Lovers Potatoes

Dawn hates potatoes in any form other than french fries. She said she and her brother would dig them from the ground when they were kids and eat them raw. She says they would sneak down to the cellar in the wintertime in North Dakota and eat them raw from the huge pile they kept down there. Maybe she just got her lifetime quota of potatoes before she turned 10.

Because she never ate them as an adult, she also didn't cook them much. She has linked her life with mine, though and my life requires potatoes. Dawn has fed me so many terrible potatoes in her quest to fill my potato needs. She has finally gotten it just right. They are buttery and garlicy and salty and delicious. She calls them Lovers Potatoes.

She loves me and I know it. I've never been surer of anything else.


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Summer Lovin'

I love, love, love my new look! What do you guys think? Very Summery, right?

I'm quite in love with summer tonight. Does it show? Summer is all of my favorite things, except Christmas. But that's good because the wintertime needs something uplifting, too, you know?

Summer is my favorite foods - crawfish boils, homemade ice cream, oysters on the half, and Perfect Garden Vegetables (notice how I give respect with capital letters). Tomatoes. Tomatoes. I could write yet another Ode to Tomatoes right now, but I'll spare you.

Summer is my favorite drinks - Iced Sweet Tea, Chilly Cold Beer straight from my rusty cooler, Frozen Margaritas, Late Afternoon Vodka & Tonics that take many witty cocktail napkins. My favorite one shows a 50s era woman in a button-up pink dress leaning against a tree. She's smiling coyly. The caption reads, "She had not yet decided whether to use her powers for good or for evil."

Summer is my children - at the Beach, in the yard, on a road trip, in fountains, on bikes, in parks, at festivals, together.

Summer holds my favorite memories from my less than illustrious childhood and not-yet-adulthood. I went to summer camp at Camp DeSoto atop Lookout Mountain in Alabama. I went for a month for 6 years. LOVED it! It was hot and dusty and humid and comfortable and safe and fun and perfect and wanna hear me sing some songs?

Summer was the time for my tragically dysfunctional Southern family to take a FABULOUS trip. We drove across Canada once. Good Lord. We had run-ins with bears, massive sheep and elk that wouldn't get off the road for the goddamn Pope. There was snow (we Mississippians don't do well with that.) There was a grumpy customs agent who didn't think much of our Georgia peaches. My now ex step-dad drove the rental van into a pole in a bank parking lot. I got new L.A. Gear high-tops because they were affordable in Canada. My now ex step-sister did not and threw a massive fit, so my mother's sister threw one of the aforementioned peaches at her in the aforementioned rental van. Good times.

Summer is my favorite boyfriend. Lance. It was the summer I worked at my dad's Country Club as a lifeguard. When I say it was my dad's what I mean is that he was the Golf Pro at the course. It was his job. Lance was a lowly cart boy, and a county school kid, at that. He was adorable. Totally smitten with me. I was the boss's daughter, 16 with a rock hard newly transformed body in a brand new bright red racerback suit and tortoise shell sunglasses. My goodness. He was tripping on himself. He drove a T-top Camaro with only the primer on it. The tape deck responded better to a good swift whack on the dash than to the buttons and knobs. He cried a little the first time we heard "Beaches of Cheyenne," the big hit of that summer. To this day, he's the sweetest boy I ever knew.

"If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance."

Go get some sweet kisses, girls. Summer's here.

Dawn - Part I

She’s given me the afternoon to write, which is to say that she is entertaining the kids, isn’t yelling at me about drinking wine before 5, and is resisting the urge to come in here every quarter hour on the quarter hour. She’s doing a really good job with all except the last. She’s just told me that she may can stay away if I will regularly check my email so she chat with me from the other computer in the den. Our friend Spencer finds this disgusting. I’m pretty sure it’s because her husband (yuck!) is yucky.

I’ve spent the last little bit reading some other lesbian blogs. After reading all the love stories out there, it occurred to me that I haven’t written much about Dawn that doesn’t involve our kids. So here’s an installment of True-as-Far-as-I-Know-It Dawn Lore.

It seems logical to start at her childhood home. She grew up in North Dakota, for the love of God. North Dakota! Before I met her I wasn’t totally convinced that North Dakota even existed. I could have been persuaded that it was simply a joke amongst cartographers. On her tongue, North Dakota is a Wonderland, a frozen tundra with only 25 different species of tree and endless adventure opportunities. She paints it as Norman Rockwell would. She loves the small town. She loves telling about her mother taping 42 cents to a letter and her postman buying the stamp for her. She loves that when her mother accidentally called the dentist’s office to warn them that Dawn’s father had had a stroke and she was bringing him in, the dentist called the ER and said, “Something’s happened to Ed! Maggie’s bringing him in! Meet them out front, will you?” She was a really big fish in a very small pond, but remembers splashing contentedly and regrets not getting her kids there more often.

Dawn went to South America as an exchange student in High School. She didn’t speak a word of Portuguese or Spanish when she applied or when she arrived in Sao Paolo. She had never seen the ocean, either. I think that heaven will be a time-machine. I will, at will zip through time and space witnessing historical events, big and small. At the very top of my list, will be a statuesque fingertip appointment in Washington in August and a Grassy Knoll in Dallas in November, both in 1963. I’ll see my own birth and my own firsts. But before I go anywhere else, I will take a moonlit trip to Brasil to see her see the sea.

Her soul picked her body up from the drowning pool of blood her attackers created and left her in. Her soul, perfect and remarkably still aglow, carried her broken exterior to doctors good enough to just keep her alive. She forgave them years ago, and helps me forgive them now. Stronger and Better than even she was then, she now is near unstoppable in spirit and body. Damn inspiring is what she is! Amazing and beautiful and her own and still Mine! Mine! I’m not getting over this miracle any time soon.

More Dawn Lore to follow. Stay tuned.

Valentine's Day

I had the best Valentine's Day of my whole life. It didn't involve chocolate or roses or jewelry or lingerie. I had a most unconventional perfect day. A good friend of Dawn's Hannah flew in from Milwaukee ro spend a few days with us. I teased her that she just wanted to see us smootch and figured that Valentine's Day was a sure bet for that. Late in the afternoon we started making plans for the night - solidifying babysitting, checking reservation rolls around town, etc. My ex-brother-in-law Will stopped by on his way home from work to see the kids. He stuck around long enough to decide that our plans or lack thereof sounded pretty good, so he volunteered to be the DD. The 3 of us let go a "Yee -Haw!" We hastily set up dinner and a movie for the kids, gave Mimi a big kiss and piled into Will's Honda Civic.

We proceeded downtown to Atlas Oyster House. The wait was 2 hours, but they had a band and a heated tent so we settled in. Great People-Watching! The band was playing good sing-alongs, Brown-Eyed Girl and such. My favorite lady was a nearing 60, dyed brunette wearing a black cocktail dress with a red sparkly stole. She had had 2 too many champagnes and was singing and dancing her festive ass off. I hope I'm that cool when I'm that cool.

Time-Out for dynamics. Dawn and I have been together for about 3 years. I was married to Will's brother for the 5 years prior to that. He is 6 years younger than I am. Hannah and Dawn were in the Army together a decade ago and have remained close ever since. Hannah is 6 years older than Dawn and so 14 years older than Will. I hate to be an ageist or sexist, but in this case the differences made for interesting conversation, especially on the topics of love and sex.

The 4 of us recounted stories of loves lost, families broken into 1000 hilarious pieces, current relationship blunders and struggles and doomed realtionships that mercifully ended. We talked about everything from jailstays to virginal fumblings to farm-raised eel to fake boobs to the unlikely nature of our group and its' testiment to love. The food was good, the drinks plenty and the conversation surprisingly and endearingly seamless. Will did an amazing job keeping up with the female banter, and we resisted the temptation to tell him what an adorable idiot he is.

Dawn finally corraled us back into the car. Will gave us a brief tour of downtown while Hannah told us about an old near-boyfriend with a "hidden penis." (If you're prone to queasiness, don't Google Image it. Otherwise, it might be worth a look-see.) There was a lot of laughing, a little singing and more than the regular amount of "I had SUCH a good time! This was SO fun!"

Dawn and I said our good-byes and good-nights and then fell into a perfect snuggle. The last thing I heard her say was, "This was the best Valentine's Day of my whole life."