I really don't want my blog to become one of those blogs, even though this post is one of those posts from those blogs
What are "those blogs"? There's a bunch of different types, but the one I'm thinking of is blogs which go a long time between posts, and then spend the post that finally does appear talking about why it's been such a long time between posts, but then soon the author isn't posting very often, and the whole vicious cycle starts again. I don't know whether that makes the result a blog about blogging or a blog about not blogging, but it's weak, no matter what.

This is probably the tenth time or so I've written something about what this sporadic posting means, that my life has settled into something normal, accepted, or routine with the chances of figuring out the cause of the circumstances shrinking as the trial gets colder and colder. Still true, though. I think this is the first time that I mention that I'm looking at the sidebar and how the blog updates weekly because I was posting that often five years ago. I feel vaguely guilty about not being even close to that schedule nowadays, even though the rational part of my mind says that it's not like I'm obligated to produce this for anyone...

(Also: Holy crap, five years! That's like a double-digit percentage of my life!)

So what have I been up to? Red Sox games - I've already been to four or five, thanks to the way my buying tickets back in January clustered and picking up a game from someone at work who has season tickets. It felt pretty good to have them win the first three games I went to, prompting the inevitable comments about how I should go every day. Probably healthy that they eventually lost, or else I might have thought there was something to it. It's not a good idea to start thinking you have control over things you don't.

I did get to see Masterson's first major league game, though, and he was pretty darn good. Last year I saw Buchholz's first game and he pitched a no-hitter the next time he was called up, so it's worth watching next time, eh?

Kate and I also volunteered at the Independent Film Festival of Boston, which was cool, although I chickened out of meeting Famke Janssen. I would likely have blurted something out about having had a crush on her since her appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but that might have been weird.

I think next year Kate and I will show our support of the festival by buying passes. It felt good to volunteer, no question about it, but most of the time when I go to a film festival, I'm looking to see a bunch of movies, and working the festival prevents that. It's kind of selfish, since there'd be no festival if everyone who loved movies in the area took that attitude.

And there's been a few other things where, well, to write about them properly would have meant writing about other people's personal lives, and I find myself more reluctant to do that nowadays. It seems like it was easier to do it a few years ago, when I was unsure of who I was and every relationship or observation seemed like it was vital unexplored territory. Now, not so much.

So, there's my last month and a half. Hopefully I'll never make another post like this again.

-Marti

Labels: Kate, movies, Red Sox

- posted 11:33 PM - (5) comments - (archive use only)

 
Soap opera stuff
Telly and I have been hanging aorund more the past couple of months, since my mom visited at Christmas. Not a whole lot, but every once in a while, especially when I feel like doing some guy stuff that Kate figures a woman with a girlfriend rather than a boyfriend has no need to put up with. Kate had no need to go see Doomsday, for instance, so I went with Telly and lapped up the over-the-top post-apocalyptic violence.

That's not the sort of thing he and Michelle would do together, I gather, but it's getting less awkward for us. He'll never look at me and not see her, of course, but I kind of like that. I'll have been this person for five years this summer, and I've gotten so used to it that before I started hanging out with Telly on a regular basis again, I could go weeks without thinking about Michelle. I identify as Martina now, and I'm pretty sure that I'd put up a fight over giving Michelle her body back were she to resurface, but even if I've only met "her" once or twice, she's too important a part of my life story to not stay in my thoughts.

Telly benefits from this arrangement, too, by having at least a surrogate for his sister in his life, and in more material ways. Last week, for instance, he called me to mention that his roommates had screwed up with the cable bill, and Comcast wasn't going to do anything to fix it for another week, and he'd reeeeeeeeeally like to watch the red Sox opening series in Japan... In high definition if possible. And, as far as I knew, he is really good at making pancakes.

So, fine, I say; he can show up early in the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday to watch the games with me, especially if he made breakfast. I was sure Kate would appreciate it, too, even if she wasn't going to stay around to watch the entire game like we were. At about the same time, Amy called Kate asking hte same thing - only for her, it was not wanting to wake her roommates up, figuring she should express an interest because it was in Japan and she should start trying to learn something about her body's ancestral home. Kate said, sure, she knew I was was going to be watching the game, so why not? And, sure, she could stay over the night before rather than wake her roommate with a 4:30am alarm.

I didn't see it coming when Kate mentioned it, or when Amy showed up the night before, but I probably should have at least predicted the possibility. Anyway, Telly arrived Tuesday morning, saw Amy on the couch wearing her Matsuzaka babydoll t-shirt and pajama bottoms, with extra-cute bedhead (hair covered her right eye but stuck up on the left side) and bare feet, and was pretty much incapable of speech until at least the fourth inning. I think he finally got up the nerve to ask for her number after the second game, when I shooed them out right after the last pitch so I could lock up and still catch the 9am bus, because it was the next afternoon that Amy started frantically IMing me saying that she hadn't expected him to call, and was it weird for him to be attracted to her knowing what he knows, and was it okay if she called him back and said she would like to go to dinner and a movie Saturday night...?

I told her the truth - that we share DNA doesn't mean I can put him off-limits, even if I want to. Besides, we're just talking about one dinner and movie right now, and it's not like you're going to find a lot of guys who are more comfortable with your unique situation, even if Telly's still just getting used to it.

I think she'd been trying to get me to give her an easy out, but it wasn't my place. Besides, the part of me that's a little disappointed in just how normal, relatively speaking, my life has become is kind of curious to see how that works out.

I'm also curious to know what Kate told Telly when he called her for advice about dating an exchangee, but I've been told to mind my own business.

-Marti

Labels: Amy, dating, Kate, Red Sox, Telly

- posted 10:00 PM - (1) comments - (archive use only)

 
Playing hooky
I'd had tickets to a Sox game back in April, but it got rained out. Rescheduling a ballgame scheduled for a rainy April day to a Friday afternoon in August is trading up, so to speak.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Kate couldn't get off work, so I wound up going with Amy. She's had a bit of a rough last couple of weeks; she thinks that as much as Sam says otherwise, the idea that Amy might have been one of the people who held her body hostage seems to be making her very nervous.

(Boy, my life is bizarre. I have no idea how to describe that.)

It was a fun game, and we had pretty good seats. Well, not seats, per se; we were in the standing room section of the right field picnic area. It's a great view, although some of the neighbors left a bit to be desired - it seemed to take a while for the kids apparently there for a birthday party to take an interest in the actual game, as opposed to throwing peanuts at one another.

There were also the usual folks who seemed kind of lubricated for a one o'clock start, and disappeared when the beer got cut off in the seventh. Amy stirred the ice in her soda as they walked off, wondering if she had been a drinker in her previous life. She didn't have any particular desire to do so right now, but how much of that was Amy's body and how much was some attitude left over from her previous life? And of course, the past year or so couldn't be forgotten - the Sanadas don't drink much, and getting pretty sick at some party had turned her off to it some as well.

So, I said, not having any more flashes of memory?

Not really. She saw her therapist earlier in the week, and told her about blurting Carter's name out, and that got her rewarded with a bunch of memory exercises that didn't seem to be doing much good. She seemed encouraged, though - ever since we'd found out that her amnesia was due to a physical trauma, they'd been worried that the memory was simply impossible to recover, like paper files that had been burned rather than misfiled. Amy's still worried that that might be the case - after all, there's no reason why it has to be all or nothing; some might be gone and some might just be missing.

Anyway, the Sox won, and we went our separate ways after.

I'll write more tomorrow - I've got tickets for tonight's game, as well, and this time Kate can make it.

-Marti

Labels: Amy, Kate, memories, Red Sox, therapy

- posted 5:38 PM - (0) comments - (archive use only)

 
Surprisingly good seats
I got to go to Fenway Park twice in the past three days, which is always a blast. Heck, going once a month is a blast; twice in one week almost feels downright gluttonous. Yesterday's was a bit of a disappointment; Wakefield has been so good so far this year that I was really psyched for a great battle between the wily old knuckleballer and Detroit's young fireballer. Verlander was as impressive as advertised, so much so that the three-run home run in the middle innings seemed like too much to overcome.

It was a very nice night at the ballpark, though - just the right temperature, the clouds made for a beautiful sky, and when they started releasing some rain in the eighth and ninth, it wasn't close to enough to make us retreat a few rows back to get under cover - or, like some of the folks around us, leave. Leaving was not an option, after all - we'd been to Sunday afternoon's game.

Now, that had been an exciting one. Beckett looked pretty darn great until he came out with a cut on his finger, and the Baltimore rookie was dealing. It could have been a bummer before the improbably comeback, but the environment was too cool. Jen had gotten four Monster standing room tickets at work, so Kate and I joined her, Carlos, and Eloise up there on a beautiful afternoon.

Eloise is crawling now, which means she squirms a lot as someone her. She's a cool little kid, with big eyes and little blonde curls. I don't think she really understands the game at all, but she got that people were clapping in the bottom of the ninth, and clapping is fun. All the excitement wore her out, though, and she actually conked out in her highchair whne we ordered dinner afterward.

Jen said she liked me, but I said she just thought I'd make a good meal. Jen laughed at that, but said that wasn't it. Also, I probably shouldn't think my breasts are such a big deal after having them almost four years.

Well, I said, maybe that's why Eloise likes me so much - maybe she can sense that I'm kind of like her in that I remember what it's like to be for the whole world to seem strange and new. I may not be trying to put my whole hand in my mouth, but the rest is still pretty neat.

Carlos says he hadn't thought of it that way, but that I'd make a great mom with that attitude. I laughed at that - I'm not exactly on the mommy track right now. Then I got things off that subject by talking about how it was the second-greatest comeback I'd ever seen in person. They had a hard time believing the "second-greatest" part, but I told them I'd been at Opening Day '98, where Mo Vaughn capped off a seven-runn ninth with a walkoff grand slam off Heathcliff Slocumb. Or, at least, I remembered being there.

So we wound up talking sports for the rest of the meal, although the heavier stuff wasn't completely forgotten. Before the game last night, Kate brought it up, asking if I thought about having children.

Sure, I say. I may look young, but I'm in my mid-thities, experience-wise. One of my best friends has an adorable little girl, there's an equally cool little boy out there that's, at the very least, part of my extended family. Admittedly, most of my thoughts about having kids are in terms of there being kids around, not having one grow in my womb and then being pushed out my uterus, but the idea is there.

Kate puts her mildly sarcastic smile on. "So you're saying that part would be up to me."

I laugh. No, just that my brain doesn't quite work that way yet. Why, have you been thinking about it?

My mom has, she says. She can't help but notice that we don't have a complete set of baby-making equipment between us, and worries about not having grandkids. I tell her it's way too early to think about that, but apparently her parents feel that left to herself, Kate wouldn't think of that until too late.

I guess I've got to actually meet them sometime, so they can at least get to know me as a person rather than some lesbian hussy trying to lead their daughter away from the right path.

And if they start asking about kids, blow their minds with the idea that Kate's ex-boyfriend Carter would be the most logical sperm donor.

-Marti

Labels: Carlos, Eloise, family, Jen, Kate, Red Sox

- posted 3:51 PM - (3) comments - (archive use only)