Better!

I finally cleaned my dresser! Yes, mine was the super messy one. Ren does a good job of keeping his organized, but me? Not so much.

I also took the time to hang these three paintings. They're fairly cheesy but I really, really liked them when I found them. And since I got them for TEN CENTS EACH at Dollar General, I'm not complaining about a little corniness.

Not Better.

The Dam Tour.

I don't have an official bucket list but if I did, taking a tour of Hoover Dam would be on it. And this April, I will check it off.

Elvis Has NOT Left the Building.

We booked our vow renewal today. You know that place that's on every TV show with a Vegas wedding? The one with the 24 hour drive thru and rent-a-Elvis? We're so there.

50 days...

My Year In Books, 2011 Edition.

A little tardy for a year-end summary (how can it be mid-February???), but this is what I read last year, in order.

This list is 42 books long.
My goal in 2012 is to read 50 books and so far I've tackled 7.

The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown)
Sarah's Key (Tatiana de Rosnay)
A Secret Kept (Tatiana de Rosnay)
Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand)
A Discovery of Witches (Deborah Harkness)
Heaven is for Real (Todd Burpo)
13 Little Blue Envelopes (Maureen Johnson)
The Out-of-Sync Child (Carol Stock Kranowitz)
The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
True Colors (Kristin Hannah)
The Last Little Blue Envelope (Maureen Johnson)
A Girl Named Zippy (Haven Kimmel)
The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
In Zanesville: A Novel (Jo Ann Beard)
My Name Is Memory (Ann Brashares)
Hissy Fit (Mary Kay Andrews)
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
Bloodroot (Amy Greene)
The Fixer Upper (Mary Kay Andrews)
My Horizontal Life (Chelsea Handler)
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (Lorna Landvik)
Upside Down, Inside Out (Monica McInerney)
Ellie Bean the Drama Queen (Jennie Harding)
Savannah Blues (Mary Kay Andrews)
Savannah Breeze (Mary Kay Andrews)
The Sea Captain's Wife (Beth Powning)
The Alphabet Sisters (Monica McInerney)
The Widower's Tale (Julia Glass)
Deep Dish (Mary Kay Andrews)
I'd Know You Anywhere (Laura Lippman)
Blue Christmas (Mary Kay Andrews)
The Sweetness of Tears (Nafisa Haji)
These Things Hidden (Heather Gudenkauf)
Lisey's Story (Stephen King)
Sisterhood Everlasting (Ann Brashares)
Summer Rental (Mary Kay Andrews)
Mating Rituals of the North American Wasp (Lauren Lipton)
The Raising (Laura Kasischke)
Big Girl Small (Rachel DeWoskin)
The Little Bride (Anna Solomon)
Oh My Stars (Lorna Landvik)
11/22/63 (Stephen King)

I Support Marriage Equality.

To those of you who attended our 2002 wedding, I must apologize. We deceived you. You did not actually witness our marriage.

Wait, what? You don't believe me? You saw us exchange vows and rings and all that?

Well, yes. Yes, you did. But you didn't actually see us get married. This is for two reasons:

1. Our "wedding" took place in Kentucky and our license was issued in Ohio.

2. We lost our marriage license that morning and didn't find, sign and file it for a month.

Our technical, legal wedding date of record is: May 12, 2002. Not April 13, 2002.

You know what's even crazier? The state of Ohio didn't care that you were in the audience that day. They didn't care that we stood in front of 202 of our closest friends and family and promised to love each other for ever. They didn't care that we danced and ate and drank until the wee hours of the morning. They didn't care that when we went back to our hotel...well, you get the point. And that point is this: the State had absolutely no interest in how we celebrated our marriage. The State only cared that we were two unrelated adults who paid Hamilton county to issue us a piece of paper declaring us legally married.

So, friends and family, we fooled you. For that whole month after our wedding, you thought we were married. You supported us based on our love and commitment to one another. How the State viewed us didn't affect you in the least. And how you viewed us didn't affect the State.

Okay, now where am I going with this? Well, I'm going here. I support marriage equality. And I'm here to tell you that I think legal marriage equality has absolutely nothing to do with love or feelings. Honestly. The whole "love is love" argument? Lost on me. Because in the State, sex and love have no bearing on legal marriage. There was no in-home visit to prove we consummated our marriage. And there has been no follow-up in the past 10 years to verify that we still have intimate, heterosexual relations. The State didn't care about our sexual relationship when we got married and it doesn't now. Thus, the State really shouldn't have an opinion on the *type* of sex involved in any marriage relationship.

Legal marriage is a civil contract. Nothing more, nothing less. Two consenting adults enter into a contract together. In the eyes of the law, the marriage contract is no more meaningful than a drivers license or home mortgage. Which is why I don't understand how sexual orientation plays a role in granting civil marriage licenses. It is socially assumed that two consenting married heterosexuals engage in "traditional" penis-vagina intercourse...but it's not a condition of civil marriage. I know plenty of straight people in loveless, sexless marriages and many who practice all sorts of aberrant sexual behaviors. The State doesn't revoke their marriage licenses. Right?

For years I've believed this was strictly a states-rights issue, and I do believe states should have the right to grant civil marriage licenses based on their own criteria. But I'm starting to feel there should also be a federal mandate in place to ensure that all marriages granted in one state are recognized as valid by the next state, regardless of whether that subsequent state allows same-sex unions to be granted. I realize this would create all sorts of logistical issues, but it seems to me that if my current legal marriage is recognized seamlessly across the country, protections must exist somewhere that could be tweaked to accommodate all civil unions. Which, essentially, would create a de facto universal marriage law...but I'm not a politician and I'll leave that sort of dickering to them.

So, to me, it's just common sense that two consenting homosexual adults should be able to get marriage licenses--they can get drivers licenses and buy houses, right? Legal, civil marriage should be treated with indifference by the State with regard to sexuality. Period.

Evona was the BEST.

Evona M. Myers
August 4, 1959 - February 8, 2009

So What Are You Going To Do?

I have heard that question dozens of times in the last week. People keep asking what I'm going to do about the 3-Day. The event I've supported and participated in for 3 years. The event that gave birth to Frankfoot (and about $70k in medical bills). The event for which I've raised over $5,000. The event I am supposed to both walk (Cleveland) AND crew (DC) in this year.

The Susan G. Komen 3-Day.
Sigh. Yeah.
THAT event.

And the truth is: I still don't know. I am conflicted and confused and completely uncertain. I was already struggling with finding the motivation to train, fundraise and walk this year. And then all the proverbial shit hit the fan. If you haven't followed (or at least seen/heard about) the current issues with Komen, please send me the address to your rock, because I want to get under it with you!

Losing my grandfather and uncle to cancer in January and then facing the anniversary of Evona's death from breast cancer has riled my Fuck Cancer sensibilities. But I just don't know if this event is going to be on my calendar this year.

At this point, I really don't want to get into a discussion on the subject. I see positives and negatives in both walking/crewing and not. I have mixed feelings about the actions of SGK, the foundation itself and the fight against cancer. I have a lot of thinking to do. I'm currently registered for the two events this year and that's about all the commitment I can offer today.

Come March, you'll either see me fire up my fundraising and training efforts for the 3-Day or you won't. I'm just not sure.

You don't know how much you miss your family
until you miss your family.

Kerry A. Koloini
February 9, 1949 - January 26, 2012

Rest in Peace, Uncle Kerry.

The old cliche is that every child wants to run away to join the circus. As a child, I dreamed of running away to live with Uncle Kerry. Part Clark Griswold, part Uncle Buck, he would have driven me to Wally World or made me kitchen table-sized pancakes, all I had to do was ask. I was his first niece and that gave us a special bond. I peed on him the first time he held me and we were tight ever since. Uncle Kerry bought me my first swingset, escorted me to my very first day of school and he was the man who gave me my first diamond earrings.

But loving Uncle Kerry also meant one had to live on the edge of danger. A ride on a roller coaster left you open for his famous "torn up napkin tossed behind like puke" trick, a simple shower meant making sure the door was locked (but you still had to be ready to dodge ice water) and a trip to or from school typically meant being prepared to see him hanging out the car window, yelling something innocuous but embarrassing. Perhaps the lyrics to the Marty Robbins classic "El Paso".

I was even lucky enough to spend several summers with him and Aunt Dawn and the girls at their resort home in...the suburbs of Baltimore. When I got a little older I became the default babysitter. While I might have complained, deep down I didn't *really* mind because I was at Uncle Kerry's Funhouse.

I was in college when Uncle Kerry and the family moved here to Dallas, and the distance made our visits less frequent. And life kept moving on. There were classes and boys and parties for me; work and travel and family for him. When I was 20, my parents and Uncle Kerry and Aunt Dawn conspired to get some distance between me one of those boys (and all those parties--you know, because if anyone could straighten me out, it'd be him). I spent 5 weeks here with my aunt, uncle and cousins. I made the beds, shuttled the girls to and from school, shuttled Uncle Kerry to and from the airport, hit the grocery store, changed the toilet paper rolls...but, I loved it. I complained and whined about how unfair it was but deep down I really did treasure that time with my family. Even as a grumpy 20 year old with bad college grades and a dead-end boyfriend, I loved spending my time with my favorite uncle and my Texas family.

In the past 15 years, I haven't gotten to see Uncle Kerry as much as I would have liked. Distance and money and jobs and kids and all those things made it difficult to just get together on a whim. But when I *did* get to spend time with him, I got just as excited as I did when I was a kid. I was blessed to spend a few days here in November, just before Thanksgiving. I wish I could say they were magical days. I wish I could say Uncle Kerry sat me down and told me the secrets to life. But they weren't and he didn't. They were just regular old days, as much as we could make them so.

I've tried over and over to come up with the right words to wrap this up today, to send you all off with some meaningful wisdom about life and love and my fabulous Uncle Kerry, but honestly, I keep drawing blanks. So for lack of anything better, I'll leave you with the words that embody life with Uncle Kerry: Hallelujah, ho-lee shit. Where's the Tylenol?