past week, and I added the weatherstripping this weekend (while Susan commented on how butch I am). She trained Taco to go through it, and then Taco and I together trained Boston to go through it. It seems to serve its purpose reasonably well; it fits the door frame and fits the dogs and doesn't pop out of place or do any of the other things I had feared that it might. There were an awful lot of air spaces around it before I added the weatherstripping, and I ended up going to a hardware store to buy two rolls of extra weatherstripping - it came with only one roll. With all three rolls applied, there are still a few spaces I just can't get rid of that mosquitoes or even houseflies could probably wedge themselves through if they chose to; it's just not possible to make the weatherstripping stick in certain crevices. And the part the dogs go through sometimes doesn't close in an airtight or bugtight manner either (despite the magnets that do help somewhat). But it's as good as I can get it, and it's a definite improvement over just leaving the door open for the dogs all day long. There are fewer houseflies inside now (though still some), and maybe slightly fewer mosquitoes inside (though still some), and the heating/cooling bills should be lower.

Her neighbors have been flooding her yard lately, and the result is a horrifying outcrop of weeds. I think the main weeds coming in are foxtails, although they don't have actual seedheads right now. I dug a bunch of them out on Saturday, although I really probably shouldn't have since digging just exposes more weed seeds. I didn't dig up more than a third of them, though, before I was exhausted. I tried to dig out mainly the foxtails that were growing closest to my native plants, because it's hard to spray herbicide that close to my plants without accidentally killing the wrong plant - though it's also hard to dig them out without harming the roots of my plants! I hope I did all right. On Sunday I bought some new herbicide (at the same hardware store where I bought the extra weatherstripping) and sprayed the remaining ones. While doing this, I noticed that there are various tiny broad-leaved plants sprouting that may very well be the beginnings of the wildflower seeds I scattered out there. I hope I managed not to kill too many of them. I also noticed that the golden currant I bought a few weeks ago that was looking so sickly at the end of the truck ride home has now sprouted new leaves and is looking much healthier. Currants like plenty of water, so I'm sure the neighbors' flooding deserves some credit for those new leaves, even though it also deserves a lot of blame for the sprouting foxtails. I'm very happy that the currant is recovering so well. The grapevine and deergrass also enjoy flood situations, and those three plants are the ones I planted closest to the neighbors' yard (precisely because I suspected that the neighbors would flood Susan's yard occasionally), so if I could just get the weeds under control, the flooding wouldn't be a particularly bad thing.

While at the hardware store, I also bought some seeds of non-native plants: delphiniums, rosemary, oregano, and lavender. I think I'll have to plant the delphiniums in the front yard though, to keep them away from the dogs; delphiniums are poisonous when eaten. The rest can go in the back yard. Susan can use the rosemary and oregano in her cooking, and the lavender - well, I just like it, and since it's native to the Mediterranean, it should grow very well in our Mediterranean-type climate. The seeds for these plants all say to start them indoors and transplant them later though, and I've decided to actually follow the directions. So I brought the seeds home, along with some pots. Tomorrow I'll buy some good potting soil and plant them.

We had been planning to have some delayed first-anniversary celebrations this weekend, but we didn't get around to that because Susan was feeling sick. Next weekend we should get around to it; I'll be taking her out to dinner at the restaurant of her choice. This weekend we mostly just stayed home and read together, which was very pleasant. I read Come back to Sorrento by Dawn Powell. Susan read at least three books, including Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather by Jincy Willett.

Mood: happy
Music: silence

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Yesterday was Susan's and my first anniversary. She had a vase of blue delphiniums delivered to my office for it!



I gave her the books Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford (the sister of Nancy Mitford, whose books The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate Susan gave me for my birthday), Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 by Sharon Olds, and Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman. I also gave her a sonnet, but I gave her that ahead of time, on Sunday.

And then we had a romantic dinner of frozen pizza. (We're going out to dinner next weekend, but we decided not to go out on the actual day.)

When I came home from Susan's place Sunday night, there was an evil message on my answering machine. It said: "Hi Cynthia! My name is John. I'm a volunteer with the Yes on Prop 8 campaign, to protect and restore traditional marriage. We hope we can count on your Yes vote in November. I'll try you again later. Bye!"

I so wish he had left a phone number for me to call him back at, because I desperately want to call him and tell him I hate his guts.

Mood: anniversary!
Music: neighbors' footsteps

Books and Dead Plants

My books for the authors from Q through Z are now inter-alphabetized with Susan's. My favorite juxtaposition is how Susan's copy of The World According to Mister Rogers is sandwiched alphabetically between her copy of Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World by Lisa Rogak and my copy of Science and Homosexualities by Vernon A. Rosario.

My buckwheat and coyote mint plants seem to have died! They're all brown and dead-looking. I don't know what happened to them. They look as if they died of drought, but Susan and I had both watered them. And the buckwheat is a plant that's native to the Mojave Desert, so it's used to less water than it'd get here even if it were never watered at all. Maybe it died of excessive water instead? I don't know. Anyway, they both look dead. The other plants are still alive, even the tattered little currant, although none of them are looking especially vibrant. Susan says it's been 108 degrees (42 degrees Celsius) here for the past several days, so I guess it's lucky that any of them survived. Still, it seems like if a 108-degree heatwave is going to kill off my plants, the one native to the Mojave Desert shouldn't be one of the first to die.

Susan is sick today, too. She says she's been throwing up all night. I think it's from stress, because her school year is about to start - stress does that to her sometimes. I hope she feels better soon.

Mood: accomplished
Music: Sarah McLachlan: "Good Enough" (in my head)

The All-American Lesbian Couple Next Door

There is a dyke couple that has apparently just moved into my apartment complex, in the building next to mine; they've hung a huge Americanized rainbow flag on their balcony that was never there before (it's a rainbow flag with a blue box in the corner with fifty white stars in it - maybe it's more of a rainbowized American flag, really), and they're both sitting out on their balcony surveying the neighborhood. At first it was only one of them out there with the rainbow flag, a very extremely butch dyke positively strutting around in front of the flag by herself, and I thought the flag was an awfully over-the-top effort to meet women while sitting there on her balcony - but a few minutes later her very femme girlfriend joined her on their balcony. So now they're both sitting up there with their huge rainbowized American flag, watching while I carry box after box of books to my car to begin the process of moving in with my girlfriend. I think I'd actually greet them and explain the queer nature of my moving project, if only they had a regular rainbow flag instead of the Americanized version. The Americanized version puts me off, though.

(I'm not actually planning to finish moving until around the end of October at the earliest; I just want to get my books moved a few at a time before then so there'll be less left to do later.)

Mood: antisocial and unpatriotic
Music: silence

The Most Important Lesson You'll Ever Learn (or Fail to Learn)

Romantic relationships are not supposed to feel exhausting. The time you spend with a romantic partner is your free time; the things you do with a romantic partner are supposed to feel like things you enjoy doing during your free time. The time you spend with a romantic partner is not supposed to feel like an unpaid second job that you force yourself through the motions of because you feel obliged to. If it starts to feel that way, then you're not getting what you need from the relationship. If it's felt that way often for a significant portion of the relationship's duration, you really need to dump the person. If for most of the relationship neither you nor your partner felt that way at all, but just lately one of you has been starting to feel that way sometimes, then something is still very significantly wrong and it would probably be a good idea to seek relationship counseling.

It's extremely unlikely that you'll ever create a good relationship by forcing yourself to remain in a bad one and desperately hoping that it'll turn into a good one if you just stick it out long enough. Bad relationships tend overwhelmingly to get worse, not better, with the passage of time. The best way to create a good relationship for yourself is to ditch the bad relationships and learn to enjoy the single life while holding out for someone truly wonderful, who you'll consistently look forward to spending time with instead of dreading it.

(This journal entry was inspired by watching too many LiveJournal users feeling obliged to remain in relationships that are obviously making them unhappy.)

Mood: wise
Music: Susan's washer and dryer

Return to Bowman Lake: Photographs

Susan and I went back to Bowman Lake this week, and stayed in the same creek campsite there that we stayed in a few weeks ago. We went out on the lake in Susan's raft again, but this time the dogs both insisted in climbing in the raft along with us - even though the raft was really not built to hold as much weight as two adult humans plus two medium-sized dogs. We ended up with a lot of water in the bottom of the boat, and dogs shaking themselves dry in our faces, and a complete inability to steer the raft in any direction, because Boston kept climbing all over the raft and shifting the weight distribution so much that it destroyed Susan's steering efforts.



( More pictures! )

Mood: cheerful
Music: the Olympics on Susan's TV

Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of the day Susan and I started emailing each other. Since we met via Craigslist, we celebrated by reading other people's horrible Craigslist personal ads recently. The "men seeking men" ads were particularly entertaining. One of the men saw fit to mention in his personal ad, "My favorite food is Frosted Mini Spooners covered with peanut butter." Since his entire ad was only four lines long, this must be a very important fact to know about him. He also said in his last line that he wants to find someone who'll be the macaroni to his cheese. Susan hasn't stopped asking me to be the macaroni to her cheese ever since.

A different man informed us, "i hate 'NICE' b/c nice levels meaning, it erodes dignity, prevents attainment. if you acquiesce and become nice, you are lost. i hate 'MEAN' b/c evil resides in the white spaces, the linguistic riff between adult and child, between consciousness." I'm sure he meant "rift" instead of "riff," but all I got out of the rest is that he's not nice and doesn't want to admit that he's mean.

Anyway, we're going camping today. We probably won't leave until late in the day, because we have quite a bit to do first. In the meantime, here is a picture of Susan's back yard with the plants I planted on Sunday. From left to right, the plants you can see in the picture are: deer grass (back), coyote mint (front, with a purple flower), buckwheat (middle, with off-white flowers), coffeeberry (back), monkey flower (middle, with orange flowers), and fuchsia (front, with red flowers that aren't really visible from this angle).




I'm worried about the damaged currant, which only seems to be looking worse today. You'd be able to see the currant in the picture if it were less dead; it's located right about where the hose ends, because I've been trying to water it back to life. Most of the other plants are also looking a little worse than when I first planted them; the grapevine has acquired little black spots on its leaves, and the fuchsia has lost one of its two flowers. But the currant is the only one that looks like it might die. It still might live though; it's deciduous, and may grow leaves again when it's feeling better.

Mood: good
Music: Susan rinsing dishes in the sink

Nonsmoking, Native Plants, and Fish

Susan is quitting smoking! I told her I would move in with her sooner (in two months, though we later amended it to three months at Susan's own request) if she quit than if she didn't (in seven months). She had one more cigarette after that, and no more since. She has now gone one day and six hours without a cigarette.

Today we went to Floral Native Nursery in Chico and I bought native plants, which I planted in Susan's back yard. The locally native plants I bought are California coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica), California grape (Vitis californica), deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens), monkey flower (Mimulus puniceus), and coyote mint (Monardella villosa). The plants I bought that are native to other parts of California are golden currant (Ribes aureum), California fuchsia (Epilobium californica), interior California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), and blue flax (Linum lewisii). The monkey flower, coyote mint, fuchsia, and buckwheat are all in bloom right now. The currant seems to have lost some of its leaves during the truck ride back to Susan's duplex, so I hope it recovers.

Susan bought a second aquarium, just in time for the daddy convict fish and several of his babies to mysteriously die, leaving few enough fish that they all fit comfortably in a single aquarium now. I think we're going to fill the other aquarium with better behaved, less violent fish instead of with cichlids. Some tetras would be nice.

P.S. Look, I made Susan a "quit meter":





Now, if only it would let me uncapitalize the word "cigarettes."

[Edited to add: She un-quit a few weeks later, when the school she teaches at started again, so the meter isn't accurate anymore. She's still hoping to quit again soon.]

Mood: delighted
Music: something about hippies that Susan is watching on the History Channel

Bowman Lake Photographs

Susan filed for divorce today! She actually signed the paperwork yesterday for dissolution of her domestic partnership, but her lawyer filed it with the court today.

And now I'm going to post the pictures of our beautiful camping trip at Bowman Lake. We brought Susan's inflatable raft and rowed out on the lake in it - sometimes both of us together, sometimes Susan with one or the other of her dogs, and sometimes me alone.



( More pictures! )

Mood: happy
Music: Frank Sinatra: "You Are the Sunshine of My Life"

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday! I turned 32. Still ten years to go before I become the answer to life, the universe, and everything like Susan is, but at least I'm back to being an even ten years behind her now.

We went to my parents' house, where my mother had made me a heart-shaped birthday cake that Susan took one look at and informed me that I'm spoiled. I said yes, I am, but I can't possibly be any more spoiled than Susan's dogs are. I am spoiled enough, though. These are the books I received for my birthday:

• Flight by Sherman Alexie (from my father)


• The Tent by Margaret Atwood (from my father)


• Dancing Girls by Margaret Atwood (from my mother)


• Wildflowers of the Sierra Nevada and Central Valley by Laird R. Blackwell (from Susan)


• Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante (from my mother)


• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (from my mother)


• Standard Operating Procedure by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris (from Susan)


• Aloft by Chang-rae Lee (from my mother)


• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (from my brother)


• The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (from Susan)


• Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford (from Susan)


• Sierra Nevada Tree Identifier by Jim Paruk (from Susan)


• The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault (from my mother)


• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (from my father)


• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (from my mother)


• A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews (from Susan)


• A Sierra Nevada Flora by Norman F. Weeden (from Susan)

I also received the CD/DVD sets of Accelerate by R.E.M. and The Glass Spider Tour by David Bowie (both from my mother) and a pair of purple slippers (from Susan). And a card from my parents that says, "Daughter, didn't want to embarrass you by bragging about you to other people, so this year, not a word to anyone . . . Really - it's just between us . . . However, here's a modest little poster for you to take to work!" Then the card opens up to form an 18" x 18" poster that says, "Happy birthday to a wonderful daughter and a terrific human being!" The card caused Susan to declare me spoiled again, which really just means that she envies me (rightfully).

My cat did not give me anything at all, and still seems to feel she has the right to squeak at me demandingly. But this is probably fair revenge against me for the fact that Susan is currently foster-parenting a hamster from summer school and I failed to bring this hamster home to Stardust and offer it to her as a cat toy.

In less birthday-related news, Susan and I had a great camping trip from Thursday through Friday at Bowman Lake. There was a huge creek full of whitewater rapids flowing directly through our campsite, and we took Susan's inflatable raft out on the lake. I will post photographs soon.

Mood: happy
Music: Stardust squeaking at me

Car Accident

I just got in a car accident. I think my car is totaled. I bumped the left side of my head on the side of the car and it knocked my glasses onto the floor, but I don't think my head is actually damaged at all, and my glasses aren't damaged either. Just my car. I didn't realize my glasses had been knocked off my face until I got out of the car and suddenly noticed I wasn't wearing them. I looked in the car and saw them on the floor with one of the earpieces folded, and at first I thought they were broken. They're not broken, and neither is my head. But my car! My car is very broken.

I was going to the drugstore to buy some stuff for myself (shoe inserts, random stuff like that) and also cold medicine for Susan, because she has a cold. I stopped at a gas station first to buy gas, because I was almost out. When I was pulling out of the gas station, there were cars parked on each side of me obscuring the view a little, but I didn't see anyone coming at all, until when I pulled out into the street, a huge truck that was hauling a boat behind it ran into me. The right front corner of the truck hit the left front corner of my car. It left only a very tiny dent in their truck, but it bashed a gigantic hole into my car. I used the cell phone Susan gave me last fall to call her, and then my phone's batteries went dead in the middle of my conversation with her. I'd told her I was at the gas station, and she correctly guessed which gas station I meant, so she came to pick me up. Then I used her phone to call my insurance company. The police came and called a tow truck for me, which took my car away. I will have to get a rental car tomorrow to go home with; I'm spending the weekend at Susan's place as I usually do, and my own place is an hour's drive away.

My car was only insured for damage to other people's cars, not for damage to mine, so if they determine that the accident was more my fault than the other people's, I'll have to pay for buying myself a new car. Since the truck had the right of way, it seems more likely that they'll say it was my fault, although I think the truck might have had to be speeding to have come out of nowhere like that. The truck had just finished turning off a highway onto a 25 mph residential street, so it seems likely that it was still going at highway speeds.

I never did end up obtaining the cold medicine. I expect to have a cold in a few days too, so I'm not sure I'm going to want to go camping.

My car was seven years old and kind of dented, most recently from a nasty parking lot hit and run at my workplace a few weeks ago - I had worked a little late that day, so the parking lot was mostly empty when I came out, and I saw a car that looked exactly like mine except that it had a big dent in the side that had never been there before, and I thought, "That can't be my car, can it, with the big dent in it?" and was forced to realize that it was. So it wasn't in great condition, so maybe I shouldn't be too upset about having to replace it. But it only had just barely 50,000 miles on it! And it was my first real car, the first car I bought from a dealer instead of from my parents. It cost me $12,000 in May 2002. It was a silver 2001 Nissan Sentra. I bought it with the idea that it would last me longer than seven years and a lot longer than 50,000 miles. It was supposed to last twice that long.

Mood: scared
Music: Susan's dogs barking

Racially Diverse Recommended Reading

denim_queen has put together a racially diverse list of recommended books. This is my copy of it, with books/writers I've read in boldface, books I've read only parts of in italics, books I own but haven't yet read underlined, and a heart symbol next to books I particularly loved.

( The list! )

Mood: studious
Music: the air conditioner

Mendocino/Hendy Woods

Last weekend Susan and I went to Mendocino and stayed in the Mendocino Hotel. We also stopped in Hendy Woods State Park on the way back home and went on a two- or three-mile hike there, during which she took this picture of me, which I am very delighted by:



( More pictures from our trip! )

Mood: accomplished
Music: silence

I Met spiritofnow!

spiritofnow (a.k.a. Ned) is in California right now, taking a break from her studies at NYU and from her home country of Pakistan. I was supposed to meet her on Friday, along with Susan and Ned's friend Dave, at an IHOP just before Susan and I went to a Monarchs WNBA game. But something came up at the last moment that prevented Dave from driving Ned, so we postponed it to Sunday. There was another Monarchs game on Sunday, so we still met at the IHOP just before the Monarchs game; it was just a different Monarchs game, and instead of Dave driving Ned, Dave's friend Lynda drove Ned. The Monarchs lost the Friday game but won the Sunday game, so maybe Ned's presence in the vicinity helps them win.

The IHOP was probably not the best place to meet Ned, since she's a vegetarian and the menu didn't offer many vegetarian options at all. It was also more expensive than either Ned or I were expecting (neither of us having ever eaten at an IHOP before - unless you count the fact that I ate there with Susan on Friday after Ned had canceled, in addition to eating there on Sunday when Ned was there). But the company was great! It turned out that Lynda has previously worked as both a teacher and an editor, so Susan and I both had plenty to talk about with her, despite never having even heard of her before we met her. We also talked about the plenty of other topics. Ned wanted to know what we thought of Obama and the smear campaign claiming that he's Muslim (which is predicated on the offensive unstated assumption that Muslims are not qualified to be president). I wanted to know whether anything about the United States has surprised Ned. She said she's only been in the most liberal parts of it and therefore finds all Americans to be wonderful so far, but she has been surprised by how biased CNN and our other mass media news sources are.

Anyway, we had a great time. Then Susan and I watched the Monarchs win, and we each went back to our respective homes.

Earlier events in the weekend included acquiring new fish. I discovered on Saturday that the plecostomus, which was the only non-convict fish that hadn't been murdered by her convict fish, was missing from the fish tank. It's odd that it was missing; the convict fish had left dead bodies lying around after all their previous murders, but we never found a body this time. Anyway, on Sunday afternoon I went to buy a new plecostomus (they help keep the tank clean; without one, algae was starting to develop). I found a plecostomus that was already in the same tank as a bunch of convict fish at the pet store, and decided I should buy that one so that I wouldn't be subjecting it to company any more unpleasant than it already had. Then I noticed that there was one other species also in the same tank as the convict fish - some Nicaraguan cichlids. There were many other tanks containing fish that I had read online were theoretically compatible with convict fish, but I couldn't bring myself to actually subject any fish to such unpleasant company unless they already had such unpleasant company to begin with. So I decided to buy the Nicaraguan cichlids, which I had not heard described as being compatible with convict fish, but which were visibly alive in the convict fish tank at the pet store.

Susan's biggest convict fish is a little bigger than any of the ones in the pet store, though, and he seems to be harassing the Nicaraguan cichlids quite a bit so far. I hope the Nicaraguan cichlids don't kill the baby convict fish or get killed by the daddy convict fish.

I think it was also on Saturday that Susan finally managed to induce her next-door neighbor Jessica to fill out the voter registration form I had picked up for her a week earlier. We figure that if every same-sex couple in California can persuade one person to vote against the state constitutional amendment in November that would make same-sex marriages illegal again, we can preserve our right to get legally married - so we've picked Jessica as our person to persuade. She doesn't need any persuading about same-sex marriages being good, but she needs a lot of persuading to actually go vote about anything, ever. So Susan bribed her by inviting her over for dinner with us on the condition that she fill out the voter registration form. It worked; Jessica came over for dinner and filled out the voter registration form. I will stamp it and mail it in, and then in November, Susan is going to make sure Jessica actually votes.

Also on Saturday, Susan expressed a desire to go to the Mendocino Hotel (on the northern California coast). This led to what was by our standards (we being quite an un-argumentative couple) a fairly heated argument. Which is to say that it was perfectly polite but still rather emotional. The argument was over our differing standards of living. To me, a hotel is never a destination in itself but rather a place it's occasionally necessary to stay overnight when visiting a different destination, and staying at one is always an extravagance, normally indulged in less than once a year. To Susan, a hotel can be a destination in itself, and one should stay in hotels at least four times per year. Also, for her the major appeal of hotels is the idea of having people serve her, providing room service and food at her command. For me, having strangers serve me (or even having them anywhere around me) is a nuisance to be endured for the sake of whatever the non-hotel-related destination is. At the Mendocino Hotel, ocean views and other nature scenery would be a sufficient enticement to make the hotel stay worthwhile for me, but Susan kept trying to persuade me that I should want to go there for the hotel itself, which did not work and which instead made the whole trip sound unnecessarily unappealing to me.

Really it was probably very bad form for me to argue over this specific hotel trip, since she pointed out that her birthday is coming up and the trip could be a birthday present for her. But she didn't suggest that it should be a birthday present until after I resisted her other reasons for going. Anyway, we are going! Next weekend we are going to the Mendocino Hotel. There will be beautiful expanses of Pacific Ocean across the street from the hotel, and beautiful redwood forests to pass through on the way to and from the hotel, and beautiful nature scenery all around. And these things will make it worthwhile to put up with having strangers provide room service and food.

Oh, and our tenth lunar revolution (ten-month anniversary) was on Thursday. I still owe her a poem for it. But yay for ten months! Is ten months really supposed to be this easy and fun and not hard work at all?

Mood: good
Music: cars outside

French Meadows Reservoir: Photographs

I have a hot girlfriend! She took me camping at French Meadows Reservoir last weekend. This is my hot girlfriend at French Meadows Reservoir.



( And these are many more pictures of her and her dogs and the reservoir and our campsite. )

Mood: happy
Music: Stardust squeaking at me

Obama's Running Mate

Poll #1199001 Presidential Election
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Should Hillary Clinton be Barack Obama's running mate?

Which of these people would make good running mates for Obama?

(continued)

Mood: curious
Music: Stardust squeaking

LiveJournal Advisory Board Elections

If you are reading this sentence, you use LiveJournal. If you use LiveJournal, you should care about the way LiveJournal is run. And if you care about the way LiveJournal is run, you should vote for the users' representative on the LiveJournal Advisory Board.

In my opinion, the biggest issue that the users' representative needs to care about is making LiveJournal start focusing on what its users want again instead of on what its advertisers want. Advertisers' presence here puts us at risk of greater censorship (because the site owners worry about anything that might scare off the advertisers) and subjects us to unpleasant ads that are often offensive to various demographic groups ("You're not pretty unless you buy our product to make you look more ______!"). For this reason, I voted for rm (first choice), squeaky19 (second choice), and qfemale (third choice). I strongly urge the rest of you to support rm especially. She is endorsed by ljunited and, in my opinion, her position statements (posted in her journal) are many, many orders of magnitude better than any other candidate's. Please vote for her.

(And whatever you do, please don't vote for jameth, who is currently leading in votes by a huge margin and whose campaign platform includes a statement that he does not want any ads removed from the site and does not want to bring back the option of creating new Basic (ad-free, no-cost) accounts.)

Mood: busy
Music: Stardust purring on my lap