Sunday, November 16, 2008

Busy Day, and Phychic Powers

Let me see if I can explain how impressive my man is. Yesterday we woke up, he prepared and got cooking a ham and a turkey. Then we went off to karate, and then right off to the anti-prop 8, pro-marriage rally at the city and county building.

We then hurried home, where, within an hour, he finished off the ham and turkey, separating the white from dark meat while making the gravy.

Then we arrived, just in time, for the thanksgiving party for our group of same-sex headed families.
We had a lot of fun. It was held in one of our member's church, which was much better than the cramped quarters we used to use; the group is just getting to big for homes and the GLBT center. It's just nice to let the kids socialize and run wild, while the parents get to commiserate about politics; is there a sound more joyful, though, than the sound of a herd of children chasing each other? It's hard to commiserate with all that laughing :-).

We had a surprising amount of new members: people with infants and some grown families moving into the Salt Lake valley. One couple moved here from Ca to be around family, which made me reconsider our thought of moving away. But their family was completely on their side, not part of the politics fighting against us, and not part of the predominant faith here. So there are some differences; besides, we'd be taking the grandparents with us.

After we were stuffed with stuffing and turkey, we headed up to the candle light vigil at the capitol.
Here we were trying to spell out "EQUALITY" on the lawn. You can see it partially done by ksl's coverage, and it eventually got done, but it was tough to fight the wind and shelter the flames from going out faster than we could light them... There's an analogy in there somewhere :-).




Also, I thought this was cute: On the way home, Brian asked me what a mutant was (something he saw on T.V.?). I explained again about our genetic codes and such and then talked about some special mutations humans sometimes have. We talked about some genetic and semi-genetic differences humans have, like albinos, dwarfism, perfect pitch, and synesthesia. With each they were more and more enthralled and I was loving it.

After we talked about synesthesia and some people "hearing" sights and seeing numbers as colored, Alan wondered if some people can hear other people's thought. I told them that was called telepathy, and, without telling them what I believed, I asked them what they thought.

On the freeway on the way home we ended up conducting many experiments, trying to read each other's minds (and me trying to teach a lesson about science and skepticism :-)). Most tests were, of course, unsuccessful... but when it was my mind's turn to be read I picked a thought and thought hard, and they tried to hear me.

Alan asked if I was thinking of our dog and I said no. Then Brian asked if I was thinking "I love you."

I was! I laughed and said "Yes, how did you read my mind?" Wondering if I'd now inadvertently initiated him into new age magical thinking :-).

Brian said, in his little kid incredulous voice, "I didn't read your mind; that was just a lucky guess."

I'm lucky for many reasons. I'm lucky to have two sweet boys and an amazing husband. I'm lucky to have these teachable moments. I'm lucky, even in Utah, to have groups of tens and hundreds and thousands of activists and families to gather and hope with us.

I'm especially lucky my son finds it to be a good guess that his pop is thinking "I love you".

11 comments:

Queers United said...

did you take the kiddies to the rally?

Scot said...

We do. Actually, I don't know if it's different where you are, but all our events surrounding the gay community here in Utah are designed to be family friendly and have many couples with kids from both straight and gay-headed families. I wonder, but we may be the only state in which the pride festival has about a quarter of the grounds as a kid's are :-)a.

The only tricky part is sneaking around the protesters, just in case they decide to yell, but that isn't hard.

Amanda said...

I didn't know synesthesia was considered a genetic mutation. I have color-grapheme synesthesia (seeing colors in numbers and letters) and find the subject fascinating. I didn't know everyone wasn't like that until about 8-9 years ago. All my siblings have it, too. We can't agree which letters are which colors. :)

Scot said...

From what I understand, synesthesia falls under "semi-genetic" category, but I wanted to fascinate them with cool mutants like yourself :-).

Queers United said...

Well I don't know because I am 24, so I don't have kids yet. But hopefully one day I will and my future partner (whoever that is to be) and I can goto family friends functions.

Craig said...

I've also got synesthaesia - mostly ordinal linguistic personification - mostly with ordinal numbers, and less so with letters, but not colour-grapheme.

chosha said...

How nice he guessed you were thinking 'I love you' instead of something like, 'those wretched boys never keep their room clean' haha. If I was trying to be psychic as a kid I probably would have guessed I love you, too, so I guess I'm also one of the lucky ones.

And now I need to go look up synesthaesia and find out what my mutant friends are up to.

Craig said...

Also, it's "psychic".

:)

Scot said...

"Well I don't know because I am 24, so I don't have kids yet"

I was about 27 when we started the process. You've got 3 more years to find a man and settle down :-).

Craig, you too? I had no idea I was surrounded by so many mutants. I'm jealous.

Chosha
"If I was trying to be psychic as a kid I probably would have guessed I love you, too, so I guess I'm also one of the lucky ones."

You're parents must be lucky too then. That's exactly what every parent wants to be a good guess.

(and thanks for the spelling help... I'm a very "special" speller. Brian can even out spell me now.)

Queers United said...

Believe me I'd love to find my guy, but I think I'd wait till early 30's for kids. I'd wanna have a good job and be able to support my family, etc. Right now I am a student lol.

Ophidimancer said...

I'd dropped an arbitrary age (30) for when I would start the kids process, mostly because I was hoping to be financially stable enough to do so by then.

Well, we're rounding up on 26, and being a single income family because of immigration issues, I don't know how possible it will be, especially since I was really hoping to have biological kids through a surrogate.

That's expensive, though. :*(