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Just as I pulled up to the house today, I noticed the odometer had just hit 19,999. It seems like I just picked Pepe up a couple of months ago, not a couple of years ago. I’ve been thinking all night about how much my life has changed in the last 745 days:

1. I saved the world from the horror known as ‘Creed’.

2. I turned 30 years old.

3. My baby got accepted to Grad School.

4. We moved to Colorado.

5. I was hired and subsequently laid off by a local property management company, which led me to find a GREAT job.

6 There is no 6.

7. My honeysweetiepielovemuffin turned 30.

8. I forgot what 8 was for.

9. I got married to a woman I both love and adore. And taunt. Next to the birth of my future children, and when I finally get the animatronic-coin-operated-Kimberly-poking-you-in-the-eye complete, this will be the happiest day of my life.

10. We added a fourth cat to the mix. I don’t know what it is about her, but Chloe just wrecks me, she is so cute.

11. I celebrated my one year wedding anniversary.

12. I watched my wife present her Master’s Project.

13. I watched as my lovely wife graduated from Grad School. And cried.

14. I drove my baby to the airport so that she could visit Paris and Switzerland with hermoM. (It’s where the history comes from!)

What an interesting 2 years. I love my life. I love my wife. I love LIFE.

| Posted by: Jim T. | Link to this post |

There’s an interesting AskMefi thread about the disconnect between women who have children and women who choose not to. I haven’t really thought about it much because none of my close friends are having babies right now, but it’s interesting to imagine how maintaining adult relationships will work once this starts happening. It’s also interesting to note that of the people who I consider friends and who I would or do hang out with that Jim and I are the most likely to have kids.

I can’t really speak from experience, but I can’t imagine not wanting to get away from the kids to have some adult time. Of course, before I was in a committed relationship, I couldn’t imagine not wanting social breaks from my SO, but when I’m out without him I usually wish he was there so he can have fun too. (Although I do recognize the importance of having those social breaks–at the very least for the sake of my friends who aren’t in relationships.)

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

I just read this news story, about a long-standing and seemingly fun tradition in a rural Texas town, which involves the boys dressing like girls and the girls dressing like boys (I can’t use the term cross-dressing here, because it invokes a completely different mentality).

It really seems innocent, just a progression of the old Sadie Hawkins tradition (at one of my high schools, we had a school dance in the spring called Morp, where the girls traditionally asked the boys out).

However, what really chaps my hide (to use the local vernacular), is the quote from one of the local hicks parents:

“It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl — kids think it’s cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you.”

This woman is afraid that exposing her two young children to this horrible and disturbing incident could lead to homosexuality! (GASP!)

Let me share something with all of you, quoted directly from my sister’s blog:

I am sickened that I live in a country where ELEVEN states voted for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. I am angry that there are millions of people in my own country who think it is their right, much less their business, to tell anyone whom they can love. I am ashamed that more than 20 years after we first began to worry about AIDS, it’s still a taboo subject, money for research is still scarce, and people of all races and both sexes continue to die.

I am the daughter of a gay man. My dad was a really good guy. He had a smile that made me feel like I was the center of his world. He was easy going, liked his scotch and listening to opera, and watching college football. He loved animals. He was kind to everyone. He lived happily with another man for the last 12 years of his life. I had the privilege of being part of their lives, and witnessing how much they cared for each other, how much kindness they showed each other. We should all be so lucky.

I am the son of a gay man. My parents divorced when I was very young, and the earliest memories that I have of my father are of us on winter vacation visiting him in Florida in 1983. We stayed from just before Christmas until just after New Year’s, and I remember my dad letting us stay up late on December 31st so that we could toast the new year. We had pink champagne to toast, party hats and noisemakers to ring in the new year in style. I remember him laughing as I ran down the quiet street he lived on yelling “Happy New Year 1984!” at the top of my lungs. I was 10 at the time, and even my father’s admonition to keep my voice down couldn’t keep me quiet. I know that my father loved me.

His sexual proclivity made him no less of a man, and no less of a human being, and no less able to love me as his son. His choices just made him him. And I still love him for that.

It is my sincere hope that these bigoted people can open their eyes and see that homosexuality is not evil that they need to shield their families from.

| Posted by: Jim T. | Link to this post |

I guess these guys are pretty mad.

[via Bombadil]

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

This really cracked me up:

When my oldest daughter was a baby, friends with older children used to say, “Just wait, wait until she soaks in everything you say and do like a little sponge!” I didn’t really understand what they meant until recently. Sure, she had repeated my words or actions here and there, but not with any real understanding — that is, until she turned 4.

It was about 7 one morning last week when my daughter pranced down the stairs with her pink cotton Hanes girls’ underwear tucked into the crack of her behind. Calmy I asked her why she was wearing her underwear that way. She said, “Mommy, I want to be like you. This is what your underwear looks like.” (Note to self: Maybe thongs don’t look that great after all?)

…

Although the other day she did yell from the backseat at a driver who cut us off. “Hey lady,” she screamed, “what’s your problem?”

So did my follow up conversation with Rita:

Rita: At one point, I had to finally institute a rule that you didn’t get to cuss the other drivers unless you were behind the wheel. because the echo gets annoying. :)
Kimberly: hahahahahaha
Kimberly: Little T.
Rita: Yup. :) Although ours was more cussing out the bus driver for leaving us at the stop.
Kimberly: d’ooh!
Kimberly: hee.
Rita: yeah, you *really* don’t wanna see an 8 year old flipping the MTA driver the bird.
Kimberly: You are *so* wrong.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |

Dooce expresses some parenting wisdom I can get behind:

I am much more scared of agendas than I am four-letter words. Fucks and shits and damns aren’t going to brainwash my daughter, although they might make her unpopular with the other mothers at playgroup. It will be much easier to undo the fucks and shits (“How about we say something else in front of Grandmommie?”), but much harder to undo ideas. Agendas will teach her that her only shot at happiness is God or a large set of tits. Agendas will teach her that women are only supposed to fulfill certain roles, or that men are doomed to be aloof, fumbling idiots. Agendas will teach her that violence is somehow okay.

| Posted by: Kimberly | Link to this post |