Hallowe'en roundup

Hallowe'en was awesome. Everything I was hoping for and more.

I had a party during the afternoon at work for which I made the kitty litter cake. Total hit. In fact, such a hit that the daughter of the woman I sent it home with sent me back candy as a thank you. How's that for a hit!?

Michael and I came home early on Hallowe'en, put on our scrubs and lab coats. I stuck an Anatomy of the Brain poster in my front hallway so it was the first thing trick or treaters would see upon opening the door.

About 1/2 hour after sunset the first of the kidlets arrived. They kept on coming until about 9 p.m. I was already cleaning up. I think as the doorbell rang I heard Michael yell, "Those better be some damn good costumes to be ringing my doorbell at 9 p.m." Grumpy ol' grouch.

Anyway, in the hour before sunset I finished off the tombstones. The tombstones read,

Here lies Jeff - Quit talking about me!
(a phrase he frequently said)

Your Name Here

and

Christine Amen
(who was the lovely and talented but dearly departed alter-ego of my husband)

Then I lit candles on our mantle and set up the fog machine. I downloaded about 2 hours worth of really, really scary sounds off iTunes and set up the speakers in the front window.

Needless to say, we had a few young kids who were afraid to come all the way up to the door and some smart-assed teenager who I heard as he was coming up to the door, cough out "I have asthma." Duh. It's a fog machine kid, not a smoke machine. The wind was perfect so that we had the gauze curtains blowing in the light breeze and the fog would come out of the entryway in billows and then hang over the graveyard like I designed it that way...yeah...I designed it that way...!

Then on November 1st, we had the Stitch and Bitch dia de los muertos party. So fun!!! I went as La Calavera de la Catrina. I won the prize for the best dia de los muertos themed costume!!! Made the hat and shawl that afternoon with one trip to Michael Levine and some stuff I had in my craft room. I love CRAFTING! Not only that - I got the best damn bag in the whole world - handmade by Natalie! Woo hoo! (I'm the one on the left. Middle - Monkeygurl, Right - Crazy Aunt Purl - Photo credit L.A. Ell)

(P.S. I have to note that I have absolutely no makeup on my neck or chest. I am just that white. I am..."the whitest white girl in whitetown.")

Finally, I just had to share pictures of my niece on Hallowe'en. Oh my. She is just out of control cute!!! Baby Elvis has left the building!

Happy Birthday Baby

Today is my hottie husband's 40th birthday. How much do I love this guy?

Well, let me tell you.

Michael has an awesome and ridiculous sense of humor. One of the ways he makes me laugh is by telling squirrels, birds, children and other assorted animals to "Get off my lawn!" in old man voice.

Michael makes me think by challenging the way I live my life, the routine things I do, so I hardly ever feel like I'm in a rut or living a certain way just because that's the way my parents did it.

He reminds me to appreciate my own opinions. Sometimes without one ounce of tact. Sometimes with just a little hint of it.

Michael knows how to turn off the voices in his head. Something I am learning to do.

Michael is protective. He wants to make sure my virgin ears stay that way and yet he loves the way I curse like a truck driver.

Fuck yeah!

Michael is boundary guy^TM He's teaching me. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

Michael says something and he actively works to make it happen. For instance, he said we'd buy a house. And here we are in our own fabulous house.

Michael keeps Jeff's memory alive in our home.

Michael takes me riding on his super hot VTX and I don't even care that I get bugs everywhere.

I love this guy so much that even when he's not getting "it", even when he's working my last gay nerve, I still want to give him a giganto hug for being a good man.

Michael has learned over the 8 1/2 years that we've lived together that I'm going to make too much food for us for dinner. He has also learned not to comment on it.

Michael loves who he loves. He can't fake it and he can't make it happen if it isn't there. I love that.

I love you.

Happy Birthday Jeff

We're all thinking about you today. Not that we don't think about you every day. Seriously, we do. We're talking about you a lot too. Yes, we're talking about you.


I miss the way you said anything. You called me a death junkie. (am not!)

I miss how much you cared about me. You called me the mommy. (am not.)

I miss how you let me know that it was important that I cared about you. You sent me a postcard that said "Thank you for caring about me."


We miss you. A lot.

The ghost on my living room wall

Michael's lover of 10 years, dead for the last 7 1/2 years is hanging on the wall in my brand new living room, naked and half-tattooed. We all had portraits done the year before he died while we were on vacation in Hawaii.

If Jeff was an artist, and in many ways he was, this painting would have been done during one of his beautiful periods. He looked like a young Greek hero. Smooth and strong and defined - carved of marble. There were some not so beautiful periods as well, like the time he chose to look (and grow a beard) like a lumberjack with no access to personal hygiene accouterments.

People sometimes ask me about Jeff and I'm not sure if I romanticize him or not. I share that he was sweet and caring. He bought me beautiful, thoughtful gifts for my birthday and would say wonderful, kind things to me in his own way. Once we were out at some club in the Tenderloin. I was being bawdy and said something about a sex act. He said to me, "You can't do that. You're the mommy." It was unbelievably touching, in a way that was uniquely Jeff's.

This was a man who had been featured on the side of a milk carton, had started doing porn before he was legal. Was diagnosed with AIDS before he could legally drink. Or vote. I know he saw terrible things that I will never see, but I know he also saw beautiful things that I took no notice of.


Jeff was a handful. He could be mean and was skilled at noting the spot that you were most vulnerable. He was a drug addict, although clean and sober in his last 3 years, the years before were very difficult. Even in the clean and sober years, he could be a total fucking pain-in-the-ass.

The fact that he had been skillfully climbing out of a hole dug by crystal meth when he was diagnosed with cancer was unbelievably painful. He had been going to school, he was on committees for youth living with HIV.

The problem with someone dying is that they are always going to be just that. It never changes, the being dead part. Those of us left are changing every day, but there's no way to make the dead do anything differently. They never come back, they never comment on your post, they don't take back anything they said, they aren't proud of you for everything you've done since they've been gone.

I can hear him though. And Michael hears him constantly.

"Why aren't you talking about me?"

He is a presence in our house, and in our marriage. He is part of us. Not just part of me and part of Michael, but part of the "us", the "we" that married people talk about. I married a man with a dead partner. It is a commitment in and of itself.

Jeff hangs, his tattoo forever unfinished, on my living room wall. He is held in time, in Hawaii, nude but for a pendant on a piece of leather. There is no anger in his face, no worry, no questions. He is pristine.