Card Games for Kids

My four-year-old is big into card games. I’m delighting in the fact that he’s now old enough to play games with a standard deck, which expands our possibilities for travel entertainment. I was able to teach him Go Fish and Crazy Eights, but had, however, forgotten how to play War. My tastes in games have run to the more complex over the years, and the simple ones have fallen by the wayside.

I was happy, therefore, to find Wikipedia coming to the rescue. Its page of Card Games has links to rules for dozens of games, categorized by style (trick-taking games, rummy style games, etc.) I can’t vouch for how “official” any of the rules are (Wikipedia needing a heavy dose of salt at times), but they should get you through a few hours of a rainy day with your kids. (I’ve renamed “War” to the slightly less violent “Capture” when I play with my son, though.)

What are your favorite card games from childhood (or even now)? Those of you with older kids: how old were they when they started beating you for real?

The Rainbow Picket Fence

Both the New York Times and Details magazine have just published articles that look at the “settling down” of gay male culture. The Times, in a Sunday Magazine cover story, explores the trend of even young gay men in their 20’s getting married. Details looks at “The Gay Baby Boom.”

It’s a good thing that mainstream media is finally realizing there’s more to gay life than darkened bars and sparkly drag shows. At the same time, I can’t help but think: Didn’t we gals go through this already? Newsweek’s famous cover article on “Lesbians: Coming Out Strong” appeared back in 1993, and these days you can’t find a lesbian on mainstream television who isn’t trying to become a parent. Read the rest of this post »

Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 29, is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s. Yep, that’s right. Free cones at any B & J’s participating Scoop Shops. No purchase necessary. (Though if you come home with an extra pint or two, don’t blame me.)

What’s your favorite B & J flavor? I have a perverse love for Chubby Hubby, given that my spouse is neither chubby nor male. I’m also partial to Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey.

I have to say, though, that most of our ice cream purchases of late have been from a nearby dairy that uses hormone-free milk from their own cows. Not that I don’t love the guys from Vermont (who also use hormone-free milk), but I like supporting smaller, local businesses, too, and my son likes to see the cows when we go pick it up.

(Thanks, Parent Hacks.)

Book Review: Choosing You

Choosing You: Deciding to Have a Baby on My Own by Alexandra Soiseth (Seal Press: May 2008), chronicles the author’s journey to becoming a single mom by choice. She is not a lesbian, but I wanted to review her book here because of the parallels between straight single moms by choice and lesbian moms, partnered and not. I think there are many places where our experiences overlap, and there is much we can learn from each other.

Soiseth writes with insight about her inability to find the right man before she reached 40 and her time for childbearing grew riskily short. She also tells of her struggle with significant weight loss, and how that fed into her insecurity about relationships. It is a reflective book that manages to be sensitive without being sentimental. Soiseth doesn’t gloss over her fears about the process nor the difficulties she had in getting her family to accept her decision to parent alone. Read the rest of this post »

Weekly Political Roundup

First, the feel-good story of the week:

Canadians Ruth Pogson, 83, and Beth Aime, 79, married each other this week at a Victoria nursing home. The couple has been in a committed relationship since 1995.

On to more serious matters:

• A senior Senate Democrat says that he wants to attach expanded, LGBT-inclusive federal hate crimes laws to the 2009 defense authorization bill. A similar attempt to pass such laws failed last year.
• The U.S. military is admitting an increasing number of ex-felons, while continuing to ban law-abiding gay men and lesbians.
• The Arizona House gave preliminary approval to an amendment that would prevent same-sex couples from marrying. It needs to pass a roll-call vote, but that is seen as a technicality. If approved in the state Senate, it will appear on the ballot in November. Read the rest of this post »

Day of Silence

Today marks the 12th annual Day of Silence, an event where students from middle school to college are asked “to take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment—in effect, the silencing—experienced by LGBT students and their allies.” This year’s event is in memory of Lawrence King, the California eighth-grader shot to death by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression.

The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network coordinates the event, and they report that students from a record 6,800 middle and high schools registered as of yesterday. Last year, a day before the event, they had slightly more than 4,000. King’s death was a tragedy, but if it has helped raise awareness so fewer people suffer his fate in the future, then at least some good will come of it.

HRC also informs us that:

Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Lois Capps (D-CA), along with 28 co-sponsors, introduced H. Con. Res. 328 (.pdf), a resolution in support of the 2008 National Day of Silence. And yesterday, April 23, Representatives Baldwin and Sam Farr (D-CA) spoke on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives about the importance of the National Day of Silence and the need to confront anti-GLBT harassment in schools.

Support at that level is important, but not more so than students and others willing to raise awareness within their local communities. Sara Whitman at Suburban Lesbian writes about her son’s choice to participate (and her followup). Students in Breckenridge, Colorado and Los Angeles, among other places, are organizing local events. (Thanks, National Gay News.) I even know of non-student employees at one major corporation who are asking their colleagues to join them for 15 minutes of silence and/or a private observance of the event.

There are those, too, who are protesting the observance. Promotion of homosexuality and all that. You’ve heard it before, so I’m not going to dwell on it here. Google “day of silence” and you’ll find the news, if you want.

Are your children participating in the Day of Silence, or do you know others in your community who are?

“Proud Soccer Mom” T-Shirts, Hats, and More

Just in time for Mother’s Day, I’m pleased to launch the brand new “Proud Soccer Mom” line of t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and more. Suitable for both playgrounds and Pride marches, they could become a wardrobe staple.

Buy now through CafePress.

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 25

Helen and I discuss why people always want to know what children of two moms call their parents, why even Cynthia Nixon can’t escape the question, and why we shouldn’t get so hung up on the issue. We also have fun with two classic board games and tell you why our son isn’t a genius just because he plays them (though we’re not ruling it out).

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

Pregnant and Miserable

Andrea Askowitz is pregnant—and she’s grumpy. In My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy (Cleis: May 1, 2008) she shares her cantankerous journey to parenthood as a single mom, complete with weight gain, leg cramps, hormone-induced depression, and well-intentioned friends who never quite do the right thing. It’s the perfect antidote to the slew of cheery parenting books that make pregnancy seem like a blissful time of womanly glow and nursery decoration. “I wake up at 8 in the morning, nauseated,” Askowitz relates. “What a relief. I’m still pregnant.” She worries later, “I can’t even decide what to eat for dinner. I’m going to be a terrible mother.”

Askowitz balances her dry, acerbic humor with unexpected bursts of warmth: “My baby wakes me at 7 a.m. playing the drums . . . It’s weird and wonderful, this steady beat. I can’t wait to meet this brilliant musician.” She also offers insights into the particularities of lesbian motherhood. When her straight friends start sending her maternity clothes, she complains “This must be a plot to turn me into a straight, suburban mom. They want me to be just like them. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’m not still a lesbian.” Read the rest of this post »

The Sports Section

Lesbian mom and basketball superstar Sheryl Swoopes spoke with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today. She’s playing for the Seattle Storm this season, not her long-time team the Houston Comets. In the article, she talks about how the WNBA’s lack of support for lesbians is “the one thing that’s hurt my feelings more than anything else.” One of the Storm’s new owners, Anne Levinson, said, however, that the league has grown and is doing “a lot of things with marketing to acknowledge and respect the diversity of the fan base.”

Part of what could be driving the change is that Levinson co-owns the Storm with three other women, including Microsoft VP of Human Resources Lisa Brummel, one of the members (along with Swoopes) of my “Most Powerful Lesbian Moms in America” list. The Storm might just have the highest lesbian-mom quotient in the league.

Other happy sports news this week includes the announcement that the Women’s Professional Soccer League will kick off a year from now. After Ellen has the scoop. I’m thrilled there will be a team in Boston; I’m still pining for a WNBA franchise here. You’re also in luck if you’re near Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and maybe San Francisco.

My own soccer news this week is that my son has started his first “serious” soccer class, by which I mean that he now owns shin pads and cleats. Lesbian soccer moms unite!