Lesbian Dad | Monthly Archive

Archive | August, 2008

We interrupt this parenting blog to crow about a well-placed lesbian television and radio commentator

By Lesbian Dad on August 20, 2008 in APB, Miscellaney

I don’t even watch television, but a friend has been saying for months, “Don’t you know about Rachel Maddow?! You have to! Brilliant! Â Progressive! Â Out dyke! Â From your home town fer Chrissakes! Â On television! Go watch her right this very instant and then report back.”

Sadly, the years of Rachel Maddow’s ascension in broadcasting have more or less paralleled my years either in family crisis or early parenthood or both. So I’d been a bit tuned out. Also, we moved the TV from one room to another about a year or two ago, and managed never to really plug it back in again, beyond hooking up the DVD player. We can’t have the child watching Dottie’s Magic Pockets on my computer here, now can we?

But I succumbed to the peer pressure, checked out Rachel Maddow (pictured at right — see? you think I’m kidding? she’s like, like, like US!), and hot darn was I not disappointed. She reminded me of my smartest chums, laying into [name the topic] with gusto and good humor and insight and research to back it all up. Ah, my peeps.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 17 }

Q/A

By Lesbian Dad on August 20, 2008 in Q/A

This evening the lil’ monkey took umbrage at being interrupted to come to dinner. She had been spelling her name out over and over, along with sundry other words and non-words.

Baba: Why in the Sam Hill did you just whack Mama?!

Lil’ Monkey: Because I wanted to find some harassing way to get her to let me write some more.

[Note to self: It didn't work when the little girl did it, so it is likely not to work if I do it. Even if I have the good sense to whack Mama on the hiney instead.]

Comments { 0 }

A well-rounded musical education

By Lesbian Dad on August 19, 2008 in Nonsense fun

While the sun will never completely set on Into the Woods — Sondheim’s in our girl’s blood, I say — a new musical is already in the wings, readying itself for rehearsal and production this fall for the beloved’s youth musical theater company: Fiddler on the Roof.

Since we have a fairly aggressive campaign to see to it that the lil’ peanut acquires appropriate dance skillz (what with him being a future white guy and all), it was a natural that we get us the pop-ragga version of “If I Were A Rich Man,” done by Ms. Gwen Stefani and Ms. Eve Jeffers. Lately it’s been a daily thing, putting this song on and then shaking the collective tailfeathers.

(And no, the little tykes are not watching the video: I’m not ready to see them working some of the fly girl moves, even if my own facsimilies thereof may well have been what led the beloved to look me up in the first place. I support that kind of galavanting wholeheartedly, but on people other than my kids, and/or I should say rather when my kids are old enough to write convincing five-paragraph essays about debates in contemporary choreography. Which for the lil’ girlie, at least, is a few years off.)

Continue Reading →

Comments { 7 }

Punky of the sands

By Lesbian Dad on August 18, 2008 in Mostly a picture

At Rodeo Beach, Marin Headlands, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Comments { 4 }

Weekend bonus shot, 08.16.08

By Lesbian Dad on August 16, 2008 in Mostly a picture, Weekend bonus shot

Magnifier, Berkeley, CA.

Comments { 2 }

A brief ditty about time

By Lesbian Dad on August 15, 2008 in Baba familias, Mostly a picture

The kiddles, they love them some Wood Nymph!

After four years of piloting our family into the uncharted waters of trio, then quartet, the beloved and I have come to realize how critical time away is. With two such dependent dependents, we are like camels. We go for days and days on a wee dram of what we used to utterly bathe in: time enough. Time enough to smooth out the wrinkles of misunderstanding, time enough to re-member ourselves and each other. The stuff relationships are built on.

Now that there’s not time enough, time away is critical. Not just to re-member our relationship to one another as a duo, but to discover and nurture our evolvingÂ familiness, above and beyond that which we see emerging out of the daily stresses attendant to earning an income and raising kids at the same time.

As with everyone, upon our return home from vacation, our backed-up, put-off work rushes back in (notice the skimpy number of posts this week?). And the kids’ days become filled again with other people’s care as well as ours.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 13 }

Lil’ Red

By Lesbian Dad on August 12, 2008 in Mostly a picture, Re: the bairn

Isn’t it nice to know a lot?

…and a little bit… not.

[Above lyrics from "I Know Things Now," Little Red's soliloquy from Into the Woods, recently produced for her local youth music theater co. by the beloved, and still all a-swirl in the head of our music-mad girlie.

You can imagine the thrill when a chum lent the lil' monkey her priceless little red riding hood for non-stop use during our recent week-long vacation in the woods.

Lyrics to the tune here, YouTubeage here -- the song's half-way through, at about 2:20. Now that's it for the Sondheim madness, I promise.]