Lesbian Dad | Monthly Archive

Archive | January, 2008

Her first dentist visit (as told in pictures)

By Lesbian Dad on January 11, 2008 in Mostly a picture, Re: the lil' monkey

We took the lil’ monkey for her first dental visit this week. I know, I know. We could have taken her earlier — should have taken her earlier. The American Dental Association recommends they come in as soon as the first teeth appear, and no later than the first year.

Yep. Remember, this is the dentists talking.

Our first visit clocked in at the average, which is when the kid’s around three years old. (Fortunately this was A-OK with our pediatrician, who must not golf with dentists, or if she does, she must be carrying a grudge from when the cart ran over her foot that one time.)

Least we’ve been brushing the little things since they first broke through the gums and began to put a crimp — d’oh! — in the ol’ nursing routine.

The lil’ monkey took along her little buddies Amahl and Amahl’s mother (natch).

I already love the dentist (who’ll be seeing to Mama’s and Baba’s teeth soon). She came highly recommended, has a family practice, and obviously loves working with children, who love her back. Or at least ours did. The lil’ monkey was as relaxed as if she were having a manicure.

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Portrait of an obsession

By Lesbian Dad on January 9, 2008 in Mostly a picture, Re: the lil' monkey

She’ll be off book for the entire Amahl part in another day or two. All the other parts, she still has some holes. I do think she’ll be ready to work as a prompter for the show for the upcoming season, should anyone produce it locally. ‘Course there are those pesky child labor laws. Could put a fly in the ointment. And she’s probably too short to pass off as sixteen.

Could be worse. Could be Phantom of the Opera. (They paid me to say that. The inlaws revile them some Andrew Lloyd Weber. Can you spell t-h-e-a-t-e-r – s-n-o-b-s?)

Also this post could be worse. I could have subjected you to video of our baby monitor, piping in to us her entire operetta-long medley, which she sang to her stuffed animals before going to sleep last night. Yes, I did videotape it. You know, to keep on hand if we want to use it for part of her earlybird application to Juilliard.

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Pomo hi-jinx and an econ riddle

By Lesbian Dad on January 7, 2008 in Metacommentary

Pictured above: a media tongue-twister. A photograph, displayed on a blog, of a media playback device displaying a photograph, which appeared on a blog. Which photograph, by the way, only exists digitally. Unless and until I (or anyone else, for that matter) downloads and prints it. The moment it “captures” came and went in a blink, but I suspect that it remains in my daughter’s head still. Hopefully, some of the value of the image lies in the universality of that moment. Though it was conveyed by a specific for instance.

Now what does any of this palimpsest of representation mean? Nuttin’ in particular. Necessarily. But the “internet in your pocket” device featured in that media tongue-twister above does get me to pondering: is meaning (its depth, its value, its integrity, etc.) affected by the E-Z accessibility of its age-old conveyances (images and words, i.e.)? Per usual, I’m of two minds: part of me thinks no, part of me thinks yes.

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Weekend bonus shot, 01.05.08

By Lesbian Dad on January 5, 2008 in Mostly a picture, Weekend bonus shot

At the door, Berkeley, CA.

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Fee, fie, foe, fun

By Lesbian Dad on January 4, 2008 in Kid lit, Re: the lil' monkey

This afternoon, while listening to Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors for the seven hundred and twenty-eighth time since Christmas, the lil’ monkey drew a picture. I am noting the obvious when I say that she, like her mother, and her mother’s entire family, is an Amahl and the Night Visitors FREAK. (Anyone not familiar with this delightful holiday operetta can watch the entire historic 1951 telecast of it thanks to the miracle of YouTube — it’s a one act, 54 minute video, including the composer’s introduction. More fun facts about the operetta can be found here on Wikipedia’s entry.)

At this point the girlie has already got half the lyrics memorized, and for days on end has only answered to the name “Kaspar” (one of the three kings in the opera). I’m sure what egged this on was that the beloved (at the lil’ monkey’s behest) told the whole story, and then sang all the parts to all the songs (baritone, straight tone boy soprano, and mezzo) as we drove down out of the mountains after our holiday vacation. Sure beats “Ninety-nine Bottles of Milk on the Wall” for two and a half hours. At the end of the rendition, our girlie was chanting “More opera! More opera!” At which point we gave each other that contented “Our work here is done” look.

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New Year’s clearance

By Lesbian Dad on January 2, 2008 in Anima animus, Metacommentary, Seraphim/dakini

At left: Glitter glam dress lights up the couch, Dorrington, CA.

Last week when LD was OWON (Offline WithOut Notice), I had written most of a draft piece about the Christmas holiday. In it I wrote about how when I was young, the holiday’s primary meaning stemmed from the repetition of traditional songs, and decorations, and food, and references to love and kindness — as it does for so many — but also from my mother’s abundant love, and from the vicarious thrill she got watching my sister and me experience the bounty she had longed for as a girl, and never received. I wrote about how after my mother died, the wind was knocked out of the holiday for me. I took a gloomy detour to describe my Worst Christmas on Record, the one following my mother’s death, when my father and I joined my sister who was then living in Norway.

We all went up to an ancient farm outside of Trondheim, where my sister’s husband’s sister (my sister in-law-in-law?) lived with her husband on the working farm that had been in the family for hundreds of years. He took us to look at goats with coin-slot pupils who would live out that winter, but none more. I wrote about the wan December light (dawn and sunrise came in late morning; dusk and sunset in mid-afternoon; at its zenith the sun was little more than a stone’s throw above the horizon). The tundra that stretched for as far as the eye could see. Our compassionate but taciturn hosts. My crying jags in the bathroom, with the faucet turned on to mask the sound. I wrote about how it all combined to underscore the dimming of the light of Christmas for me, in the absence of my mother (the heavenly body around which we all orbited, and without whom we began to slowly drift out of orbit). I wrote about how I never could summon the enthusiasm for the holiday in the same way again.

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