Rainbow Oreo

I saw this and my first thought was "Why pride?"  Why not just follow the advice of Roseanne Barr (She said it about being fat, but the sentiment is the same)  "So you're gay.  It's okay to be gay.  Just be gay and shut up about it."  I really do not understand what all the fuss is about.  I must be some kind of alien or something, because I totally fail to understand why one aspect of your person should be such a big deal.

Well, I went to a comment section on one of the news stories, prepared to say so, and got slapped in the face with the why.  I don't have people telling me that I can't be a lefty because it's against THEIR religion. No one is screaming BOOKWORM at me when I walk down the street with my book.  There's no debate over why I prefer oranges over olives.  

The fact is, that one aspect has become a big deal because of other people - not because of the gays.  If those of us who believe it's wrong would shut the hell up, they would not be all-up-in-your-face. So, to paraphrase Roseanne again "So you're ignorant.  It's okay to be ignorant.  Just be ignorant and shut up about it."

And that cookie looks really yummy, too.

Defining Family

Several years ago, I was introduced to the world of genaeology by a distant cousin and then a co-worker.  I got a computer program for the information and hit on the brilliant idea of giving each of my siblings a copy of the family tree for Christmas!  All I had to do was enter our spouses, children, and grandchildren.  The paper and ink would be expensive, but the sentiment was worth it.  Then I posed myself the question "Who do I include?"

I have seven siblings, two parents, and a total of three step-parents.  The siblings each have at least one spouse and at least one child.  Some of them have ex-stepchildren that they still think of as their own. Feelings were going to be hurt even if  I figured out a  Definition of Family.  What I finally decided was if they had a legal or biological link to us, they were going into the family tree.  What I gave my siblings that Christmas was prefaced by a little speech (or a letter if it was mailed) explaining my Definition of Family for this purpose.  No, some "family members" were not there.  Others, like the the childless second wife of a brother, were at the very least mentioned in notes. 

My Definition has created some funny (both peculiar and ha-ha) branches.  My oldest brother has been married three times.  When he married wife #1, she already had a daughter.  After they divorced, she had another child in her next relationship.  My brother's third wife came with a son, who he legally adopted.  Then they adopted an unplanned baby from Wife #1!  Who needs soap operas?!  

Another brother married a woman with a daughter and had two sons with her.  They divorced, he remarried (this wife came with four kids), and the first wife later had another son.  One of my sisters legally adopted her own grandchild.  This is why I love the NOTES section!  


So, if my math is correct, I have two ex-step-nieces, one ex-step-niece's half brother, seven step-nephews and step-nieces, a biological great-niece who is legally my niece, one who is half brother to an ex-step-niece and two "real" nephews, AND twelve "real" nephew/nieces.  I just call them my minions.

And then there are my grand-minions....   You may feel free to run away screaming.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I was out of reading material, so I hit the local public library.  After debating checking out a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes (to whom I may be distantly related), I found a bunch of "true ghost stories" books and took them all!  Most of the ones I've read so far aren't impressive - lots of weird mists and funny noises - but they have me wanting to share my own ghost experiences.

My mother's brother Art died nearly ten years before I was born, but I knew him.  He was the family ghost.  We heard him all the time, walking down the front hall from the kitchen and then up the stairs.

I had a friend over one day, playing a board game in my room.  We heard someone on the stairs and when she looked, no one was there.  I told her it was just Art, the family ghost.  She mocked me and then flew down the stairs when "someone sat on edge of the bed".

It was common knowledge that I believed in ghosts.  One day at school, a classroom door opened all by itself and someone said "Hey, Jean, your ghost is here."  I glanced over and said "Shut the door, Art."  The door closed right away!

I woke one night to see a non-menacing human figure standing over me.  "Art?"  The figure nodded and I went back to sleep.

Now, I am willing to admit an errant wind may have moved the classroom door and the figure standing over me might have been a dream.  His sitting on the side of the bed may have been her imagination.  But Art's footsteps in the hall and stairs was not the house settling - he had a recognizable tread, just like the rest of the family.

Now for a tale of Art that I personally did not experience.  Once upon a time, the entire family went out for a day trip.  The next day, a neighbor teen confessed (to my brother) having planned to break into our house, but a man glared at him through the window when he tried.  From his description, we knew it was Art.

When Art was a child, his father died.  He told Art to take care of his (Art's) mother and sister, that he was the man of the house now.  My mother and grandmother both died in the late 1990's and I believe Art has moved on.  Taking care of Mom and Marian was his Unfinished Business.  

An open letter to an former friend

(I post this reluctantly, having no desire to play the martyr.  But I've ranted in my head, into the empty house, even on paper, and nothing helps.  Maybe blogging about it will get her out of my head so I can move on.)  

For over twenty years, we were friends.  You claimed to not mind, and even to enjoy, supporting me as I struggled to rise above my programming.  You told me drinking scared you, that many of your kin had problems with it and you didn't want to join that club.  You told me your co-workers were jerks and losers.  For many of those years, people 'knew' we were a couple... a reasonable assumption, all things considered, but you were irate.  I used to tell my friends and family to not even joke about it around you.

Then you tell me one day that you've decided you're a lesbian, that a certain party who boasted about converting straight women was your sweetheart.  You jumped out of the closet feet first, waving the rainbow flag like a madman.  All those years, you had been insulted at the idea of being with me.  All those years, you had insisted you were straight as an arrow.  But when I got upset, it was my homophobia that was the problem.

You visited mutual friends and told them I never let you drink, that I never let you go out with your co-workers, that I was using you financially.  I never left a job, in all those years, without another lined up.  I bought you stuff with my Welfare when I'd been fired.  You told me to get bill money from my sister so you could go to a Star Trek Convention!  But I was freeloading off you?!  You got me a pager so you could keep track of where I was, but I had you on a leash?!

After I figured out our friendship was a lost cause and moved out, you continued to put our mutual friends in the middle.  You basically told at least one of them to choose between me or you. (I see that some of my friends on Facebook are also your friends and think about telling them the things you said about them back then.  But, childish as I am, I'm more mature than that.)  You tried to keep me from your father's funeral, even though your mother wanted me there.

So tell me, how is this my fault?  You lied to me for twenty years about - well, pretty much everything - but it's my fault we aren't friends anymore?  Sometimes I wonder if we were ever friends.  Maybe that was yet another thing you lied about.