Happy Mother's Day

I don't have many pictures of my Mom. The few that I do have are very old, from my parents' wedding and up to around the time I was a small child. She didn't like to have her picture taken.

She wasn't what would be considered "beautiful", in our beauty-obsessed culture. She was more what would be considered a "handsome woman". She was strong, and sturdy, with a strong nose and wide smile and eyes. She wore plain clothes and no makeup other than lipstick. She was a Mom, and any pretentiousness didn't matter anymore. She had a job to do raising three sons.

She made our lunches, sent us off to school, made us come straight home afterwards, made us do our homework, was a Cub Scout Den Mother, slapped us when we were bad, sang silly songs to us, hugged us mercilessly, made dinners we didn't like (but we never starved), made us hang tinsel on Christmas trees a single strand at a time, kept every single picture we ever drew, gave all my friends rides home from school, held a friend of mine for an hour when her father died of a heart attack at our lake house when she was 12, complimented everyone, had beautiful grey-blue eyes, always apologized when she had been wrong, taught us that you can be mad at someone and dislike things about them and still love them unconditionally, told me I was handsome and made me believe it.

At the beginning of my sophomore year in high school, she found out that she had cancer. It was too late ... it had already spread through her body. She had a mastectomy, then a couple of weeks later had a tumor removed from her spine. She was paralyzed from the waist down after that operation.

A few days before she died, she couldn't speak from the tubes in her throat. She wrote notes to my Dad, who was by her side at every second.

I had always been a sensitive child ... I used to cry when I left the house to go to school when I was in grade school. I would get homesick sleeping at a friend's house for the night. She knew, way back then, that I wasn't like everyone else. I always thought she would hate me because of who I was (even though I didn't really know what "that" meant at the time), but I saw one of the notes she had written for my Dad at the hospital:

"Please make sure Matt understands".




I desperately hope she would be proud of who I am. I miss her like crazy, even 25 years after her death.

Happy Mother's Day, Jeanne Irene Coney R*****. You were always beautiful.

International House of Crabs

Off to Chinatown - er, the International District - for dinner ...

My favorite - the Boy Boy's Salon:

HoHo ... it's not just a restaurant, it's a way of life:

The International District Gate:

Mmmm ... Sea Garden:

Scott's dinner - before:

And after:

Scott likes crab:

Man, I just can't take a good picture lately. No wonder I didn't win:

Hope y'all had a good weekend.

Kali the Wonder Dog.

She can fly ...

Bye, R.

My best friend at work, R, ended his job with the firm the other day. He and I have become pretty good buddies over the past year, and I already miss him. I've never really had a work buddy who I went on breaks with, grabbed lunch with almost every day, and worked so well with (we were in different departments but had a lot of job interaction).

One of our recruiters with whom we're also friends kept trying to come up with a name for us, since we were seen together so often. Laverne and Shirley? No. Tom and Jerry? Eh. Nothing quite fit. But everyone knew we were friends. Our recruiter friend grabbed me yesterday to see if I was doing okay. I admitted I was sad about the whole situation.

I'm sure we'll keep in touch to some extent, as he and his partner live pretty close to Scott and me, but it's different not seeing him every day. I had to take a walk and get lunch by myself yesterday, and it was pretty lonely. I'm not one to have many friends outside of those Scott and I see together, so in a way this is kinda like a death to me.

Matterdays sad.

What are we doing???

From the Seattle P.I. ...

I'll be really upset if we Democrats don't unite and git 'er dun ...