first annual punk rock christmas

Apparently all this holidaying and being semi-disconnected from my computer has trashed my typing skills, since it took me four tries to type the title of this post.

We had an amazing holiday.  We boycotted all family rituals, staying home on the 24th and 25th to be by ourselves.  But we weren’t really by ourselves — we invited friends over both days who didn’t have anywhere else to go.  And that turned out to be the best idea ever.  On the 24th we decorated the tree with some friends; we didn’t even pick them up until 10:00, and we were up til 3 in the morning.  We listened to obscure punk music the whole time, and I didn’t miss christmas carols once.  

I realized that my life has truly taken a turn for the bad-ass when I arrived at the grocery store on christmas eve after spending a couple hours in a bar drinking with my friends and it was closed.  I have never been so unprepared for having people over, but it really didn’t matter at all.  

Then on christmas day, I cooked (of course) and we all sat around the tree talking about whatever — sex, relationships, family, people’s drama — but in a really low-key way.  No presents, no arguments, just good food and good company.  It was maybe the best christmas ever.  I think we were all blown away by how fun it was and how different from the classic schtick that always happens on holidays.  I think it will be an annual tradition.

On the 26th, I spent the day with my sisters.  We went out to lunch and then shopping.  I must really love them, because shopping on the day after either Thanksgiving or Christmas is NOT something I do willingly.  Yet I was pleasant and even got a wicked pair of shoes, which caused a squeal of delight from my super-high-femme friend so I was pleased with myself.  Now I have to find a place to wear them.  (I would post a picture but they’re so awesome they would blow my anonymity completely.)

When you spend the holiday away from your family, however, you have to see them sometime, so we’ve been driving around having obligatory christmas lunches and that sort of thing with the myriad of parents who live nearby, and receiving ridiculous presents.  We got two sets of fake butch/femme pajamas, one from my mom (which looked vaguely soccer-mom-ish:  black velour for M., aqua plaid for me) and one from M.’s mom (both from that trashy lingerie store in the mall that I don’t want people searching on my blog:  blue plaid for M., violet floral ruffles for me.  gag.).  

We are planning a trip to the goodwill shop to unload these items very soon.  How do you tell your mom that she needs to buy men’s pajamas, and really don’t bother because she sleeps in her boxers?  Sigh.  We have seriously talked about moving back to CA, just to make the distance a little more daunting.

But for the first time maybe ever I’m looking forward to New Year’s eve!  We have someplace to go, and friends to spend it with, and I’m so happy.  Expect a reflective post about this crazy year sometime soon where I recap where it started and where it’s gone.   I hope you all had a good, stress-free holiday, and if you got presents, I hope you like at least some of them.  M. got me a bag full of bonbons, so I can live my dream of reading novels and eating bonbons over break.

the christmas food disaster

Tina didn’t come over here and beg me to tell this story after all, but I know she meant to.  

*****

Long ago, in a far distant land called Manhattan, I lived with M. in a 290 sq. foot apartment with our two lovely cats.  The kitchen consisted of a sink, a small gas stove, and a fridge smushed against a wall.  My countertop/prep area consisted of my childhood bedside table and a cutting board balanced on top of two milk crates.  Our pantry was a metal shelf.  If my pictures from that era were digital, I would post them, but suffice it to say that apartment was the smallest of the small (it was 7 feet wide at the widest point, and the bedroom was 6′3″ across).  My New York readers will sympathize I’m sure.

In an even longer ago and more distant land, I was raised a true Victorian.  We heated our house only with wood while I was growing up, and I had a passion for 19th C. novels, so my version of reality consisted of long dresses and open-hearth cooking.  I really thought I was going to grow up and become Louisa May Alcott.  [or Cinderella.  sigh.]  Perhaps my favorite childhood experience was a week-long summer camp at Old Sturbridge Village, where I got to make cheese and butter and cakes in a tin reflector oven.  I was in heaven.  We even got to dress up in 1830s dresses.  With bonnets.  We’re talking the time of my life.  

You’re wondering where this is going, aren’t you?  Wait, just wait.  The back story is necessary.

So I had developed a lot of notions about the proper way to do things, namely, that if it didn’t exist in the 19th C. or before it didn’t deserve to exist at all.  This applied to clothing, houses, transportation, food, cooking appliances…everything.  And I had a dream to make a proper Victorian Christmas pudding, with all the trimmings, just like Dickens or something.

One summer day, while shopping with M.’s mom, I found a vintage tin pudding mold (I would guess it’s from the 1930s)   I carted it back to our tiny apartment, excited that I now had the capability to achieve my pudding dream.  I began to research recipes, looking at my copy of Mrs. Beeton (originally published in 1868), an old Fannie Farmer cookbook from the 1930s, and many other sources.  I put together a recipe that seemed the right size, with all the right ingredients:  candied orange peel, three different types of raisins (including the kind you have to pick the pits out of, because…of course…that’s what the Victorians used to do), bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, and…suet.  [This was pre-vegetarian days.]

This began to pose challenges.  Suet.  Can you tell me, off-hand, where to buy suet in Manhattan?  I looked, but they didn’t sell it anywhere.  This was Christmas 2002, by the way, so the foodie scene was just starting up at that point.  The kinds of things that people are cooking now, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if suet is all over the place.  So don’t go telling me, ‘oh, they carry that at Garden of Eden all the time!’ because at that time, they emphatically didn’t. 

So there I was.  My true Victorian heart was not accepting substitutes.  I asked myself, what would Louisa May Alcott do?  She would go to the butcher, of course!  So off I went to the butcher at Whole Paycheck (you know what I’m talking about) and asked ever so nicely.  I batted my big blue eyes at him and damn if he didn’t slice off a nice chunk of fat from a big roast and give it to me for free.

You’re thinking, well, finally she’s going to make this thing, right?  Not before covering my kitchen in sticky orange-flavored sugar syrup!  That’s right, I candied my own peel!  I was never one to leave it to the experts, no sir.  And besides, commercial peel has preservatives in it.  Preservatives are NOT Victorian.  So I had no choice, once you think about it.

At long last, I was ready to cook that thing up.  I chopped the suet as fine as you can chop sinewy beef fat, along with the pitted raisins and the home-candied peel and everything else, and I mixed it all together and put it in the pudding mold.  I steamed the hell out of it — it took hours.  You’re supposed to store it for you know like a month or so, but I was out of time.  This list of ingredients took several days to assemble, and I was already running behind.  

So out came the pudding mold from the steam bath.  Out came the pudding from the mold.  In several moistly crumbling chunks.  But I valiantly patted it back into shape, still trembling with excitement over my masterpiece.  We were going to have a real Christmas pudding, just like Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen and Pip used to have.  I dragged out the brandy butter (made ahead of time, of course), and served the pudding.  There is a lovely triad of pictures that should accompany this post:

1.  FG, holding pudding, bringing it to the table.  Face:  proud, happy, excited.

2.  FG, fork in mouth, tasting the first bite of pudding.  Face:  surprised, mystified, even vaguely horrified.

3.  FG, beet red, collapsed in chair, laughing hysterically.  Face:  covered with hand.

After all that.  All my hard work, hours and hours of chopping, candying, peeling, picking the pits out of raisins, looking adorable at the butcher counter.  The pudding tasted awful.  More than awful.  It was inedible.  Greasy, not sweet, with a horrible metallic overtone of tin.  No amount of brandy butter could make that thing any more than what it was:  disgusting.

And while that should have been the end of my desire to be an authentic Victorian housewife, it’s something I still struggle with.  When I’m in an old house with a cooking hearth, I can’t stop myself from thinking things like, ‘I wonder if a blacksmith could make me a proper spyder, or maybe they sell them on ebay…’ and ‘how does one fire up a brick beehive oven anyway…’

monogamy: a response

Oooh I always said I thought we should keep our blogs strictly separated.  Segregated even.  It took a while for y’all to figure out that we were together, my love and I.  But our urge to merge always wins.  And I have a few words to say on this very same topic, so I am responding to M.’s thoughtful post.

I was morally certain, at 17, that I would never, ever love anyone else but M.  I could have passed a lie detector test with flying colours.  And I still truly believe that.  I am amazed at how constant and steady this love is.  The one time I felt it falter was a really horrendous time, and the decision I made at that time was not to leave her, but to stay in spite of the pain.  We’ve had endless conversations about whether in fact it would have been better for me to go, both for my own mental health and for hers.  But frankly, I cannot resist her.  Something about those blue eyes reaches right down into my soul and grabs my gut and won’t let go.

So that’s sorted.  But sometimes I catch eyes with another person, almost always butch/genderqueer/etc., and my heart drops to my feet.  I go weak in the knees, and I want to know how it feels to be loved by them.  I want them to press me backwards over a railing and kiss me fiercely.  I want to experience that crazy falling-in-love-for-the-first-time feeling again.  I want to feel loved and validated and appreciated, not only by someone who knows me completely, but by someone who has only just met me.  I want to feel desirable.

Yes, I get some feedback from the community around here.  Several weeks ago we were at an event and a tall, genderqueer person [yes, dark brown hair and blue eyes.  I am so predictable.] looked right at me, and nearly knocked me over with the force of their eyes.  I confess I blushed deeply.  This person was so damn hot, it took my breath away.  And the thought that they must return the appreciation undid me.  M., standing right next to me, thankfully took it very well and just laughed and laughed.

I no longer have a reason to complain about the sex in my relationship, though that’s a recent phenomenon.  For a long time, as M. says, I was locked up with her as my jailer.  It’s no wonder I fantasized about escape.  Those thoughts are gone now, made obsolete by the transformations wrought this spring.  I don’t think that I served in quite the same role for her; we came from very different places on this topic.  In terms of an open relationship, I feel better equipped to navigate the tensions that would cause; I have never been a jealous person.  My perspective has always been, if I can’t keep her love and attention in the face of competition, then it wasn’t mine in the first place.  I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about her; to lose her would be to lose myself as well.  

But it’s not easy to look around the world and say, ‘I’ve never experienced anything but this, but I’m fine with that.  I don’t need or want anything else.’  That to me feels like the same blind faith that fundamentalist religions ask of their followers.  ’Trust us that we’re completely right, and we’ll make sure you get to heaven in the end.’  My semi-positivist nature rebels against this kind of faith now, though I was more open to it at 17.  And sometimes I worry about my self-control.  If I had been on my own at that event, and that hot butch had also been alone, and then had come up to me and flirted, what would I have done?  I don’t know.  I have enough will power to say that I know I would do the right thing.  The way things are now, M. has requested that I tell her before I cheat on her.  And I agreed to that.  But what would happen if I did tell her that?

I’m leaving you with another paragraph of questions.  Clearly we are not finished thinking about this.  Maybe we won’t ever be finished thinking about this.  But I leave you with the same thought:  I cannot imagine just walking away from her, from this love.  It’s just too much a part of me.  M. is an amazing person, and I can’t figure out how we managed to find each other.  It’s been a hell of a 15 year run, and I really want to know what the next 15 will be like.  So I’m hanging in there, and not doing anything I think I’ll regret.

coming up for air

I’m sure it will please you all (and if it doesn’t, well, this is my blog, so don’t tell me) to hear that I’m finally recovering from my dreaded illness.  And it’s no compensation to me that I managed to pass it along to my MIL.  No it’s not.

I’ve finished one class and have three to go.  So I’m not through the woods yet.  But we did get to give M.’s Babeland present a spin, and let me tell you, it was very well received.  Very.  

This week is full of awesome things coming up — queer events every night tomorrow through sunday.  I surely won’t make it to all of them, but I’m really looking forward to being out and about.  This cold nearly did me in but I’m so much better now!  Speaking of better, we went to dance class last night and for the first time I felt like I was really doing it, not just bumbling around the floor.  M. and I had a really nice dance, where she was leading me in things that we never did successfully before.  Then I had a dance with my teacher that was amazing — she’s a really good leader and I must say I blushed a little…

I can’t believe how close we are to christmas.  Every time I go online I see people’s facebook status saying things like ’supervising gingerbread house construction’ and ‘finally finished the christmas decorating’ and ’shopping for presents’ and things like that.  I haven’t done anything at all:  no decorating, no shopping, no nothing.  On our street about half the houses are all lit up, and it looks beautiful.  We’re planning a quiet holiday at home, and inviting any stray queers who might want to to stop over to our house on christmas day.  We will put up a tree, probably christmas eve, and I will cook tasty things because (you know this already) I love to cook.  And I have a cute apron too.  So if you’re around on christmas, and you want to stop by, email me!

I am so looking forward to having time off.  M. said what she wants for christmas is me puttering around the house reading novels and making her endless cups of tea and tasty snacks while she furiously works on her book.  I say, fantastic, but she can’t work all the time…I’ll have to come up with some way to distract her.

my rainbow is red!

I got this from janet, and it cracks me up that mine is red.  I seriously thought when I filled in the answers it would be green or blue or something like that.  But no — red!  Go figure.  But it’s actually sort of true, and something I don’t like to admit to — I do want people who will keep up with me.  I am passionate (I would say that’s one of my top attributes, in fact.  Care to comment, Leo??) and energetic and I love to do things.  So there.  Now I will stop wasting time and do some work…

Your rainbow is shaded red.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are a passionate person. You appreciate energetic people. You get bored easily and want friends who will keep up with you.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

too long!

Oh the sad refrain, ‘it’s been too long since I posted!’.  I could start every post this way…  And, well, it’s true.  Back when I wasn’t in a grad program that was kicking my ass, it was way easier to keep up with my life chronicles.  But I miss writing here, and since I’m home from class sick with a dreadful, dreadful cold, I thought I’d give you all an update.

Thanksgiving:  ah Thanksgiving.  Where to start?  We were up at my in-laws, and it was the usual.  Not too warm, a little chilly (emotionally that it) and the whole time I was getting sick so I was moving through a bit of a haze.  Probably the weirdest part was the vegetarian segregation (ours) where we brought our own gravy and stuffing and did not partake of the turkey.  You know what?  I never really liked turkey anyway.  So it wasn’t a big deal.  And frankly, my onion gravy rocks, you should be so lucky as to try it.  On mashed potatoes?  Beyond good.  But it just felt a little awkward to have segregated food.  I could feel the looks.

Which brings me to a rant in general:  I don’t care if you eat meat.  Really.  I’m not one of those vegetarians who will give you the stink eye if you tuck into a bloody huge steak in front of me.  But I really don’t want to hear you defend yourself.  I have my reasons for not eating meat, and I don’t need you trying to convince me to change my mind.  In return, I won’t try to convert your meat eating ways.  When you’re eating at my house, I won’t serve you meat.  When I’m eating at your house, if it’s a problem, inform me in enough time for me to bring my own food, which I’m happy to do.  [This paragraph does not apply to Tina, who made the best vegetarian lasagna EVER when we went down and visited in October.  Speaking of Tina, go show her and Jess some love.  They are going through a really, really hard time right now.]

A few words on my cold:  I haven’t been this sick since I had the chicken pox two years ago.  Yes, you heard me.  That was unmitigated hell.  This hell is mitigated a lot, though it’s hard to remember that when I’m uncontrollably coughing in the girl’s bathroom at school, trying not to throw up from the sheer force of it.  That was this morning.  I decided to skip my second class and come home and sleep, which I’ve done very little of these past few days due to the horrible coughing.  Now, I have three papers and a huge final exam all due by the 15th of this month, so believe me I need to get better like yesterday and finish it all.  Ugh.  I will be an incredibly happy person when that day rolls around, yes indeed.

And when that day of freedom does finally roll around:  I have so many plans.  I want to walk in the wintry fields with a thermos of mulled cider, breathing the crisp air and relaxing.  I want to enjoy the holiday season for what it is, a celebration of light and warmth at the darkest part of the year, with as many friends and sympathetic family members around as possible.  I have no desire to shop for gifts, because with my limited resources I couldn’t give anyone anything they’d want to have anyway.  What I want to give is my time and my love, and I hope the people I care about will understand that.  I want to go for random drives with M., looking at the scenery and talking about random stuff.  I want to stay up too late and go out and then stay in and cook tasty things.  And read novels.  And eat bonbons.  And…give myself a proper pedicure.

Oh yeah, and I ordered M.’s present from Babeland and I can’t wait for it to get here.  The anticipation is killing me…yet another reason I need NOT to be sick anymore!