Proof positive that the universe (& its blogospheric doppelganger) works in mysterious ways: Lesbian Dad is a finalist for Best LGBT Blog in the 11th Annual Weblog Awards!

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A brief non-photographic aside here to note that we all — or those of us checking in here from late Saturday afternoon ’til around about Sunday evening — just got taken on a nausea-inducing roller coaster ride. Thanks to the diligent efforts of various of the late night and weekend techies at my stalwart webhost, Acorn Host, this mild-mannered parenting blog is no longer host body to a cranky screed by some overseas hackers with too much time on their hands and too much bile in their — wherever it is that bile collects. In their innards.

By the way, if at any point in the future the URL that’s home to this mild-mannered parenting blog deals you out something suspiciously resembling a cranky screed by overseas hackers with too much time on their hands and too much bile in their whatever, please be assured that (a) while I might have an odd sense of humor from time to time, it is not that odd, and (b) the fine folks that host this mild-mannered parenting blog and I are working ’round the clock to fix it.

Before I return to the calm of the daily photo posting, which I will in a moment, I want to thank the half-dozen or more LD readers and friends who either shot me an email or Tweeted me that something was fishy and then kept me company while I fished the fish out. I likened the feeling, last night on Twitter, to the neighborly love you’d feel when an asteroid drops down in your front yard and folks come out in their fuzzy slippers and robes and offer you a cup of tea (spiked!) and scratch their heads alongside you as you all take in the smoldering mess. And I also want to thank the fine folk at Acorn Host for their hard work cleaning up that mess: Arthur B., Gordon M., Jane W., Phil Z., and Victor T.

I asked Jane, who was the first to graciously put some nice LD wallpaper over the mess left by the bilious biley chaps, whether she and Acorn Host’s boss Emma could share a favorite charity so’s I and any other grateful LD community member who wanted could send some appreciation. Here’s what she said:

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A potpourri, here. No thread, just the will to stay up well past a sensible bedtime to say something, anything.

Have I shown you this image before? If not, I should have. It’s vintage, meaning my daughter drew it years ago, so long ago now that I don’t remember when. Yeah, I know, she’s five, bearing down rapidly on six. How can a parent manage to blur so few years? Don’t answer that. Unless you’re inclined to be sympathetic. If you’re going to blur your kid’s years, I think these early ones are strong candidates.

Comedy/tragedy, that’s what I think of when I look at this drawing of hers. Complete with a clutch of muses and Mephistopheleses peering over their shoulders.

That’ll do it, eh? Life, boiled down to its nub. Back/forth back/forth we swing between those two poles, comedy/tragedy. Usually we flutter around the one for way too little, and we’re wrapped around the other for way too long. Or at least that’s how it tends to feel.

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So I’m off for the city of dreams, the city that never sleeps, the city that apparently doesn’t serve Bloody Marys before noon on a Sunday morning. (Wha?)

[Incidentally, whilst I am at cruising altitude somewhere over the Great Plains, Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in the Prop 8 trial will be released. Here's a thumbnail sketch of the issues at stake by Chris Geidner, American Foundation for Equal Rights' sure-to-be-constantly-updated home page (they brought the suit), and a list (thanks, Dana) of community response actions planned (they're listed along the left-hand column; most are in CA but several are out of state; additional actions are added on a rolling basis).]

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So said my Pops, when he leaned across one or another of us at the dinner table, reaching for the butter dish.

I’ve been offline for perhaps as long as I’ve ever been with this thing since it launched (ten days, yow!), at least as long as I’ve gone in a slid off the map sort of way.  It might have been an unplanned vacation, if only it weren’t actually instead a bunch of feverish rowing in a rowboat atop an avalanche of transitions, physical and psychic, our household’s and our kids’.  It’s all mostly good, but it has definitely disoriented the wherewithal — space, and time — I rely upon to post here.

Please accept my sincerest apologies, and brace for content once again.