People who eat people

Having survived 9 straight days of work, I came home tonight holding my brain in my hand. What I need beyond words is a day off during which nothing is planned. Sadly, that's not tomorrow as I promised to take Anna to Body Worlds at the Des Moines Science Center. It'll be fun and I'm looking forward to being with her tomorrow. We've been anticipating this all summer and since she starts school in a scant 10 days, time is running low.

So to say I was tired and a bit on the cranky side was pretty darn accurate. But it all got better when I saw what the postman delivered for me today.


That's right - hot on the heels of saying how I really needed Streisand's People album on vinyl, I went to Amazon and found a used copy for sale. $4.75 including ths shipping. It is probably my favorite of her early albums (although Simply Streisand is a close second) and having getting it on vinyl was just a matter of time. When we were on the last leg of our trip back from Texas in May, I was crabby and wanting to be home and Heidi** put on People and suddenly, I was transformed into a better mood. I think it had something to do with Barbra's diction - that always makes me so happy. There's no "chewing the yous" when it comes to Barbra. And really, the song selection is so good.

I could have spent more for a copy in better condition, but this one works just fine. The vinyl is a little more scratchy and poppy than the ones I've been listening to, but on an album this old, the crystal clear quality of the CD has always seemed a little bit wrong.

I was trying to think of my favorite moments on People, and surprisingly, it's not the song "People." Although I will always remember being in Chicago with Heidi and Jeff, trying to find our hotel and Heidi and I were getting kind of short with each other. Suddenly, from the backseat, Jeff begins to sing "People/people who need people" which then morphed into "People/people who eat people" and then, inexplicably, "Kooka/Kooka kooka maaka/Kooka maaka, kooka maaka/Kooka mo." But really, the Italian spoken part in "When In Rome (I Do As The Romans Do)", the mournful saxophone in "Suppertime" and the wicked vibes at the beginning of "I'm All Smiles" all outshine Barbra's signature song in my book.

But the song that I have the most fondness for is "How Does The Wine Taste?" Again, Barbra's incredible diction is on display as the final "t" in "taste" is accentuated more than it might be by a lesser singer. There are also timpanis and little clicky things. Well, here's a video of it from her TV special My Name Is Barbra. Heidi and I are prone to saying "How does the wine taste?" and then the other will say "Does it sting your lips?" Yes, we are made for each other.



I've been listening to this album while I typed this blog post, and now that "People" is on, I know the album is almost over. I think it's barely 35 minutes - imagine how ripped off we'd feel if an album clocked in at under 40 minutes in this day and age. I guess the trade off was that she released albums practically every year during the 60s.

Now, if only I could get my hands on THIS.

**I should point out that People is one of the only Barbra Streisand albums that Heidi can stomach. She says anything from the late 70s on sounds like someone's grandmother.

Doing something right

Those of you in my most intimate circle may (or may not) know that the last couple weeks have completely kicked my ass. Work's been stressful, there was the whole tire debacle, and then there's other shiz going on that I'm not going to go in here. But when you combine it all with the fact I'm just starting to burn out after having taken my summer vacation in May, there's no denying that I've been going through a bit of a rough patch. The other night when Heidi and Anna came out to have supper with me at work, Heidi must have really noticed it and I told her that I'd "talk to her when I got home." Her eyebrow arched and she wondered if something specific had happened and I assured her no but that I just "wasn't feeling very good about myself."

Anna must have heard me say this because this is what I found when I came home from work that night, exhausted and spent.


As Heidi pointed out, I shouldn't feel bad about myself because I had a hand in helping mold this child who knows enough at age nine the thing that I still frequently forget at age 39 - always like yourself! Much of that for me is an old pattern that I'm working on changing, but still, I'm glad that I've helped arm her with that kind of internal monologue.

So here's to a reboot today. We're going down to Indianola for the National Balloon Classic and good times with friends and may-as-well-be-family. I slept till 10:30 and skipped my cardio because clearly, I needed the unconsciousness more than the aerobic workout. There's always tomorrow.

The right thing to do

The last 24 hours has been a jumbled up mixed bag of emotions. We headed down to Des Moines last night in less than ideal weather to attend the Public Hearing on House Joint Resolution 6 at the State Capitol. The house was packed as we expected and many, many people were signed up to speak both for and against a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would strip not only marriage rights away from LGBT Iowans, but also make any union that they could possibly aspire for unrecognized in the eyes of the state. Some of the testimony was so uplifting and some of it was downright disgusting. Iowa at its best and worst was on display last night. That said, everyone in the gallery was civil to each other for the most part, despite the fact that we vehemently disagreed on the subject matter. That, folks, is what Iowa is all about.

Both sides got equal time and although she had signed up to speak, Heidi did not get a chance to. She did publish her prepared remarks on her blog which I encourage everyone to read. I was even interviewed very briefly by the Des Moines Register and made the article in this morning's paper. I expressed my doubts that any minds were changed by the testimonies given that night, all the while hoping beyond hope that perhaps some of those that had declared support for the amendment would have a change of heart.

I knew that this wouldn't happen. With 56 Republican co-sponsors, the bill was a shoo-in to pass. What I didn't expect were 3 Democratic representatives to join in with the GOP and vote for the resolution, passing 62-37 with one Republican representative absent. These three representatives are, in my eyes, more worried about saving their own political skins than they are about doing the right thing. When it comes to this issue, those that won't stand up and do what's right are no different from the Republicans.

Conversely, we have our own Beth Wessel-Kroeschell who has fearlessly and consistently led the charge against the amendment. She has a solidly Democratic district so I'm not sure that politically such a stand is much of a risk to her, but my appreciation of her continued support cannot be understated.

Still, despite the fact that the outcome was expected and I knew Beth would be a loud and vocal advocate, I reacted poorly to the outcome. I was sad and depressed after work. I wondered if it was even worth it to go down last night. Clearly, if these legislators could not be moved by these stories, is there anything that will work? Was there anybody that could voice support of the amendment without quoting from the Bible or referencing the Judeo-Christian God? There were times last night that I felt like I was in Sunday School, being forced to listen to Bible verses. It made me want to say a la Eddie Izzard "Corinthians letter to St. Paul, Chapter one, verses one to a million. FUCK OFF!" Tonight, I wanted to throw in the towel because it seemed like it just wasn't worth it anymore. We can't change their minds and they can't change ours. And now that they're in control, what can we possibly do?

But no, that's not what we do. The other side will work tirelessly and now they have momentum so they have no reason to let up. That means we have to keep working and educating and speaking our minds. I've been thinking a lot this week about the phrase "having the courage of your convictions." And that's what it boils down to for me. Talking the talk at this point is not enough, at least not for me. I have to be willing to give up a weeknight to drive down to Des Moines in a snowstorm to be one more body in support of all my LGBT friends. I have to be willing to be interviewed for the paper and not care who might see it. I will likely annoy a lot of people and sound like a broken record but damn it, this is too important.

As Heidi said, my marriage will never be voted on - who are you to say that some people's should be?

Two steps forward, one step back. That's how this kind of stuff goes. I know that ultimately it's going to take an US Supreme Court decision to settle this once and for all. Until then, I will continue to work tirelessly in the ways that I am able. What I will not do any longer is listen to any argument in this debate that invokes religious fundamentalism or the Christian God. At this point, it should be like using Nazis in an argument. You do it, you automatically lose.

This is my last word on this particular chapter but you can bet your last dollar I'll still be fighting for it. The problem with being passionate is you open yourself up to being hurt, but it's better than not feeling at all. And as Carly Simon says, it's the right thing to do.

She ROCKS

I had kind of a fair-to-middling day (at best) yesterday. No real reasons, just the way it worked out. Heidi, on the other hand, had what can only be described as a fucking fantastic day. The Rainbow Awards are put together by Elisa Rolle and are. as Heidi put it, pretty much the LGBT fiction equivalent of the RITAs. The winners were announced yesterday and Heidi was all over the place. Heidi's post is here, but I wanted to post the results here as well.

Best Gay Erotic Contemporary, First Place - Special Delivery
Best Gay Fantasy, First Place - Hero and Miles and the Magic Flute. (They tied each other.)
Best Character, Third Place - Special Delivery
Best Writing Style, First Place - Special Delivery
Best Overall Gay Fiction, Second Place - Special Delivery

In addition to this, both Special Delivery and Double Blind were listed by Sarah Frantz at Dear Author as two of the best of 2010.

I am so amazingly proud of her that words can't possibly express it. I frequently say that she is living her dream, something that many people wish they could be doing but for whatever reason are not. She does all this while being an amazing mother to our 9-year-old and the best partner in my life I could ever hope to have. I love her so very very much and couldn't be happier that her dreams are finally coming true.

And hats off to Special Delivery, the little book that could. As I've said before, I had a small hand in making sure the book got finished and boy, am I glad I pushed her on it now!

Hooray for the man love! I never thought it would help pay the bills!

(she has three more books on the docket for 2011, the first of which will be out in February.)

Last night a pharmacist saved my life

The title may be a bit melodramatic, but indulge me if you will.

We've had a trying few days around our house. Heidi's chronic pain flared up pretty badly over the weekend which saw us going to the urgent care clinic, redirected to the ER and then ultimately calling our family friend and doctor from when we lived in Washington to get some relief from what was the worst bout of pain she's had in a while. In the midst of all this, a symptom which Heidi had never exhibited prior to this weekend showed up. It started as involuntary twitching in her left leg and gradually got worse and worse until by Sunday night, she was having full body spasms. These twitches went away when she slept and could be almost "willed away" if she concentrated hard enough. But they were still undeniably there.

On Monday, we went to the physical therapist and the chiropractor. Both provided a great deal of relief, but after a few hours, the twitches were back. The chiropractor recommended following up with our regular MD, saying something about "brain stem lesions" and other such things that sent my brain which, left to its own devices will always concoct the worst case scenario, into hyperdrive. His thought was that the MD would refer us to neurology which seemed appropriate to me.

So we did just that - we visited our MD yesterday and he did just what we expected and referred us to neurology. He sent Heidi back over to the hospital for some bloodwork to rule out some of the more obvious things. I had left work to accompany her to her appointment and she sent me back to work as my presence at blood draws is not essential. I did, however, leave her in a wheelchair in the front lobby of the hospital. Jeez, what kind of husband abandons his wheelchair bound wife to go back to work? What a cad.

That was, until going back to work caused a light bulb to go on over my head.

I'll admit that I had thought of it previously, but had dismissed it. Heidi takes Effexor for the fibromyalgia-like pain that she has. She takes a mid-range dose as that's the dose where you get the effects for pain vs. the mood-elevating effects of its approved indication for treating depression and anxiety. She also takes trazodone at night, which is an old time antidepressant that we don't use anymore because the doses needed for effective treatment of depression are so sedating you end up looking like something out of The Walking Dead. However, it does have a place in treating mild insomnia which is what she'd been taking it for. She had been taking 25mg of trazodone at night, every night and had recently upped her dose to 50mg. In addition to this, she had been tweeking her dose of Effexor upward as her pain had been bad.

What's important to know is that both of these drugs affect a neurotransmitter called serotonin. What they do, in effect, is keep serotonin in the neural synapse instead of allowing it to be taken back into the neuron for reuse. This is what leads to the mood elevating effects you see with these drugs. Why the hell this works for pain is a fuck-if-I-know type thing, but it does. Sometimes, when you combine these drugs, you can get a drug interaction which leads to an excess of serotonin. Basically think Duran Duran's "Too Much Information" but instead "Too Much Serotonin."

This condition is what's known as "serotonin syndrome." When I looked up the interaction between Effexor and trazodone, I found the following:

Symptoms of the serotonin syndrome may include ... neuromuscular abnormalities such as hyperreflexia, myoclonus, tremor, rigidity, and ataxia.

It was a long shot - especially at the low dose of trazodone she was taking and there were many other symptoms she didn't have, but something easy and worth a try. I had her stop her trazodone and the doctor was already having her back her Effexor dose down to 150mg. The half life (the amount of time it takes half of the drug to be eliminated from your system) of trazodone is 3-6 hours and it's generally accepted that for a drug to completely clear your system takes 5 half-lifes. So if my theory held any water at all, about 30 hours from when she took her last dose of trazodone, her symptoms should really start abating.

We're past that point now, and her twitching is all but gone. She's gone from needing a wheelchair to get around to nearly baseline in that time. I'll never be able to prove definitively that I was right, but in my mind, I was. Nothing else changed. And as House always says, it fits. Mostly, I'm just glad that she's on the mend.

I always get ticked by the way the movies and TV portray pharmacists - you know, as nerds behind a counter without a single ounce of social skills. They are invariably balding middle age men with thick glasses that don't seem to be using their brains. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do this kind of stuff every day. Mostly, it is mundane stuff that is easy to catch and any pharmacist worth their salt will see it. But every now and then, I get something like this. And it makes all those years of fancy schooling worth every penny.

So hug your pharmacist (especially if I am your pharmacist - I like hugs) because some day, they might just save your life. Or at least stop you from twitching.

Get the point? Good. Let's dance.

Suit shopping for Frankenstein

At the end of the month, my sister's getting married. Not terribly surprisingly, I am invited to the wedding. However, I'm also IN the wedding. I haven't been a proper stand-up part of a wedding in a long time - probably not since I was the best man in my brother's wedding in 2004 (not counting my own wedding in 1997, of course.) This wedding is such a cool undertaking. Not only is it wedding, but it's also a New Year's Eve party. It's also at the historic Englert Theater in downtown Iowa City. From what I have gathered, there aren't traditional groomsmen and bridesmaids either, but rather an inclusion of family and friends in an unconventional way. And to further set it apart from other weddings, the guys are NOT wearing tuxes. And there was much rejoicing. All that's required of me to wear for this wedding is a black suit. This means I'm going to have to purchase a black suit as I don't own one. So today Heidi and I went suit shopping.

I own one suit and I think I've worn it twice. Once was to a job interview and the other time might have been to a wedding - I can't recall. I always say that I would rather imbibe a quart of hemlock than have a job that requires me to wear a suit to work every day. Hell, the job I have now doesn't even require me to wear a tie. I don't know what my aversion to suits is - I imagine it has a lot to do with societal expectations which I both like to meet and don't like to meet. I don't mind wearing a suit to something like my sister's wedding, but as an item in my everyday wardrobe? Forget that shit.

We went to a local place to look and we were done before we even got started since their low-end suits started at $350. Their higher end ones went up to $899!! That's almost a thousand dollars! I can't imagine any situation in which I would spend nearly a grand on one particular outfit. So we went out to JC Penney and looked there. What we found there was much more affordable. I had a lot of different brands to choose from that looked pretty good on me. I even found, after initially resisting, that a vest really DOES make a suit look better. There was one hiccup though.

My torso and arms are just too damn long.

Even 42L suit coat was short in the arms and sadly, that was as far up as most of them went. Well, there was one 44 regular that I tried on and that one was so tightly cut in the back that I couldn't button it. Those of you who know it wasn't because I was trying to pull the damn thing over a huge beer gut. I was also reminded of why I shy away from formal dress shirts. My neck is 17 1/2" and my arms are 36/37. I found VERY few shirts with that kind of arm length. The fact of the matter is I am just freakishly tall and I guess that even at 38 years of age, I'm still a bit disproportionate. Apparently, I'm still in my "awkward phase."

I think what we're going to do is go down to Dillard's in Des Moines tomorrow and have an actual salesperson help us. I need some kind of happy medium between the budget busting suits at the downtown store vs. the do-it-yourself approach of JC Penney. I bought my last suit at Dillard's and it served me just fine.

One thing I will say is that I looked much better in a suit than I remembered - my wife reminded me of that several times while I was trying them on. Despite the fact that I was bringing out the animal in her, I still would never actively seek a job that required me to wear them daily.

Some things you just can't compromise on.

Smokey Row write-in

I spent a large chunk of today in Oskaloosa, IA. It was the site of the NaNoWriMo write-in that the Central Iowa Authors (CIA) was putting on today. It was kind of nice to get out of town for a bit and then there was the added bonus for Anna that she got to go see her grandma who took her to Jumpin' Jim's Jungle in Ottumwa for a pre-birthday celebration.

But Heidi and I spent all our time today at Smokey Row. Smokey Row is an Iowa based coffee shop that started out in Pleasantville, IA in 1998. Since then, it's opened three more locations, the most recent being in Des Moines. It is one of the more frequent locations for CIA write-ins during NaNo. It's also one of our favorite spots in all of Des Moines. What Smokey Row does right (in addition to coffee and food) is atmosphere. Everything feels so retro, right down to the metal signs advertising products like Hires Root Beer, Folger's Coffee (celebrating 100 years, 1850-1950) and Pepsi-Cola. It has high ceilings, wooden floors and copious amounts of seating. The Oskaloosa Smokey Row even has a stage for live entertainment. All in all, you really can't beat it as far as central Iowa coffee locations go.

Heidi wrote pretty much all day. She's writing not one but TWO 50,000+ word novels for NaNo this month. The woman is amazingly prolific. You can follow her progress on the official NaNo project here (the 3rd book in the Special Delivery series for those that love those characters) and the second one here. Me, I was mostly along for the ride. And the coffee.

You might think that I had a bit of a boring day at Smokey Row, surrounded by writers and me with nothing to write. I thought about blogging, but the wireless was so inconsistent and crappy that I quickly gave up on that idea. I suppose I could have used my phone, but the mere thought of typing a whole blog post on my phone sends me into apoplexy. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen.

I did get a lot of reading done. With a bit of discipline and stamina, I'll be able to get to 25 books by the end of the year without too much difficulty. There was also a nap involved. I put my iPod on and since Heidi was sitting on the floor with the laptop, I snuggled right up against her and fell into what I would consider a rather deep sleep for a public place. I told Heidi to jab me in the kidney if I snored. I must not have or else she had her headphones on and didn't hear me. I think that was probably my favorite part of the whole day, truth be told.

After the write-in, we met my mother-in-law and her husband who had brought Anna back up for a small birthday party, complete with a horsehead cake. Heidi's brother Hans and his wife Alicia were also there, as was our doctor friend from our Washington days, Lynette. It was good conversation and nice to see everyone again.

We probably spent a little too much money but you have to live. The folks in CIA are some of the nicest people I know and it's always fun to get together with them. Not many of them live in Ames so it's always a treat to see them.

We have a birthday party to attend to tomorrow with eight 3rd graders in attendance. The birthday girl doesn't officially turn 9 until Monday, but the weekend has been the chance to get the celebrating done. I still can hardly believe she's nine, but time continues to march on.

An aside: I'm extremely proud of the fact that we are on day 13 of NaBloPoMo and I haven't missed a day. Last year, I missed a couple days but they were offset by the fact that on two days, I posted twice. It's harder to blog every day than you might think! The last few days I have been getting the posts in just under the wire, reminding me of my graduate school days when the lab reports were due at midnight on Friday night each week. So far, I'm happy with the quality of the posts and while some are definitely more throwaway than others, it's been a fun exercise in daily writing. I could not do this every month, but it's a fun experiment to try.

Hello you fool, I love you

When I was taking Anna to school this morning, Roxette's "Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave)" came on. (An aside: any song with a parenthetical portion is automatically better than it should be. It sure helped out a boatload of Samantha Fox songs.) I hadn't heard this song in forever and I had forgotten how much I really like it. It's kind of tied to a road trip I made to Kansas City in 1991 with a group of friends. It was all over the radio at the time, riding the wave of "Joyride" which had been a pretty big success despite the fact that I was always a bit lukewarm to it.

But more than that, everything Roxette will always remind me of the woman with whom I've shared my life for the last 15 years. Now that I think about it, today is probably 15 years ago to the day that we met. Heidi and I met in early November 1995 at Jeff Tadsen's housewarming party - a party that both of us almost missed for various reasons and had that happened, who knows WHAT the world would look like now. But the reason that Roxette and all their Swedish cheese will have the Heidi connection is because Roxette was pretty much the ONLY pop music that Heidi listened to when I met her. Was Roxette even having hits in 1995? I can't remember. In a sea of Deep Forest and Clannad and Enya and other what we refer to as "woo-woo" music, there was Roxette. Clearly, I had work to do.

It wasn't because I thought her choice of Roxette was a bad one. I always liked Roxette enough, but never enough to actually purchase any of their albums. They were a staple of my senior year of high school, with hits like "The Look"(Mary, I owned the cassingle of that song!), "Dangerous", and "Dressed for Success" which my friend Holly always referred to as "Undressed for Some Sex." I was less impressed with the song "Joyride" as I found it rather annoying but all the other singles from the album Joyride were pleasant, especially the previously mentioned "Fading Like A Flower."

Within the first couple months of dating (which commenced after the three weeks it took me to call her after our initial meeting - YES, SHE STILL MARRIED ME. It's amazing.) I had made for her a mix tape of the definitive Madonna songs. Now, that tape would be woefully incomplete. Within a few days, she had responded in kind with a corresponding mix tape of the definitive Roxette. It was with that tape that I was exposed to some of Roxette's deeper album cuts and how I discovered what would become my favorite Roxette songs. They were all dubbed from the tapes of Roxette's albums which blew me away because I thought that dubbing from a tape had gone the way of the dodo bird by that time. I wasted no time in going out to the now-defunct BJ's Records in Iowa City and I picked up every last one of Roxette's albums for her on CD. If I recall correctly, it was part of a Valentine's Day present. And as a bonus, inside the copy of Crash! Boom! Bang! was a live bootleg album. This excited me more than anything else and Heidi had a good poker face and put up with my excitement because she has never really been a fan of concert recordings and really couldn't have possibly cared less.

But on that tape was the Roxette song "Run To You" which, at that point in my life, spoke very strongly to me and really summed up how I felt about the fledgling relationship we had at the time. I didn't know there was a video for it until just this morning. Naturally all Roxette videos on YouTube have embedding disabled (seriously?) but I did find it elsewhere.


Roxette - Run To You

I don't know what happened to "The Definitive Roxette" mix tape. I know I wouldn't have consciously gotten rid of it. It's probably around here somewhere just waiting for me to find it.

It's pretty safe to say that had I not met Heidi, I wouldn't have spent the last hour listening to Roxette. And honestly, I can't imagine this morning without it.

Hello you fool. I still love you. Happy 15th anniversary of meeting. Ish.

The ghost of Halloween past

I don't know about anyone else, but it seems like Halloween has been an all-weekend affair this year. I guess that's what you get when you have trick-or-treating on Friday night and Halloween doesn't actually happen till Sunday night. Surprisingly, we really weren't all that into Halloween this year. A lot of that had to do with the fact that October was an amazingly draining month so by the time we got to the end of it, we really lacked the ability to put something fantastic together. We had a few friends over, but we didn't even dress up this year which is VERY unlike us. So since there are no new pictures of a costumed us, I raided my hard drive and found a bunch of photos from Halloweens past.

This is from the first Halloween party we ever had. We lacked the space for it so Jeff hosted it with us at his place. We went as Gomez and Morticia Addams. My sister Wendy went as Wednesday Addams but I can't find the picture of the three of us. She killed it as Christina Ricci's version of Wednesday. We weren't too shabby ourselves.

1999 found us hosting our first Halloween party in our first house. We went as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Heidi made our costumes and I do believe we pulled it of pretty well, even though we had to be a bespectacled Dorothy and Scarecrow.

Never to be outdone, Jeff came to that party as Joan Crawford accepting her Oscar in her nightgown. Jeff, you have a level of courage that I can only aspire toward.

My brother and sister were living in Iowa City that year, so they came to the party as well. On the right is Ryan doing his classic Unabomber costume which was based on the famous artist's composite sketch. My sister arrived as "the new Jan Brady" complete with blond hair sticking out from her black Afro wig. Perhaps two of my favorite costumes ever.

This is from 2002 - Anna's first Halloween. She was a ladybug that couldn't stop sucking on her pacifier.

In 2004, Anna had to wear the cat costume that was worn by Heidi and all her sisters at some point. So I decided since Anna was going as a cat, I'd go as a mouse. That thing hanging around my neck is a picture of cheese but it's flipped around so it just looks stupid.

2008 we started doing Halloween parties again in earnest. Anna was Princess Leia that year on a "diplomatic" mission to Alderaan.

That was also the same year that I shaved my beard and went as David Tennant as The Doctor. Heidi went as the scariest thing we could think of - President Sarah Palin. Looking back, my resemblance to the Doctor is only vague at best, but I had a good time.


Last year's Alien chestburster victim is the best costume I've ever done. It was a little bit technically difficult to rig up, but once I figured it out, the rest was easy. I got more comments on that costume than any other.

Heidi was a bit less inspired that year - going as the "H" Scrabble tile. Anna was Coraline from the movie version - complete with blue hair.

Jeff arrived in full Glinda regalia that year. I think that we both peaked in terms of costume ideas that year. No one does Halloween drag like Jeff. And it led to the very surreal picture below.

So yeah, although Anna dressed up this year, we didn't. Next year, we'll have to make up for it.

Vacation reflections

It's the last day of vacation. Tomorrow, I head back to work and back into the real world. It's not quite going to be the real world until Heidi gets back sometime on Thursday, but it's the end of lazy days in front of the TV and yard work afternoons with my dad. No more staying up till 2:30 in the morning and sleeping late. I'm sad to see it end but I'm also ready for the return of my daily rhythm - well, as much rhythm as I can generate in a job that has rotating shifts.

I didn't blog nearly as much as I wanted to. I didn't get the bathroom recaulked but will try to do so this afternoon. I did get to meet up with Matt and Bess one day for lunch which was very fun and, as usual, full of unpredictable conversation topics. I was massively productive outside with the always appreciated help of my dad. I reconnected with my daughter - not that we were suffering this huge disconnect, but being her sole caregiver gives you a glimpse into the things that she usually splits between us. She missed her mom but learned that, as a certain Gloria Gaynor said, she will survive.

The thing I would excise from this past week if I could would be the unanticipated arrival of Operation: Keep Blair Alive Until Heidi Gets Home. After spending approximately 48 hours during which time we saw him exactly once, he is quarantined in my office where he is recovering from a respiratory infection brought on by his extremely low white blood cell count which is the direct result of his recently diagnosed multiple myeloma. He's on the mend - eating and drinking and getting stronger. Still, facing the very real possibility of having only three more months with him is a hard truth we're still coming to terms with. We do love him even though, as Heidi said, he is the fucking bitchiest cat that ever lived.

I feel ready to get back to it, even though I'm sure that I'll miss my free time the instant I get back to work. That's a natural reaction. I have had a lot of good times this week even though Heidi has been gone for the entirety of it. I have learned a few things over the last week though.

1) If I did nothing else, I could almost keep up with preventing the house from falling into complete disarray.

2) I can give Blair medication without the help of anyone as long as it is a liquid medicine with a total volume of 2 mL or less.

3) It helps to have an agenda. Otherwise, you can spend massive amounts of time at the computer accomplishing next to nothing.

4) It's amazing how the absence of one person can make the dishes so much more manageable.

5) There is such a thing as watching too much Hoarders.

I've been beyond lazy this morning. I got laundry put away but I can't motivate myself to do anything else. Even writing this blog post seemed like a Herculean effort. But I suppose that since this IS the last day of vacation I should cut myself some slack. The good thing is that there are fun things on the horizon. I'm headed down to Des Moines on Wednesday night with my mom to go see 9 to 5: The Musical while my father does Anna duty. And then on the weekend of the 22nd I'm headed to Kansas City to meet up with my friend Jason who will be in town for a conference. We'll be hitting Evil Dead: The Musical and I'm looking forward to just hanging out. We started planning this back in July and it seemed like forever away then. Hard to believe it's just around the corner now.

Today is also my 13th wedding anniversary. It's a little bit bittersweet because Heidi is not here. She is on her way to Austin today as she and Marie make their way back to Iowa. I love her so very very much and can't wait for her return.

But for now, I'm going to go see if I can find the caulk. Because there is caulking to be done on that upstairs tub. The caulk just looks terrible. We'll see if I can make the caulk look more appealing. And yes, those last four sentences are there specifically to make a certain reader laugh like a 12-year-old boy.

37 years young

My most favorite Virgo in the entire world is turning 37 today.

In the immortal words of Violet Newstead, "we're gonna need a special locker for the hat."

There's not much more to say that I haven't already said in these pages, but what the hell, I'll just say it again. 15 years ago, this woman very unexpectedly entered my life after what I refer to as "the summer of my discontent" and when my life was rather rudderless and I knew I was barking up the wrong tree professionally but lacked the courage to make any changes. I was smitten from the start and she pretty much immediately became the anchor and rock that she is to this day. We fit together like a hand in a glove, but have somehow managed not to lose our own identities over the years as well.

We've seen a lot over the years - both good and bad - and have weathered the changes that time inevitably brings to anyone, but the thing that remains constant is my love and devotion to her.

So happy birthday to Heidi. Here's to many more years and many more books of man-on-man action that are also very sweet - just like her.

Go harass her on Twitter - she loves it.

Year of 25 Books: #6 - Double Blind

For those of you that are not our Facebook friends our follow us on Twitter, Heidi's third full length novel in 4 months, Double Blind, was released today. Of course, I read this book in its beta draft and then was required had a chance to do the galley proof a few weeks back. It hit the internet a week ago Friday in both paperback and eBook format and already, it's already climbing the Dreamspinner best seller charts (#9 overall today.) I thought since 1) I just got done working overnights and 2) I'm a bit behind in my challenge to read 25 books in the year I would do something on the blog to celebrate its release.

Double Blind is the sequel/spin-off to her well-received novel Special Delivery. When she finished writing Special Delivery, Heidi declared to me that Randy really needed his own story. Randy enters Special Delivery towards the end of its second act, and I'll admit, the first time I read it, I didn't really find him incredibly sympathetic - at least not initially. But I was willing to go with it - her instincts are rarely wrong when it comes to her writing. And so Double Blind was born, written in November of 2009 - the month to which we are used to losing Heidi to NaNaWriMo.

Double Blind opens in Herod's Casino in Las Vegas with Randy watching a video feed of Ethan Ellison at the roulette table. He is betting on black over and over again, and he is also losing over and over again. Randy is well known for his ability to read people, he makes a bet with Billy Herod, the owner of the casino, that he knows exactly what Ethan's story is. But has Randy finally met his match in Ethan?

While the book is, as most of Heidi's books are, a romance between two people - and, more abstractly, four people as Sam and Mitch from Special Delivery are back for an encore performance - it also throws Mafia machinations and Vegas' games of chance into the mix. There's quite a bit of poker in the book, and for those that might be afraid to wade into it because of the poker - trust me, you don't have to worry. The rules of the game are explained very well and in such a way as they contribute to the story. Somehow, even when explaining the rules to a game, Heidi still manages to show rather than tell.

I mentioned that Double Blind is a sequel of sorts to Special Delivery, but what I love about Double Blind is that it doesn't suffer from what I refer to as "The Mummy 2 Syndrome." It resists the temptation to take what worked in its predecessor and dress it up with more bells and whistles until it collapses under its own weight. Rather than rehash the past, what happens is that the familiar shows up and goes off in new directions. Consequently, it's not essential to have read Special Delivery to enjoy Double Blind (although reading the former is highly recommended.)

As I said when I reviewed Libby Drew's State of Mind, I really like it when the main characters in m/m fiction read like real guys as opposed to (as Mrs. Giggles said in her review of Special Delivery) "little girls with a pee-pee." Nothing bugs me more than seeing these men act as if they were somehow not men - as if by virtue of their orientation, their masculinity necessarily has to be ratcheted down several notches. This bounces me out of the story and mostly just makes me angry. So when the characters seem authentically written as men, I'm in. The flip side of that is that the emotional connection between men, regardless of orientation or the presence of absence of sex, is the draw for me in these novels, and that can sometimes seem not-very-mannish. Randy even thinks this during a particularly intense scene with Mitch "What the fuck, guys don’t talk like this, not even gay guys!" But as I have said a million times, although that may be the rule, it doesn't mean that it HAS to be that way. In fact, I feel like we would all better served if we banished the kind of statement that Randy made from our collective definition of masculinity. Men of all orientations have so few examples of real emotional connection and if m/m fiction can provide this, so much the better. Too bad that straight men (who, arguably, could use the education the most) will be the least likely to read it. If anyone ever asks me why I enjoy reading m/m fiction, those are the reasons I cite.

And even if I weren't married to the author, I think Double Blind is a more than capable entry into the genre.

Back from the dead

It's Monday morning and while everyone else's work week is starting, mine is over. Well, until Wednesday at least. I worked the last 5 overnight shifts and am dead dog tired. I have a proof to finish today for Dreamspinner and I have a date with my daughter for ice cream after school, but first, I must sleep.

I'll be back with some posts this week, but in the meantime, take a look at this review of Heidi's Special Delivery. It is frickin' awesome.

She's on a roll

Heidi got the cover art today for her second novel, Special Delivery, which is due in February of 2010 from Dreamspinner Press. She sent me the photo in my email today to show me and I have to admit that it's pretty much EXACTLY like I pictured it, only in my mind's eye, they were looking in the other direction.

I don't want to steal any of Heidi's thunder, but this is one of my favorite stories she has ever written. The fact that it's a gay romance and that I am not exactly the target audience for this book is really beside the point. I know that many think that I like everything that she writes and, well, they would be right. The fallacy that many people fall for is that me liking all her stuff is in the fine print of the marriage license. Nothing could be further from the truth. Naturally, I'm going to be biased, but there's no guarantee that whatever comes out of her iMac is going to appeal to me.

But Special Delivery is a little bit special to me, because it's the only thing that I'm aware of that I really and truly encouraged her to finish. I don't remember the origin of the story exactly, although I think it started out as a short piece that quickly outgrew the short story format and graduated to novel length. She had an early draft that featured Sam and Mitch, but the set up was completely different and, as will frequently happen in first drafts, she wrote herself into a corner she couldn't find the way out of. But I always liked it, even though it didn't really have any conflict to speak of and the characters were quickly running out of things to do. But it had Kylie references and an iPod named after someone from one of my all-time favorite movies and well, I was sold. But she had hit the wall and couldn't find the way out, so that seemed to be the end of Sam & Mitch.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

No sooner had she given up on it than I was on her case to pick it back up again. My refrain was always "I wanna know what happens next!" And so she picked it back up again. Aided in no small part by our trip out west in June, she has crafted what is not just a romance, but also a physical and emotional journey. In many senses, it's a road book. I told her this early on and I stand by my assertion.

See, here's the thing. The fact that the sexuality of these characters is not the same as mine doesn't matter one bit. I end up relating to them anyway because Heidi does this incredible job of making the characters so REAL. There are conflicts and motivations and crazy risks taken. She manages to bring you along every step of the way. I feel for these characters, through every twist and turn and up and down. So much of what is experienced is part of the human condition, regardless of orientation.

I always say that I like her contemporaries more than her historicals because I like the soundtrack for the contemporaries better. She always borrows liberally from my iTunes collection - something she did quite extensively during the writing and revisions of Special Delivery, as well as her NaNoWriMo novel, Double Blind. Our musical tastes are overall compatible, but have only thin areas of overlap. So when she's coming down to my computer with the flash drive asking for Olivia Newton-John songs, somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good.

For all the communities and groups that Heidi's a part of that center around writing, I think that if you asked her, she'd agree that writing is ultimately a very solitary activity. Even as her husband, I have only been able to be involved in it insomuch as I read everything she writes, do copy edits on early drafts, and the itsy bitsy detail that I earn the salary that has made her pursuit of this dream just that much easier. But as far as being directly involved, as a rule I'm not. But with Special Delivery, I was. In my own small, but direct way, I helped make this story come to life.

Hero

This is the first of many chances I have to pimp my wife's brand spanking new novel, Hero, available from Dreamspinner Press as of 12/4/2009. It now has a completely finished cover and is in the "coming soon" section of the web site.

Here's the cover art, done by talented artist Paul Richmond.

As I said, it will be available in paperback and eBook form on 12/4/09. The link to buy will be here. You can bet I'll be back on 12/4/09 with another post. In the meantime, if you're interested, you can read an excerpt here.

And don't worry, Mariah Carey's "Hero" will not be playing over the credits of the LOGO made-for-tv movie. (not actually in the works, but one can dream!)

Looping

I had a really hard time sleeping last night. My work schedule has been so wonky - overnights last weekend and nothing but evenings this week - that I fear that Monday will be a total loss while I try to get back to normal. But last night was kind of different. I was caught in a mental loop that I couldn't short circuit, no matter how much my rational brain talked to it. It was as if the part of my brain that had decided to ramp itself up was willfully ignoring the part of my brain that was trying to talk some sense into it. The fact that I finally fell asleep without the help of chemicals is miraculous and a testament to either my improving ability to override that part of my brain or to the fact that I was much more tired than I thought I was.

I slept till 10AM this morning and in the light of day, things are not nearly what they seemed at 1:30AM. It is times like these that I can seriously feel the years being shaved off my life and know that I have no one to blame but myself. So we chalk it up as a loss and try for a win the next time.

In much better news, Heidi is now the author of not one but TWO published works. Special Delivery will be out on Dreamspinner Press in February of 2010. Here's her author page which hopefully will eventually have links to both of her books. And you can bet I will be pimping the hell out of them here.

It's Vegas, baby!

No sooner has Heidi got one book sold and another submitted for consideration, she's prepping for another one that she's going to tackle during National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short). And even though the actual writing of it doesn't start until November 1st, she's already knee deep in research. This one is set in Las Vegas, a town which we only blew through during our trip out west this summer, and deals specifically with the game of poker, which she knew literally nothing about other than it was played with cards.

Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to educate yourself on these kinds of things, and one of the ways she's been doing it is watching a shitload of movies set in Las Vegas. The tricky thing is that it has to be current Las Vegas, not the Vegas of the 50s or even the Vegas of the 70s. There was some VERY brief talk of taking a quick trip out there over our anniversary weekend, and obviously since we're just finishing up that weekend, we didn't do it. In hindsight, it was a very wise decision considering all that's happened with the car and some other behind-the-scenes stuff I won't get into here. But anyway, short of actually going to Vegas, watching movies set in Vegas is kind of the next best thing. So last night we watched The Cooler and Lucky You. Both were subpar overall but what we really enjoyed was the depiction of Las Vegas. Vegas is almost a character in the movie itself - especially in The Cooler.

Las Vegas is not a city that we ever thought we would want to visit, it was kind of an afterthought on our vacation this summer. The only reason we really went there was because we were looking for some place to stop between L.A. and Glenwood Springs, CO. Truthfully, we should have stopped somewhere in Utah, but it worked out as getting stuck in L.A. rush hour traffic made getting out of L.A. a 2+ hour endeavor on its own, causing us to pull into Vegas at 10pm. Seriously, the drive into Vegas on I-15 after dark, seeing the lights of the Strip in the distance - one of my favorite memories of the trip. I vividly remember that "I Love New York" was playing at that time and although it wasn't New York, it seemed appropriate driving music.

Heidi was pleasantly surprised by Las Vegas. She had never been sold on Vegas, fearing it to be a bigger version of Reno, a city she really hated. My folks have a time share in Vegas and keep trying to get us to go out for a week, and she has never wanted to. But after spending some time there - I think we were there for about 12 hours, which was just about the same amount of time Jeff and I were there for the Confessions Tour - she began to see the draw. And now that she's writing a book set there, well, let's just say that she really wants to get out there.

I have to say that I both understand and don't understand the draw of Vegas. In an attempt to replicate a Vegas experience this weekend, we headed down to Prairie Meadows casino in Altoona, IA, where we lost 20 bucks in under 5 minutes on the roulette wheel. I will admit to having fantasies of hitting it big and coming home with thousands of dollars, but I probably have as much likelihood of winning the lottery that I never play. Mostly because of the financial craziness that is such an omnipresent part of my life, that would be an easy way to fix that. But trust me, my mother's first child is no dummy and I realize the folly of thinking that. The house always wins. Always. And the only way out from under financial craziness is hard work and discipline, not hoping for a miracle that will never come.

But let me tell you, if Kylie sets up residency in Vegas as is rumored right now, I'll figure out a way to get there. Because, as Kylie says, it's Vegas baby!

Dessert dishes

Today is our twelfth wedding anniversary. As Janet Jackson might say, they said it wouldn't last, we had to prove them wrong, although no one ever actually said it wouldn't last except for Jeff who always good-naturedly teases us about how it's lasted longer than the six weeks he gave it. Regardless, here we are, twelve years later.

We're fond of telling the story of how we chose an October wedding date in the middle of the semester because we were really wanting a cool and crisp fall day for our wedding. We didn't get it - it was humid and in the 80s but nothing like a June or July wedding would have been. But it was still a good day, as you can tell.

Sometimes people ask me what the key to a successful marriage is like I'm some sort of expert on it. That's really not something that's easy to pin down. I will frequently respond (only half-jokingly) "It's because we know how to fight. And then we know how to move on." There's a lot of truth to that. I wonder about couples who say that they never fight. If you never fight, are you passionate about ANYTHING? Is there any intimacy whatsoever? It seems like so many people go to such great lengths in all their relationships to avoid fights, and yeah, it's probably smart not to actively seek them out, but as a friend of mine once said to me "there can be no intimacy without offense." There is so much truth in that statement - it applies easily to marriages, but also applies to close relationships of all sorts.

But if you REALLY want to know what the barometer for the health of our marriage is, I'll tell you straight-faced that it is dessert dishes.

We got a set of four glass dessert dishes as a gift for our wedding. Over the years, they have fallen victim to accidents or gravity or whatever and several of them have broken. Heidi and I have joked that when the last dessert dish breaks, it's over. We are down to the last one, and consequently, it has been treated with kid gloves for quite some time now.

So this year, for our anniversary, she got the best present we could possibly hope for: peace of mind.


That's right, four new dessert dishes. These are actually her mom's (Heidi remembers them from her childhood) and in acquiring these, I told her that she has purchased us at LEAST 12 more years.

But in all seriousness, the dessert dishes are indicative of something bigger. I will never, in a million years figure out how I got so lucky as to find the woman I married. She has stood by me through the worst versions of myself and been there with me through all the good times and bad. We have had many great times, weathered many storms and have produced another fantastic human being in the course of our relationship. She has helped me find the comfort in being who I am, warts and all, no questions, no apologies. I'm still working on the no apologies part, but as I am fond of saying, I'm a work in progress.

Happy anniversary, Heidi. And thanks for the dishes. I promise to keep washing them for at least as long as they're around.

(and if you want to read Heidi's companion piece to this, which I will freely admit made me tear up right here in my office chair while I listened to Janet Jackson's "Throb", go here.)

(As always, our anniversary coincides with National Coming Out Day which we find fitting considering our passionate support of LGBT rights. To all of our LGBT brothers and sisters, whether you've been out for decades or are taking those first tentative steps out of the closet, we salute you. Your bravery inspires people everywhere to be who they are with no apologies.)

The call

For as long as I have known my wife, she has been writing. For nearly that long, she has been trying to publish her works. She has been working on various manuscripts over the course of the time we've been married - one famously written in a week just prior to Anna's birth. Earlier this summer, she wrote what became a 60,000 word novel (novella to her as her full length novels are usually over twice that length). Once she got done editing and polishing it, she submitted it to a couple different small publishing houses that she had researched, thinking that the fit might be a good one. Yesterday, she got the 21st century equivalent of "The Call."

She called me at work yesterday afternoon saying "I need to read you this email." Basically, the gist of the e-mail was that Dreamspinner Press was interested in publishing her novel in both paperback and e-book format! So come most likely December of this year (she was thinking probably April or July of next year), she'll have a book that she wrote available for purchase. For those wondering, it is a male/male romantic fantasy with paranormal elements. I've read it. It's very good and I'm not just saying that. OK, I'm biased, but it IS good!

I have always teased everyone that my goal is to have her live out her dream of being a best-selling author so that I can live out my dream of being a kept man. Well, I better not quit my job just yet. Let's just say that we're not ready to go from me earning the main income in the house to her earning the main income. But it's really not about the money. It is, as someone told me earlier today, more about the milestone. I can't overstate how proud and excited I am for her. I love it that she is following her passion, despite the frustration and aggravation that getting your work out there can be.

I'll be sure to post a link here for folks to see when it's on the Dreamspinner web site. In the meantime, we're going to celebrate. I am so proud of her accomplishment. So many people dream of writing and publishing a novel. She has done it.

Huge face

I haven't done a video blog in a while and I thought "what the hell? Let's shake things up a bit." And since the whole point of doing a video blog is to not have to write anything, let's get on with it. (It was not this dark when I filmed it. Oh well.)




Here's the back of it that I mentioned in the above video. I think that's the coolest part of the shirt.