Happy Belated Turkey Day

Happy Belated Eat Until You Puke Day. Steven and I went to his parents this year for Thanksgiving. His sister's C-Section was scheduled the day before, so we helped prepare a lot of the dinner. I know that the families minds were elsewhere. His sister gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Emerson.

We had a really nice time with the family and it was topped off by having his Mother give me a hug and tell me how happy she was to have me as a part of their family. No one has ever said that to me before. It was totally unexpected and caught me off guard. Caught Steven off guard as well.

I always knew I was a lucky man.

We avoided the malls and shopping centers in fear of being trampled to death. We did go see the movie Australia. The movie has been getting some average and even scathing reviews, calling it a sappy, over the top, epic movie. Well, no shit. That's what it's meant to be. The movie was beautiful and yes, a wonderful sappy love story that will make you cry. In a way, it reminded me of Gone With The Wind. Screw the reviews, go see it.

We ended up going out for a "couple" drinks with our buddy Ray that night. Which means we were out until 1am, drinking, doing shots and dancing our asses off. It made getting up today, not so easy. Steven's Mother hired me (along with Steven) to decorate her entire house for the Holidays. Doing things like that hungover isn't much fun.

I would love to do that as a seasonal part time thing though. Minus the hangover.

Now we're exhausted and can barely get up off the couch. It's taking all my energy to get up off my ass to write this post.

And one more day off from work!

I needed these four days. Disneyland is only 5 days away!

Finally Finished

We spent the most of the weekend finishing things up around here, seeing the Disney movie Bolt (which was sooooo fucking good), grocery shopping for Thanksgiving and taking it easy. Steven and I are cooking a lot of the dinner for Thanksgiving at his parents house. Ok, Steven is cooking most of it and I'm just making mashed potatoes. We met his parents for dinner Saturday night for their birthdays. I drew a portrait of their grandchildren, which they seemed to love.

Finally got around to taking some pictures of our loft all decorated for Christmas. I swear that every year, I'm going to cut back and just put up one tree and a couple other decorations. Never ends up like that. But we did at least limit ourselves to TWO trees. I heard through the rumorville, that Brian and his boyfriend Dwayne were setting up about seven. We went decoration shopping with them last weekend. Dwayne was like "Is it this way every year???!!" Girl, if you only knew.

I know it's early, but for some reason, we both are already in the Holiday spirit. It's kind of nice. Usually it take me up until the first Christmas party or something to get me in the mood. The only thing that I'm not ready for is all the Christmas music they're playing in the stores and on the radio. I have to draw the Christmas spirit line somewhere.

No surprise here, but I have to say that our favorite tree is the Disney tree.

Christmas is coming early this year

Whirlwhind weekend. Here we were excited to be spending the weekend here and not doing anything. Friday night we spent the night at a great new Mexican restaurant called Sala that's only a few blocks from us. Cheap margarita's. Enough said. We finished up the night with movie, then crashing early. Saturday we heard that Garden Ridge was having 50% of their Christmas decorations. Even though it's early, I didn't want to miss the sale, so we headed up there with Brian and his boyfriend Dwayne to spend way too much money. It was nice spending a few hours with them shopping and having lunch.

I made the mistake of taking a 24 hour Allegra for my allergies and I didn't sleep well Friday night, or at all for that matter. Saturday, I tried to take a nap which didn't work. The medication had a horrible effect on me and I felt jittery all day. We started decorating last night (don't judge us, more on that in a minte) and I had the energy of a work horse. Nothing like doping yourself up to be able to even sleep. I'll never take that shit again.

It was a big deal for Steven to be in the mood for putting up Christmas decorations, let lone wanting to start this early. It's been years since he's wanted to do anything for Christmas, let alone do it this early. We have a lot of parties, dinners and events coming up over the next month, including a trip to Disneyland, so we wanted to start early and get it finished before our lives got too hectic.

It's starting to look a lot like the Holidays around here.

No pictures until it's perfect. We're both a little anal retentive, to say the least.

We're even doing a Disney themed Christmas tree.

How gay is that?

I kid you not

Only my  Mother would have some of the craziest shit come out of her mouth.

This past weekend, my Mom and Sister drove a couple hours to meet my Nephew and his wife.  My sister was going to meet them to give them football tickets and have lunch and decided to take my Mom as well.  They planned on finishing up the afternoon shopping before heading back home.

Let me remind everyone that my Mom is 80 years old.

They all met at the Mall, ate some lunch and then did some shopping.  While getting on the escalator, my Mom mentioned for the hundreth time how much she hates those things.  Out of the blue and for no reason what so ever, she decides to blurt out, "My husband has been teasing me a lot lately.  Four times this past month I've accidently brushed my dentures with Vagisil."

Everyone was more horrified then anything, trying to hold back a smartassed comment.  Everyone pretty much lost it and couldn't stop laughing.  Mom continued to go on talking about how she just doesn't pay attention close enough and that both items come in a tube that look a like.  

My nephew's wife, still red faced and laughing, told him that she had something to ask my Mom but couldn't bring herself to do it.  She leaned over to tell him what it was.  He himself, couldn't even bring himself to ask, so at lunch he leans over to my Sister and told her to ask Mom the question.  My Sister, being like the rest of the family and not afraid to say anything to anyone, looks over at our Mom and says, "So, does your breath smell like Pussy now?"

My Mom starts giggling so hard that she claimed to pee a little.  If she's not doing that when giggling too much, she's passing gas.  

Once she composed herself, she leans forward and replies, "I don't know, you tell me!"

Only in my family.....

A tragic end

I wasn't at work for 5 minutes before someone told me that an ex-coworker had hung himself this past weekend. Kevin was one of those co-workers who never said too much. He was extremely smart and learned things quickly. He was part of our development team. 

Most of us in our department had become quite close in a matter of a short time. For some reason, Kevin never seemed to click with most people. Being the type of person who always seemed to befriend the underdogs or the oddballs, I quickly started trying to get to know him, although he made it difficult. After a few months, he finally started to open up and talk more, but still no one really knew much about him. We would say Hi in the morning, ask how each others weekends went and on occasion had to talk about something work related. 

I regret not getting to know him more. What we did learn was that he had a 7 year old son and an ex wife. He had a fiance' who left him probably a month before he was laid off a couple of months ago. Someone had mentioned that he took it really hard, but he sure didn't show it at work or mention it to anyone. We also learned that he was very bipolar and battled it daily. He was on medication, but with our shitty medication insurance, the cost was still expensive and it was difficult for him to juggle child support along with everything else. I'm sure once he was laid off that he wasn't able to afford the medication at all. I'm only speculating here. I'm not even sure if he found a job immediately after getting laid off or not. 

My whole meaning of writing this, is that you never know what is going on in the life of the person you have daily contact with or who sits right next to your cubicle. That quiet, unassuming person who never says much could be hurting more then you could possibly imagine. How often do we try to break through those walls and get to know them? Find out if they need help or just someone to talk to?

Obviously, with all that was going on with him personally, life became not worth living.

It makes me look at my co-workers in totally different light.

The Election

We stayed up late last night watching the election results. We didn't want to miss Obama's speech. I don't think I've ever been so moved as I was listening to him talk. I'll admit that even a tear or two appeared. The way he's brought a country together and sparked hope in people is something that doesn't come along in our lifetime that often. I'm glad we get to experience him as our President. 

Unfortunately, we have to wait until the middle of January for him to take over. 

I'm glad that this week is short for me. We're forced to use some of our PTO at work before the end of the fiscal year in March, so I'm taking off Friday and Monday for no reason at all. I'm not going to know what to do with myself. Normally, when I have a day off, I'm heading out of town somewhere. Maybe I'll spend the day drawing.

This coming weekend is the Fall Fur Fest at The Ranch. Even though we were there last weekend, we're looking forward to heading back. Last weekend was so comfortable. We enjoyed ourselves there for the first time in a while. Throw a bunch of hairy men into the mix this coming weekend and what more could we ask for?

Halloween at the Ranch

Halloween at the Ranch was a blast. People didn't know how to react to Brian, Dewayne, Steven and I. We greeted each other with hugs and kisses and spent the first night hanging out, drinking, laughing, teasing and having fun with each other. The rest of the weekend we pretty much hung out with them, working on our costumes, cooking and drinking. It was one of the funnest and most comfortable weekends we've had there in a long time. Ray and Brad were our wonderful hosts. It was good to get a chance to hang with them as well. We only have about 5 days before we'll be heading back there for the fall bear event, Fall Fur Fest. A big thank you goes to Ray and Brad for putting up with us crashing on their couch.

Here's a few shots of our costumes. We were quite popular and even had a fan base who wanted to have their pictures taken with us. Yet again, we came in 2nd place for the 4th year in a row. Then again, who else can claim that title? No one but us. We lost to an older lesbian who had saggy titties hanging below a Hooters t-shirt. Don't get me started.