Dazzle of the Day: SPRING!

What a stunner of a sunny day today is! A dazzling dose of Vitamin D really gives me one heck of a boost. I slept in until our buddy the Sun was at its peak, dozing in a big fatty of a sunbeam with Ms. Violet, my kitty; Then, honest to goodness I got up, stretched myself and showered off my weird dreams.

Today being International Women's Day, I thought it would be a good idea to get out there in my "F*** Patriarchy!" shirt and go visit my mom at her new workplace, bearing cookies. I hung out there for a good hour and a half, striking up light and intermittant conversation with my fabulous mom and her fantastic co-worker about feminist pornography, crocheted mathematical models of Hyerbolic Planes, warrior goddesses, tax forms, babies and, of course, the frozen tundra of my queer love life. But we all agreed that spring can bring nothing but good things in the latter department, and the Vitamin D coursing through my eyelids let me bask in that possiblity as I streetcarred back to my neighbourhood and let them get back to helping customers pick out stylish upholstry and wade in welcome-to-the-neighbourhood flowers and new filing techniques for paperwork.

Spring just sparkles with renewal, and while that renewal sometimes means the potent waft of defrosting dog poo deposits emerging from their hiding spots in last season's snow banks, I'm still 100% pro spring! Just watch where you step, Squooshy-gooshy patches abound.

[flow of thoughts into next paragraph: Spring --> Fresh ---> Fresh Prince --> Aunt Viv -->the ORIGINAL Aunt Viv]

This evening, I have had the joy of watching several episodes from the first season of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and I can't get over how much I love Janet Hubert-Whitten, the original Aunt Viv. She was fierce, glam, hilarious and so expressive! No offence to the actress who played Aunt Viv in the later episodes, but I find it so weird when shows switch new actors into a role that has been played by someone else for a long time. I can only imagine how difficult it would be for the new actor or actress to fill those shoes, but to be honest, it peeves me. Original Aunt Viv! This woman is so sincere! She makes me want to do my hair like her! (It could happen!)

In related thoughts, I am so glad how often I am reminded of my emense respect for Auntie figures and Mother figures, blood related or chosen family. I have been thinking about all the women in my life who have supported me and not only held my world together when I didn't know how, but who helped to create that world for me in the first place. As I mentioned before, I love my mom something fierce, for her totally unique sense of humour, all her protective energies, how much thought she gives to everything she says, her creativity and all the quirks and talents that come from being a sassy single mom for most of my life. I also have a vivacious, irreverant, madly creative and whirlwindishly enthusiastic auntie who thinks of me as her daughter, too, who has lived all over the world and has entrepreneured herself in such directions as jewelry and tea sales, wholesale distribution of human hair for extensions as well as spandex lingerie erotic dance costumes, unique dog jacket fashions and her own employment agency.

Family is such a complicated concept for so many people, and choosing one's own people out of all the spirits we are tied to by blood or karma or fate or happensance has been such a liberating journey for me and so many people I have known throughout the past five years especially. I just spoke to my father for the first time in five years yesterday, and realized how much I have grown and changed, and how far I have come in my healing journey since our last (yucky) conversations so long ago. I've accumulated a couple of amazing, magical chosen sisters along the way, snuggled a small brood of fantastic teenage ducklings under my wings and really valued being able to cherish and nurture such deep relationships in the space created by a lot of tangled roots coming undone.

I feel my heart thawing out in a pretty golden way.
It makes me wanna shoop-shoop -shoop!