The Smart Ass Guide to Decoding Lesbian Dating Profiles

Posted: 22nd September 2017 by admin in Blog
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Wow, these online dating websites are quite popular. I used a couple of them, myself, in addition to some Meet Up groups in my effort to make new friends following my gay-divorce.  (When you get gay-married, you have to get gay-divorced.) Curious process, this. While I did meet a few folks who became friends, I also had some experiences where I doubted that I was speaking the same language as the person with whom I was in contact. Up was down, black was white. Or grey. Or green. Women who claimed not to want drama were expert at creating it. One of the first women who spoke to me asked if I’d like to be Facebook friends and when I declined, she prowled through not-for-profit website after not-for-profit website until she found a photo of me and proudly told me how she tracked me down. I was totally creeped out. No did not mean no? I hadn’t hesitated. I had said NO. I began to wonder if there was a secret decoder ring that would help me understand some of the conflicting messages and language barriers.

Calling Capt’n Crunch! Ovaltine? Anyone?

Alas, not finding a decoding system, I finally decided to write my own.

Mind you, it wasn’t all bad. I like my new friends. They’re kind, decent folks who really were okay with the fact that I was just looking for friends, who became bike ride companions, hiking companions, lunch or let’s-get-coffee companions. Sometimes we compare notes on their experiences on the dating sites and what I saw, and we have found some remarkable similarities. That could be because it seems like it’s the same 40 or 50 women on all of the sites over and over again, so there’s bound to be some similarities.

I suspect these findings are not limited to lesbian dating websites. I suspect cis-het folks get their share of comments like these, as well as people who try to convince them that up is down and black is white. Or grey. Or green. In fact, several of my straight friends howled with laughter when I read this to them and then said, “It’s not just the lesbians doing that, baby!”  I can’t speak to that, though, as it’s been a long time since I went in search of a maaa-yun, or as I sometimes called my housemate, “An XY.” So take these with a grain of salt. Or even a shaker full of it, depending on your own experiences.

For the record, I am open to the idea that I just suck at meeting new people but if that’s the case, it’s a fairly new phenomenon. Like since I turned 50. I mean, it’s entirely possible that my ability to make friends has gone by way of “What did I come in this room for?” that we 50+ folks tolerate of ourselves on a daily basis. I do, however, recall some coaching in grad school about how when you repeatedly walk out of a conversation scratching your head, genuinely puzzled, wondering, “What the hell just happened here?”, it’s also entirely possible that the issue is not yours.

So who knows for sure? Let’s keep the door open to the idea that when I am faced with potential new friends, I draw a blank and can’t remember what I came in this room for. Maybe it’s an ongoing cycle of walking back to my office with a Diet Coke when I really needed to go get some scissors, just with people, instead. I meant to go out and make a friend, but once I got out there, I forgot what I was doing and came back with a puppy, a new refrigerator and someone who really just wants to get married. These things are known to happen, right? While we’re at it, though, let’s also make room for the idea that quite a few of these conversations truly deserved a head scratch and a “What the hell just happened here?”

Here is a list of the comments I heard and saw most frequently, coupled with the things I believe to be the unspoken real statement behind what was said outwardly.

No drama! Translation:  I’m going to treat you poorly and then when you protest, I’m going to complain about the drama you’re creating. Do NOT call me on my shit.

No baggage! Translation:  I have no true desire to get to know you or share with you anything that makes me real, usually because I don’t know what that is. Let’s just figure out if I want to get in your underroos or not, and then we can be done.

No drama/no baggage! Translation:  I’m an absolute asshole.

I’m all about living in the moment.  Translation: What? There are people who actually write about and speak on the topic of mindfulness and it doesn’t mean I really just wanna get laid tonight without complications??? People study this shit? Are you sure?

Feminine only. Translation:  I’m still married and my husband will be involved.

Femmes only.  Translation:  I’m still in the closet and you have to pass as my platonic girlfriend.

Must like to laugh. Translation:  I can’t think of anything else to say about myself because I have no idea who I am.

Sports fan.  Translation:  I can’t have a conversation longer than 4 or 5 sentences that doesn’t involve some sports reference.

Sure, we can be friends, Version 1. Translation: But only until I find someone to date, then I can’t be your friend anymore.

Sure, we can be friends, Version 2.  Translation:  But only until you confirm that you don’t really want to date me, then I won’t be interested in being friends anymore and I’ll blow you off until you get the point, although I’ll never actually admit this out loud.

Sure, we can be friends, Version 3.  Translation:  Whatever, I’m about to ghost you.

No, I don’t want to be in a relationship, either.  Translation: …Unless you want me to be.

I am looking for my soulmate.  Translation:  I can’t make a decision on my own and need someone else to fill in the gaps in my wounded psyche. Please take over the decision making in my life so that when things go wrong, I have someone else to blame and I can be bitter and angry at you forever.

I am looking for my other half.  Translation:  I’ve seen too many Nicholas Sparks movies OR I attempted to recreate a scene from a Harry Potter movie that involved flue powder or splinching and…ooops… (As an aside, this comment often confused me. Don’t people generally want to date and make friends with other people who are already whole all by themselves?)

I am looking for my best friend.  Translation:  I’ve somehow managed to make it to 50 without making any friends, so if we start hanging out together, you have to promise to be EVERYTHING to me because I have no other life.

Family is really important to me, Version 1.  Translation:  Saying I’m doing anything with my family is a good excuse for when I don’t feel like getting together with you.

Family is really important to me, Version 2.  Translation:  I am a single parent and have three kids under 10. Or my grown children all still live in my house. Or I’m the sole caretaker for my aging parent(s), so getting on my calendar to do ANYTHING is impossible, but thanks, it makes me feel really good that you were interested. No, we don’t need to meet in person. I just wanted to introduce myself to a bunch of strangers so they could all know that family is really important to me and that I am unavailable.

I’m spiritual.  Translation:  I don’t give much thought to spirituality at all or how it influences my life. I don’t have an affiliation with any faith community, but I believe in something—I just don’t think about it. But I believe in it. I just don’t think about it. Go ahead. Ask me. You want another beer?

I know we said we’d do something today but now…  Translation:  You’re not on the priority list. You’re not even close to the priority list. But I’d like you to be available the next time I don’t have anything going on, so please keep your calendar clear.

I’m sooooo busy.  Translation:  I didn’t really want to be connected to you, I just want you to chase me.

Sorry I have to break our plans (followed by no attempts to make new plans).  Translation:  A lack of time with you doesn’t mean anything to me…and frankly, neither did having time with you, I just didn’t know how to tell you.

I’m not even sure WHY I set up a profile on that website!  Translation:  Please don’t ask about the other four dating sites I’m also on, there’s no need to talk about THOSE. Nothing to see here, people, nothing to see!

I’m looking for a long term relationship.  Translation:  I want someone who is physically stunning, has a great job with an awesome paycheck, is an elite athlete but still exquisitely feminine, can prioritize me immediately, and lives two houses down because I don’t want to put any work into having to get to the same space she’s in. I don’t drive or own a car, I’m more interested in the size of her waistline than the size of her heart, my conversation skills are limited to, “You have a great smile,” but hey, I’m a find—just ask me how much!

Head scratching and puzzled looks aside, I do tend to be a bit of a smart ass. That needs no translation. I’ll just own that. If you’ve gone exploring in the wild world of online introductions and potential dating without being ghosted, benched, or zombied, I wish you nothing but the best. If you have been ghosted, benched, or zombied, I’m sorry. We’re all grown ups here and it’s a reasonable expectation that another grown up’s communication skills would be better than those three options. But if you find yourself scratching and puzzling, you might want to consider your own decoder system. (Well, after 25 years of working in HIV services, if you find yourself scratching, that might be a topic for another blog—get that to the nearest clinic!)

Until next time, decoding fans!

decoder ring

 

 

 

On Critters, Kindness, and Courage

Posted: 2nd September 2017 by admin in Blog
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Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.   ~ Kahlil Gibran

Last fall, I took a plunge and brought a third dog into my house. I wasn’t puppy shopping at the time. I was really nervous about adding another set of paws to the 12 already living in my small home. The circumstances seemed right, though. Her family loved her and hated to let her go but they wanted a stable place for her. Her “mom” (my friend Lorrie) had died about 6 months prior and her “dad” (my friend John) needed to be able to travel for his job and wasn’t able to care for her.

We decided after numerous conversations that Kiara would become part of the herd here and with the friendship that had formed between her family and me, she could still see her people regularly. It was a great arrangement. She got to be in one place and her dad didn’t have to worry about kenneling her or finding her a dog sitter when he was out of town for work.

I can’t say it wasn’t a difficult start. During the first week that Ki moved in, her dad came over to see how she was adjusting. He had a glass of wine with me and she sat by his feet in this new, strange environment with its extra critters. The next day, every time I walked through the living room, I found her sitting beside the recliner where her dad had sat, with her chin on the armrest. It was so sweet and so loyal, it brought tears to my eyes.

Kiara spent the winter bonding with Chip and chasing the cat around the first floor, poking at him with one pointy paw when he’d let her get close. Mylo was a bit more reserved about having a newcomer and on the night of her arrival, took one look and promptly nipped her on the snout to let her know who was alpha. Kiara got the message. It was Mylo’s house. I don’t think Ki really cared all that much.

I’ve known before now that dogs have a sense of humor but I saw it surface in ways I hadn’t seen with other critters. Kiara played tricks on Chip. She would wait until all dog bowls had hit the floor filled with kibble with the little tablespoon of wet food on top to make it interesting. She’d wait just a bit longer until Chip was engrossed in his breakfast, then she’d run across the room at him, barking at the top of her canine lungs. Chip, rocket scientist that he is (how do I keep ending up with these super sweet, not too bright male dogs?), would fall over himself down the stairs toward the back door, bellowing his warning bark, then standing guard there against absolutely nothing, puffed up to about four times his normal size. He clearly didn’t know WHAT was happening, but SOMETHING was happening and he was going to stop it, by golly!  Kiara would casually swipe the wet dog food off the top of his bowl and go trotting back to her place in the dining room as if nothing had happened. Laughing. I KNEW she was laughing.

The best part of it for her –and maybe the funniest part—was that Chip fell for it not just once or twice. She pulled the Chip-alarm every day for weeks. I finally had to intervene and put a gate up so the poor guy could eat his kibble in peace, without being blown up into the unfortunate dog in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. I could almost hear her saying to Seamus, “Hey, Cat, watch THIS!”

Kiara was the early riser in the family. She could be tempted to hit the snooze button once in a while if I loudly told her, “No bark!” but her response to that was to climb onto the end of the bed with her pointy legs, sigh, and fidget, while kicking me, until I got up. She had strong opinions about these things.

I think it is safe to say that this was one of the best decisions I ever made. She got it all. She got a house and a yard to romp in, and two new buddies to play with, and her dad could do his job and not have to worry about her and she got to see her other people frequently, which always brought happy sounds and a certain dance with those long, skinny legs. Last week, I needed someone to watch her for a few days so she went for the whole week with one of her people who loves her most in the world.

Kiara came home from her trip last Sunday, ready to romp with the other dogs and resume telling me what time to get up each morning. On Wednesday, we started our day as all days start—with a romp in the yard before kibble, then a walk to sniff around the street and see who’s doing what. We’d gotten only two houses away. She lagged behind to sniff the fire hydrant and the tree and I called her to step up the pace.

We didn’t get any further. Ki collapsed on the driveway, maybe 60 feet from our house. I heard it before I saw it. Bony dog elbows thumping concrete is unmistakable. It was quick. I don’t think she suffered. The vet said it was a sudden onset cardiac issue. There’s no warning, no sign of a problem, so the first time it makes itself known, it’s typically fatal.

My biggest regret is that when she collapsed, I was unable to lift her, to hold her, as she died. She’d gone to visit her person the week before because I had surgery on my shoulder and one week post-surgery, picking her up from a flat-out position on concrete was not a possibility.

I yelled for my neighbor to come help and he rushed outside to see what was wrong. His voice broke as he scooped her up and held her gently, telling her that she would be okay, to just hold on, that we were going to get her help. He talked to her the entire time we were driving to the vet office. “Hold on, baby. We’re almost there.”

She was gone before we arrived at the clinic. I’m not even sure that she was still with us when we got into the car. If she was, she died on his lap in my car. My neighbor, Scott, stood on the sidewalk of the vet hospital with me as we cried on each other’s shoulders and the techs carried her inside.

It is not lost on me that my friend Kiara got to spend a whole week with her person before she left us. Nor is it lost on me that her last morning consisted of a romp with Chip and Mylo, and kibble with her favorite wet food on top, and a walk with a fire hydrant and a tree to sniff. When time stopped for her, she was not alone. She was held and loved—some even by a man who didn’t know her well, but who treated her with the utmost kindness in her last moments.

It is difficult to lose a furry family member. But the focus of these last couple of days has been far more about what she gave us during her months with us and what her family and I were able to do for her to make her last year wonderful.

It is also not lost on me that in a scalding second of I NEED SOMETHING RIGHT NOW, my neighbor Scott appeared by my side and helped me escort that sweet pup across the Rainbow Bridge. I don’t know what he was in the middle of doing when I yelled for him. He dropped whatever it was, and he was right there for me, and for her, through the end.

No regrets otherwise. This is what I offered to do when I agreed to bring her home. In return, I got a year with a very cool, smart, funny dog. I shared her with a very cool, smart, funny family and we got to do something really special for her.

In her last moments, I got to see the absolute best of a person who opened his arms and his heart to help me do one final thing for her. There are times when kindness cannot be repaid. It can only be paid forward. I think this may be one of those times.

Happy trails, Kiara. The gate is open, sweet girl. Run as fast as you want!

Scott, I will never be able to thank you enough.

Kiara beds

 

Excuse Me, Your Myths Are Showing!

Posted: 27th June 2017 by admin in Blog
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Are you ready? It’s Tuesday. Let’s do some myth busting just for fun. In my Facebook feed this morning, just in the first couple of minutes that I was looking, I saw articles on poor people, and working people, and poor people who work but can’t afford basic needs, and homeless people. Oh yeah, and comments about health insurance and who should have what and the inevitable comments from people who are tired of supporting health insurance for other people. Don’t forget those.

If I’m completely honest, it wasn’t a pleasant way to wake up this morning. Then beyond finding it irritating, it actually made me angry.

Yes, by all means, let’s talk about poor people and poor people who work and people who are homeless and what they all deserve. Here’s my angle on this, for anyone reading who has not met me in person. I’m probably as middle class as it gets. I have a great job that I love. I’m a home owner. I have some dogs that are very opinionated at all the wrong times of day. I have a master’s degree, I am involved in my community, and I’m nice to older people, little kids and puppies.

All of those things are true.

You know what else is true? I’ve been homeless. I’ve been poor. And I’ve been uninsured.

And are you ready for THIS? Here’s where it gets REALLY crazy.  I was working when it happened!

I know. I know.  Take a minute. You may have to percolate on that a bit. I didn’t become homeless because I did something “wrong”. I wasn’t trying to scam the system and get something for nothing. It didn’t ever occur to me to ask. The simple fact is that I became homeless…lacking in a permanent domicile…when my remaining parent died and the house I grew up in got put up for sale.

That’s all it took. It wasn’t a long, slippery slope of mistakes or accidents or bad judgment calls. It wasn’t bankruptcy brought on by medical bills that I couldn’t afford, although that happens all too often. It wasn’t unemployment, although a lot of folks are only a couple of missed paychecks away from becoming housing vulnerable or homeless. There was nothing about it that could be judged the way we tend to judge people who are homeless. I was 17 years old. I was suddenly and unexpectedly without a parent, then suddenly and unexpectedly without a home. Oh…the job? Yes, I still had the job. It was 1982 and I was making near minimum wage, flipping burgers in fast food. I earned $3.25 an hour. At the highest point in that job, I made an entire $3.65 an hour.

A few of my family members stepped up to help. I stayed for a while with a cousin. Then I stayed for a while with Marie, the father’s long-term significant other. Then I couch surfed with a friend. Occasionally, I told Marie I was with the friend and I told the friend I was at Marie’s and then I just slept in my car because I was so afraid to be a drain on either of them.  Then I stayed for a while with my sister. Then I went away to college on grants that my sister helped me apply for, because at $3.25 an hour, it would have been tough to pay for on my own.

In the space of ten months, I lived in six different places with four different family configurations, while attempting to cope with the father’s death and other circumstances of my family of origin. There’s also nothing in there to be judged. My family tried to help as best they could. There was nothing anyone could do that would have resurrected my dead parents so that I could go home.

You want to know the funny part? I was 27 before I realized that I had been homeless. That never occurred to me either. How could I have been homeless? I stayed with people. I had a car. I had a job. That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard! Of course, I wasn’t homeless.

Working at The Salvation Army Women’s Shelter in Syracuse, I heard the HUD definition of homeless for the first time. I worked in a homeless shelter. Go figure!  No great mystery THERE.  Anyway, hearing that concept sent me into a tailspin. In the language of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, I was a category within a category. I was an Unaccompanied Child within the larger category of being homeless.

Unaccompanied Children are people who are not part of a family or in a multi-child household during their episode of homelessness, and who are under the age of 18.   ~HUD definition of terms (https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2014-AHAR-Part1.pdf)

At 27, I had to reorganize myself around this. I had been…homeless…by all of the definitions that HUD offered. Having a job hadn’t mattered. I worked 39 hours a week from the time I turned 16, which was as many hours as I could legally take on without being called a full time employee. I worked those hours through my junior and senior years of high school, on the honor roll for most of that time. I did it the entire time I would have been considered homeless. In other words, I worked my ass off. And I had to take into consideration that I could have been viewed as a term a former supervisor taught me (and also taught me to fight against)—I was one of the “deserving poor” who had become homeless through no fault of my own, simply through a series of occurrences over which I had little or no control.

So here I sit these days, reading my Facebook feed and headline news and political comments about poor people and homeless people and I reflect on my home ownership and my master’s degree and I have to reconcile that every day that I am one of those people. I am one of those people that folks rail against, and not just because I ultimately became a social worker. I was one of THOSE. I was OTHER.

I am no longer homeless. I haven’t been in a long time. But a very smart person observed to me not long ago that we are always all of the ages that we have ever been. Don’t you love that idea? In a way, I guess that means I’ll always have a little part of me that is 17 and just trying to graduate from my high school, washing my school uniform shirt with a load of towels at work so it would be clean for the next day and waking up stiff and cold in my car in my employer’s parking lot.

If you haven’t had a chance to try it, I highly recommend that before you decide what anyone needs or deserves, that you sleep for a few cool, damp, spring nights behind the wheel in a 1973 Pinto in a fast food parking lot. Then come back to me and we’ll discuss poverty and what people who are poor and/or homeless deserve. The catch is, though, that if you have somewhere else you CAN go, it doesn’t really count.

People who are poor don’t look a certain way. People who are homeless don’t look a certain way. And they don’t need to look like what we THINK they need to look like to be the “deserving poor”. I looked like a 17 year old kid with a bad haircut and a Catholic school uniform. No one would have picked me out of a crowd. I went to school—and to work—day after day and no one knew.

People who are poor and people who are homeless aren’t all out there looking for a free ride and planning to stay on what scraps we deign to offer them as support benefits for the rest of their lives. Sometimes, we need a break. Sometimes we need a hand. I happened to get both. Sometimes we just need someone to be frickin’ kind to us. I got that too. Now I can’t help but wonder how much of my getting those things had to do with the fact that I was a white kid in a Catholic school uniform. One does have to ponder THAT question.

I grew up to be an executive director. Good stuff can happen for people who are poor and people who are homeless when they get A) a break and B) a hand and C) a little frickin’ kindness. So, for the folks sounding off in Facebook feeds and political posts about “the poor” and “the homeless” and “the needy”, seriously…until you’ve walked a mile in my sneakers, or slept on that park bench, or driven a few miles in my Pinto, as it were, I just can’t put a lot of stock into anything you’re carrying on about over what people need and deserve. Stop adding to the myths and misinformation out there and go find your bench.

Dedicated to the supervisor who taught me that there’s no such thing as the “deserving poor.”  Thank you, Liz.

bench

 

 

 

A Group Effort

Posted: 10th May 2017 by admin in Uncategorized
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I’m seeing lots of comments about Mother’s Day approaching, and it may inspire another blog post later this week, but for right now, I was inspired to share an older post about all the women who helped me become me, even when there was no Mom-of-a-sort left.

The Bonds We Forge

Posted: 26th April 2017 by admin in Blog
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Ahem. Me-me-me-me-me. Ahem.
“People let me tell you ’bout my best friend…”
Yyyeaah, lemme tell you about my buddy Zach. He once ate an entire box of dry Cream of Wheat. I wouldn’t let him drink anything because I was afraid he’d blow up. During his awkward teenaged years, he got tangled in my feet on the stairs and knocked me down, breaking my tailbone. He thought it was great fun when we landed on the floor at the bottom of the steps in a heap and he jumped away and jumped back as if to say, “Hey, let’s do that again!” I had to sit on an orthopedic doughnut for about three months. (Ok, occasionally I did wear it on my head. There are photos. Don’t ask.) He once raided the luggage of a house guest and ate her Welbutrin. He slept for three days. I had to wake him up to take him out to pee. He once chased my pet rabbit around the basement in a circle, faster and faster, until the bunny went running up the ramp into his cage, and Zach followed, getting his head and shoulders stuffed through the door before coming to a screeching halt, nose to nose with said bunny and wedged so tightly that neither one of them could move. I was surprised Smudge didn’t have a heart attack.
 
This guy was smart like a box of rocks. Whenever I called the vet with his latest adventure, I had to wait for him to stop laughing before he could answer my question.
 
I thought I would lose my mind before he was two.
 
Then came the days following my brother’s death when I could barely get through a day without breaking down. Zach would climb up on the couch beside me and drape his giant orange head over mine and just breathe with me for hours and I listened to his heart beat until those days passed. Apparently dogs know how to hold space.
 
Good boy, Zacharoo. Good boy.
 
“People let me tell you ’bout my best friend…”
Zach was with me until two weeks shy of his 15th birthday, an impressive feat for a 100 lb Golden Retriever. On his last morning, we celebrated with Frosty Paws and a visit to his favorite fire hydrant and a nap on his blanket in the yard with the sun shining. When he took the shot, I held his head in my hands and breathed with him, wanting him to know I was right there, just as he had been for me. That was this morning, a warm April day in 2006.
 
Sometimes I think I can still hear his heartbeat.
Zach and me

On Knowing Better–LGBT Youth and Trauma

Posted: 17th April 2017 by admin in Blog
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“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”    ~Maya Angelou

I’ve done a lot of reading and attended some trainings over this winter on the topic of trauma and trauma informed care and here’s what I have learned so far. When someone is in the middle of a meltdown, the thinking part of their brain stops working. No lie. The science is there. Kids, teenagers, all of us. It just stops. Decision making skills? Out the window. Language? Gone. Nothing above the brain mid-line is in gear–only the parts that can feel and act—or react.

This new learning caused me to notice the questions that we ask of people at those times. I’ve done it in my job over the years. “How can I help you?” ‘What do you need?” The questions are innocent, an outpouring of our desire to support and assist people we care about. They can’t engage in those questions with us, though. Their brain has turned off. They can’t answer a question like “What do you need” when they can’t access the upper part of their brain where language lives. We are asking them to do something with us that they are literally unable to do.

I am reminded of a Ram Dass book one of my graduate school instructors shared with us that talked about the helplessness of the helping professional. That book was written before we even knew any of the neuroscience that is driving our understanding today. Back then, it just resonated with me that sometimes the most important thing you could do with someone in crisis was to honor them by witnessing their pain. Just be with them. I have carried that message throughout my career.

Working with LGBT youth, sometimes the most important thing we can do is to honor them by witnessing their pain. We, as the agency staff, have no access to their family home. We have limited access to their school, and then only by invitation. We meet kids in tremendous pain who are being verbally and physically harassed, assaulted, threatened…kids are dealing with trauma on a frequent basis.

Neuroscience is also telling us now that people who experience trauma in childhood (abuse, neglect, parental mental illness or addiction, sexual assault, witnessing domestic violence, natural disasters, and a few others) develop cognitively in a different way than do people who do not experience trauma. The more trauma, the more different the brain and the more likely for health and mental implications in adulthood. The science is fascinating. Take a look at a quick, easy and interesting overview by Dr. Nadine Harris Burke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNk&t=577s

I wouldn’t have to scan the brains of some of the LGBT kids we work with to know that there are some differences in development going on there. We know there’s been an uptick in harassment and assault in the last couple of years (https://www.glsen.org/sites/default/files/GLSEN%202015%20National%20School%20Climate%20Survey%20%28NSCS%29%20-%20Executive%20Summary.pdf). We know there’s been, at best, benign neglect of their needs, and, at worst, open hostility toward LGBT students, especially trans students.  We also already know that LGBT youth make up between 20% and 40% of the kids who are homeless and on the streets every year, particularly high on the T, most particularly on trans youth of color. Newer research tells us that LGBT kids also comprise about 20% of youth who are incarcerated.  (Should we place bets on how many of those kids were homeless before they were locked up?)

Those are some mindblowing stats when you take into account that we make up…what….maybe 10% of the general population? Conservative stats say 5%, but let’s be generous and say 10% for the hell of it.

Now let’s add one more twist. Where’s my bugle? This information should come with a bugle blaring to announce its arrival. According to Dr. Caitlin Ryan, researcher at The Family Acceptance Project, and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the leading trauma experts in the world, all is takes is one person.

You read that right. All it takes is ONE person who hears, one person who witnesses, one person who honors and believes to begin to relieve some of the effect of that trauma. That’s one school counselor. One school nurse. One social worker in individual session. One mom. One brother. One neighbor. One volunteer at Youth Outlook or Big Brother/Big Sister. One person who is safe and trustworthy and respectful can provide an opportunity for rewiring a brain that has been traumatized. One person can be the protective factor that stops a desperate kid from making an attempt on their own life.

Wow. Think about the power you have to affect a kid’s life. Not just their life right now, but if you listened to Dr. Burke’s TED talk, you know it’s the power to affect a kid’s life throughout the life span. It’s not about the question at that moment of crisis: “What do you need?”  or “How can I help?” Remember, in meltdown mode, none of us can actually process that question.

Thirty years into this, although I see what Ram Dass meant, I don’t know that I would limit my description of this as helplessness when we watch someone hurt. It has honor. It has meaning. True enough, we may not be able to stop it from happening, but being there with someone while he/she/they hurt, holding space for them to have their experience safely, has the potential to change cognitive wiring. We can get to those pesky questions later. First, we just have to be. We are amazing critters—both what we are as individuals and what we have the ability to do for one another.

Yes, Dr. Angelou. I agree. When we know better, we do better.

Childhood Trauma Family Courts - 2015

Of Superhero Capes and Chemo

Posted: 9th April 2017 by admin in Blog
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I met one of my favorite people when she was just finishing up chemo for breast cancer. She was interested in volunteering at the agency where I work, and we met to talk about the jobs that volunteers were doing and the time commitment that might be involved.

I’ve mentioned this before in other blog posts. Some people throw light. It’s a warm, peaceful feeling to be in the presence of that light. My new friend Lorrie threw light like that. She led with it. I noticed it the first time we sat together over coffee, talking about LGBT kids. She was magnetic.

When she asked if it would make a difference to the kids that she came to a drop-in center wearing a headscarf, I told her I thought the kids would place more value on the fact that she was showing up to be supportive of them—they were not likely to judge the fact that she’d lost her hair to chemo. She took her scarf off then and the fact that she’d lost her hair dimmed when compared to the animation and luminosity in her eyes.

Lorrie decided she would sit through our volunteer training, a process that requires 24 hours over three Saturdays. It’s a big time demand. While I hope that folks who attend will learn something from the staff or the youth leaders or me, it was during that training that I learned that ANY statement coming from Lorrie starting with, “Oh, Nancy!” meant that filters were off and there was no predicting what I was about to hear.

On the third day of training, I’d left a basket of fidget toys out for the attendees to hand around. It was the usual training fidget toys—stress balls, Play Doh, stuffed bears, Nerf balls, etc. Lorrie set the tone for the next several years of our friendship at that moment.

“Oh Nancy!”

I looked up from a pile of handouts I was organizing on the front table, as a stress ball made its way down the line of new recruits and landed at Lorrie’s seat. She had the ball in one hand and the most incredible twinkle in her eyes that I’d ever seen.

“Nancy!” she repeated.  “This feels just like my new boobs will feel!” She immediately turned to the man next to her and extended the stress ball, laughing. “Here! Feel this!”

I was momentarily speechless, then washed over with a wave of her light and an irresistible urge to giggle. The man who sat next to her looked surprised (although by Day 3, it’s hard to say why either of us would have been) and declined, but he started to giggle too. Then the person on the other side of her started. Then the rest of the attendees joined in.

It occurred to me that we were laughing, however briefly, in the face of cancer.

Maybe chemo should come with capes, not headscarves. I learned a lot about life force and joy from a superhero who kicked cancer’s ass twice in the time that I knew her. During the third bout, when chemo stole her hair again, she shaved her head and sent me a selfie, commenting that she thought it appropriate to share, since this was where she was when I met her, too. Like that years ago night over coffee, it is not her uncovered head that stands out in the photo. It is her eyes—bright and mischievous and daring. She was laughing, irrepressible.  It is truly Lorrie, open, vulnerable, ready for a challenge, unbeatable. Of all of the photos I keep of my friends, it’s probably the most beautiful photo I have.

She brought incomparable gifts to my job and to my life. I wrote about the impact she had on our youth group members when we honored her at the agency gala a few years ago. Over coffee at Caribou, over pizza at Lou Malnati’s, during staff meetings and retreats, from hammering out details of a grant that funded her position through me pestering her for program reports and curriculum details, to developing our pilot program for first- and second-graders, to a serendipitous vacation when we both ended up in Paris, she was a creative force. She was one of my go-to people at first, someone whose input I trusted and whose expertise in her field gave her unique perspective on our new projects. In time, she was simply my friend, one of very few people who knew how writing Urban Tidepool had affected me and with what I was struggling, including processing my pending divorce and the fall out of the people I thought of as my friends.

Lorrie Paris

We lost Lorrie just a little over a year ago. Today is her birthday. It has been an odd year of our Youth Outlook team grieving, of kids and former kids grieving, of our book group grieving, of individuals noting softly in non-sequitur, “I miss Lorrie…”  while we engaged in the day to day activities of which she used to be a part. It has been a year of making space for the folks who needed to say, “I miss Lorrie…” and then coming home and crying alone in my garden or on a walk with one of the dogs because I miss Lorrie too.

The program she developed is going strong. The “talking ball” that she would take home from time to time to wash and return is still in the fidget basket. The stress ball that started years of laughter may still be in the bottom of that basket, too. In staff meetings and trainings, we still refer to “Lorrie nights”. I can’t walk into Lou Malnati’s or pick up coffee from Caribou without thinking about her. Maybe she actually kicked cancer’s ass a third time, because she’s certainly still with us, throwing light and prompting giggles with irreverent comments.

 

If you work in social services, you know how it goes—if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.  This happened. So I’m documenting it. I met a superhero who was having chemo. She was irreverent and sarcastic and funny as hell. And bald. She was my friend. She was my person. I watched her change people’s lives. Sometimes I got to help. Other times, I just bugged her for paperwork about it. She kicked cancer’s ass twice and left a legend. She really should have had a cape.

I will tell you clearly and not as a non-sequitur. I miss Lorrie.

Happy birthday, my friend.

poplet-custom-personalized-super-hero-cape-w-emblem-initial-01_0

Bad Ass Adulting in Entomo Season

Posted: 27th March 2017 by admin in Blog
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A Facebook post from last spring:

Somewhere in a parallel universe, there’s a bug version of Criminal Minds playing out and investigators are standing over dismembered centipedes saying, “Given this level of overkill, this is clearly the work of a centipeda-cidal maniac.” Yes. Arrest me now.

I make no exoskeletons about my centipede phobia. I’ve written about it before. Unless you share this phobia, you may have no idea how difficult it is to maintain an image of being a bad ass while shrieking and coming all from-gether (the opposite of TOgether). It’s been a while since I worried about the Lesbian Association of the Midwest—fondly known as LAM in these parts– dispatching Spike the tow truck driver to show up at my house, run a big hook through my LAM membership card, and repossess it due to my bug related meltdowns.

It’s that time of year again. Centipede season. As a person who detests any critter with more than four legs and fewer than two, you can imagine how well this sits with me. I’m still dealing with last season.

Try to get a visual. I arrived home from a late meeting and Chip, my 100-pound Black Lab mix, was snoozing on the end of my bed. Channeling my inner bad ass, I melted as I always do when Chip is in sleepy-gentle mode instead of his typical bull-in-a-china-shop mode. I leaned on the bed, ruffling his ears and smoothing his fur speckles. He made a contented sound and stretched. I petted him for a minute or so, then I straightened up with the intention of prodding him off the bed so I could get into it, as he tends to take up most of it. Grabbing a handful of blanket and top sheet, I flipped the covers back.

An enormous centipede, maybe four inches long, ran out of the sheets and down the bed. It was not a regular centipede. Those are maybe an inch long and kind of grey. This was huge and sort of red and gold. It was bug royalty.

Grabbing for the first thing I could use a weapon, I realized quickly there wasn’t a lot I could do with Chip’s tail. On a good day, Chip’s tail is a marvel, sweeping table tops clear and leaving cylindrical bruises on my shinbones. At that moment, it did nothing for me. So I grabbed a sneaker. I knocked the dodgy little bastard off my bed and proceeded to beat him to a pile of extra legs and an occasional jerky kick. Here, I am referring to the centipede, not Chip. I’d be more likely to refer to Chip as a dodgy big bastard.

Okay. I handled it. Not well, but I did handle it. THAT was disgusting.

I paced the house, unsettled, entomophobia in full gear. I had no interest in going to get into THAT bed anymore, even as tired as I was and even though it gnawed at my bad ass-ness. Chip relocated to the living room, apparently unrattled by my prowling from window to window, peeking out to see if the LAM tow truck was slinking down my driveway. It took an hour or so, but I managed to clear the buggy energy from my room and was able to go to bed.

When I woke the next morning, I knew that the house was simply not big enough for me and any random entomo. They had to go. I suited up for buggy battle, armed with some fabulous Bug X. I swept the entire first floor, chuckling to myself. Take THAT, entomos!

But I wasn’t quite done. This situation required MORE. It required the ultimate in bad ass home ownership skills. The next morning, I suited up again, attaching a sprayer of outdoor Bug X to the hose and spraying the outside of the whole house, paying close attention to windows and doors.  I was careful to shoo the bees away so they were not in the direct path of Bug X. I like bees. They do not fall in the phobia category.

I felt quite proud of myself as I finished up the last side of the house. Bring on the adulting skills. I was ready. I turned the water off and started to unscrew the sprayer attachment.

It didn’t occur to me in all of my bad ass adulting that I should relieve some of the pressure in the hose before I unscrewed it. On the second twist, the remaining pressure forced water to erupt between the threads, spraying backwards according to some unknown (at least to me) rule of physics. Or maybe it was just Murphy’s law. He was a good Irishman. He would understand these things.

I was instantly drenched from head to legs. In pesticide.

The sprayer flew out of my hand and I bobbled the hose in surprise, soaking my jeans and sneakers with cold water. It was one of the moments where you stand there dripping (and don’t try to tell me that you NEVER stand around dripping) and you think, “That did NOT just happen.”

I blinked through the mist. As I watched droplets of pesticide drip off my shirt and I spit vehemently into the evergreen shrub, the next thing that crossed my mind was, “Somebody needs to clean this mess up.” Since I was doing this alleged adulting, that could only be me.

I figured I should go get out of my pesticide soggy clothes. But first I would clean up. Should I go to the ER? No, I should get this off my skin. Skin? I spit into the evergreen shrub again. Skin?!  I got it in my mouth! Oh!

The folks at Poison Control are very nice, just in case you’ve ever wondered.

“Have you noticed any twitching?”

“Twitching?”

“It’s a neurotoxin. If you start twitching, you should get to the ER right away.”

Oooookay. That’s helpful. Spraying oneself with a neurotoxin can take so much fun out of adulting!

It turned out that I didn’t twitch. A couple of weeks later, I received a letter of commendation from LAM citing me for courage and going above and beyond the call of duty for my efforts to create an entomo-free zone while actively engaging in bee-shoo-ing.

Out of curiosity, I looked up some info on an exterminator website. Do you know if you have a significant problem with centipedes, you can lay down glue traps to track their traffic and see where they are most active? It’s not considered a solution really, because the dodgy little bastards will simply leave a few legs behind on the glueboard and go about their business of scaring people senseless and grow new legs! When I read that, I stared at the laptop screen thinking, “And how does THIS help me? Now I KNOW there’s a centipede in here somewhere—probably running in circles because it has more legs on one side than on the other—but I don’t know where it is.”

Still I congratulated myself on successful adulting and bad ass-ness and a lack of twitching. Until I saw the next one. THAT made me twitch. By then, I was calling the LAM headquarters and requesting that Spike swing by and pick up my membership ‘cause I couldn’t take another drenching in entomo spray. Right after I called the exterminator company and requested a special home visit.

I knew my reputation was slipping when the exterminator company rep showed up and said, “I hear you got some nasties.”

And all I could think to say back was, “Hold me?”

Spike would be mortified.

It’s Dodgy Little Bastard season again. All you bad asses out there, be careful!

fear

When Ya Gotta Go, Ya Gotta Go!

Posted: 27th February 2017 by admin in Blog
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Written almost two years ago as we embarked on the Don’t Pee Here adventure. I’m sad to say that so little has changed and yes, people ARE still freaked out by seeing someone with short hair washing their hands in the women’s restroom. Two years is a long time to wait to pee. You should try it sometime.

2016, A Year of Silliness

Posted: 19th February 2017 by admin in Blog
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My Facebook friends often comment on the humor in my posts. Who could not use a little humor? So I sat down today and pulled the most responded-to, most Erma Bombeck-inspired posts from 2016. I hope they will make you smile.

“Your Facebook posts are so funny. And I’m learning there’s a predictable group of people who respond to you.”
Me: “Yes. That’s my cast of characters.”
Y’all know who you are–and you ARE characters!

Gated Chip in the kitchen. Turned on Adele’s Hello (from the other side). He does not appear nearly as amused as I am.

I need a paraffin dip. Okay, tell the truth. Who’s surprised that I know what that is? (I did go to culinary school, ya know!)

We’ve all known for some time that I live in my own world. Now, apparently, I’ve also lost my grip on it!

mug

I ransacked the kitchen to find Gorilla Glue to fix the broken handle of my favorite coffee mug. All I found was a bottle of OFF from last summer. I don’t need OFF. The handle is already OFF. I need some ON.

Me: “WHAT are you doing?”
Deb from the other room: “What? Why?”
Me: “What is this tippy tippy toe–CRASH, tippy tippy toe, CRASH?”
Deb: “Oh. Sorry. I’ll stop.”
Me: “The tippy tippy toe part or the crash part?”
Deb: “Guess you’ll find out.”
How does this help me?

Deb: “Why did you turn the burner off under this pan?”
Me: “Because it was smoking.” Pause. “And I’m not wearing my smoking jacket.”
Silence.
Me: “Why do you ask me these things? Admit it–you like these answers!”

While checking on a drink mix from the fridge, to see if it’s ok. Smells ok. Has alcohol in it, so I’m assuming it’s ok. I pour a little into a cup to taste it.
Deb: “You’re not drinking THAT, are you?”
Me, trying sound appalled: “No! Of course I’m not drinking THAT! Are you crazy?” Sip. Sip.
Deb, peeking over my shoulder, “Well, what ARE you drinking?”
Me, very innocently, “THAT.”
After this, she didn’t seem to have much interest in conversing with me.

Ok. I admit it. I am afraid of things that go Trump in the night.

Rut ro! Letterman accused Trump of pandering. I love that term. Pandering. Here’s two panders right now.

panders

 

“While you’re at Trader Joe’s, pick up those coconut things in the nut section.”    Me: “Usually, wherever I’m standing IS the nut section.”
Pause.
Kate: “You have a point there.”

Deb: “So when you saw Jesus driving up the street yesterday, what was he driving?”      Me: “A VW Jetta. Not what I pictured.”     Deb: “What did you picture?”    Me: “That he’d be driving a VW micro-bus and smoking weed.”     Deb: “Yeah. He’d need at least the micro-bus to drive around with his undisclosed number of Apostrophes.”     Indeed.

Deb: “I have to practice this presentation in my office, so if you hear me talking to myself…”
Me: “It’s cute that you think I’d be able to tell the difference between that and any other day.”
Loud sigh from the other room. My work here is done.

My next retirement plan: create a mental health non-crisis center. If people are already having a crisis, why should they come in for a second one? I think coming in to a non-crisis center is much more appealing.

While getting my hair cut:
Jen, putting her glasses on: “Here…have a seat…I got my glasses all nice and clear…crystal clear…so I can make sure all of your hair is perfect.”
Me: “Good. How’s my hat?”
Jen: “Oh. You’re wearing a hat?”
Words of wisdom from my sister:
“Sometimes ya just gotta focus on the one bright spot in your day. For YOU, it’s this phone call with me right now.”

And now, if you would all join me for a special musical TBT moment….Whitney Houston’s popular 80’s tune that became the smash lesbian theme song–Climb Every Woman.

Adele lyrics misheard:
I miss you when the lights go out, it illuminates all my doubts
Pull me in, hold me tight
Don’t let go, baby, give me…lice???
Hey, Adele? No. Just no.

From that chapter in my life When Butches Cook….while rifling through the freezer…I know I just bought a bag of raspberries. What did I do with them? Oh yes. I filed them alphabetically on the freezer door downstairs. Right next to the paintbrush!

The question of paint samples–if I put this new color on the wall and I like, does that commit me to painting the whole wall that color? And if I don’t like it, am I committed to painting the whole wall with the old color to cover it up? I believe this paint commitment question may be a form of home-ophobia, the fear of home ownership.

After a week of rain, everyone mowed today. The whole street has that scalped, 1950’s-Dad’s-practice-run-with-the-clippers-on-the-first-unfortunate-kid-who-wandered-by look.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, there’s a bug version of Criminal Minds playing out and investigators are standing over dismembered centipedes saying, “Given this level of overkill, this is clearly the work of a centipeda-cidal maniac.” Yes. Arrest me now.

Dear Shriners, I would be tempted to buy one of those bags of onions if you promised that every onion was wearing its own tiny little fez cause that would be too precious.

Dropped Chip’s insulin and broke the bottle. Asking him to lie down in the puddle and roll around in it is just not having the same effect as actually putting it in his skin.

From my Salvation Army Shelter days. Me, on the non-emergency line for the Syracuse police: “The Adirondack rocking chairs were stolen off the front porch.” Police dispatcher: “Did you get a description of the person who took them?” Me, slowly: “Yyyyyeahh…he was the guy walking down Kirk Ave with two Adirondack rocking chairs. Hard to miss.”
I was so under-appreciated during that phone call.

 

At the trans health conference. For the last 3 days, I have shared gender neutral restrooms with male-identified people, female-identified people, trans-masculine people, trans-feminine people, gender queer people, gender neutral people, gender fluid people, gender fucking people, and non-binary people. Ya know what happened in those bathrooms? People peed. Washed their hands. Checked their hair. Straightened their clothing. I know. It’s crazy, isn’t it?

Considering seal coating the driveway. The seals cannot be reached for comment.

I have Poptart crumbs in my baseball cap. Seriously. No, that’s not a euphemism.

Working on a script for a new TV show based on my culinary school adventures, Game of Scones.

I told the cat about writing Game of Scones.

seamus-laughing

 

Chip sports a bone shaped tag that says he is diabetic. He hasn’t gotten lost so anyone would need to know, but it has made several bartenders stop questioning if he’d been over-served. No, he’s always like that.

Trimmed the evergreens this morning. Thought I got them all nice and even until I was backing down the driveway and noticed a tall, spiky piece that I missed, on the back center of each shrub. Yes! I have a line up of Alfalfas in front of the house now.

The best line of the day–while coming out of having lunch. My friend Susan: “Well, lunch with you did not disappoint AND my Depends worked perfectly!”
Glad to hear it!

Left the laundry on the line a little too long the other day and picked up a couple of hitchhiking June bugs. “Excuse me, sir. Is that a June bug making your pants buzz or are you just happy to see me?”

Bought new basil plants. Accidentally dropped them in my bike helmet when I got in the car. Well. That’ll be interesting. Maybe I’ll smell better or repel mosquitoes naturally!

“Wow. I can’t remember the last time I had a beer in a can. This must be what my father felt like while he was drinking….at a lesbian concert. Cause you know he did.”
Giggles all around!

The difference between having a dog and having a cat: When the dog is in the way, you look down and say, “Move over.” And he wags his tail, smiles at you for talking to him, then he gets up and moves three inches to the side so he can still be close to you. When the cat is in the way, you look down and say, “Move over,” and he looks you right in the eye, lays his ears back, attaches himself to the carpet with his claws like a kitty shaped barnacle and bites you when you try to pick him up.

Today’s observation, hanging out with another social work foodie. “Empaths are the tofu of the emotional world.”
Was there ever any question?

Ahem. me-me-me-me-me…”Everybody have fun tonight. Everybody wang chung tonight…” I suspect some of you will be better at that than others.

As a kid growing up in the 80s, it’s entirely possible that my view of physical attractiveness was skewed by a single movie. I have now lost track of how many women I have poured a bucket of water on and not only didn’t any of them look like Jennifer Beals when I was done, some of them got really annoyed.

Deb, peeking under the sink: “How come there’s no oven cleaner and four cans of bug spray?”
Me: “Hey–it was a rough spring. Lots of bugs! Big ones! I came home one day and there were several bugs cleaning the oven. They must have used up the oven cleaner.”
Aaaaand silence.

Just imagine my surprise when I yelled, “Expecto Patronum,” earlier this week and my patronus turned out to be Cloris Leachman on Dancing with the Stars!

Best one-liner of the week. While talking to the office manager at the Unitarian Church, I reached into my pocket and found a roll of doggy clean up bags I didn’t know I was carrying. I extended them to Sheri.
“Dog bag?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
When we both couldn’t talk because we were laughing too hard, it was time for me to leave.
Well played, Sheri!

Things that make me go hmmm at 3 am. In the big Monopoly game of life, what if I really AM the shoe?

I tried a new process for laundry this weekend, but every time I opened the dryer door and the Sorting Hat shouted, “Gryffindor!”, it scared me.

The best part of my BFF explaining Pokemon to me–
Me, looking intently at her phone screen: “And why can’t you do that?”
Kate, patiently: “Cause I don’t have enough balls.”
Pause.
Me: “Now there’s a sentence that I’ve never used to describe you.”

The good news: I figured out what my spirit animal is.
The bad news: I think it’s rabid.

This was the best thing I got to say last night:   “We will NOT stand by while walls are built. We have been doing this almost twenty years. Youth Outlook has already raised an entire generation of young people who will dismantle that wall, repurpose into a place where we can go for brunch and fly a rainbow flag off the top of it!”

I’ve noticed several posts from friends about “Don’t skip leg day in your routine” recently. Until today I wasn’t sure how to go about sharing my morning routine with my legs, but now that I have poured coffee in my pockets, I think I have it figured out and I appreciate your support.

Found myself whispering to my Keurig this morning, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” Don’t judge.

As a career, social work is messy. It’s hectic. Anxiety-producing. Sometimes you don’t have time for lunch or even to run to the restroom. It’s painful. People you care about hurt. You might hurt. You will have days when you can barely breathe through sadness. You will also feel joy. And connection. And pride. And passion. Then you’ll realize you still have to pee and you’re hungry.
Welcome to social work!

I was just telling my friend Rick that I am a big Penzey’s fan and I used to tour with the Spice Girls. They called me Testy Spice. I got separated from my group. I miss those wild kids. My seat mate on the tour bus was a former PE teacher. We called her Old Spice.

(Thanksgiving morning.) For my first act this morning, I dropped a five lb container of flour, causing it to explode in a dust cloud as I stood there, unable to see through the layer on my glasses with three Black Labs blinking rapidly at me, all of whom looked like they had put their foundation on wrong. It’s gonna be a good day!

I didn’t like the look of the turkey once I poked the first hole in the skin to get a temperature on it but once I slapped that fentanyl patch over it to hide the mark…wow…the guests never even noticed…and now that they’re all awake again, they’ve been only complimentary!

Mixed up the test strips from Petco and Ancestry.com. Apparently Mylo is all Irish and I’m one-quarter wiener dog.

Planning a rewrite of Broadways musicals using an all reptilian cast. Starting with Sweeney Toad.
C’mon. You saw that coming, right?

Shoulda known something was up when I wanted an Easy Bake Oven not to make brownies but to make my first Napoleon. My father promptly brought me a very short man with a funny hat and asked if that would suffice. He was good like that.

Me, singing at work in NY: “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve been…”
Sue: “You mean *seen*.”
Me: “No, not really.”

Coming out of the Godiva Chocolate store–
Karen: “I couldn’t tell which one was your truffle.”
Me: “Oh, don’t worry, I can tell.”
Karen: “It’s easier now, yours is the one with the teeth marks on it!”

Wishing you much laughter and silliness~

silliness

 

 

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