It’s not easy being green (and pink)

We jumped on the Earth Hour bandwagon again this year – more or less. We got dinner organised a bit early (we’re often still serving up at 8.30 on Saturday – kids eat early and go to bed before we have dinner) since that would be challenging in the dark.

We turned all the lights out and settled in for our hour of darkness. A few minutes past 8.30 I could hear noise coming from Hunter’s room so I went in to check it out. She awake and playing – with her light on. D’oh.

So I guess it was Earth 50 Minutes at our house.

We’re having a lovely weekend of home made deliciousness thanks to our very own Betty Crocker, AKA Leigh.

Today started with home made pancakes (though, actually, I made those). It’s a Saturday morning tradition and we’ve perfected the no-butter sandwich press cooking method so they’re a not-too-unhealthy alternative to toast.

At lunch we had salad rolls. The bread was baked by leigh and the salad was topped with home made relish, also courtesy of leigh.

Dinner is also a Saturday usual – roast chicken. Leigh made the stuffing with herbs from the garden and the veges include zucchinis from the vege patch too.

While dinner’s baking, leigh’s been busy preparing food for tomorrow. We’re going to a picnic for lesbian-headed families. It’s a local group and we’ve never managed to get to their monthly picnic yet. We’re really hoping to connect with some local families. We have a few friends from the Rainbow Babies group that meets in the inner west but it really is a bit of a hike to get there and between all the other things going on, we don’t catch up with those people more than once every few months.

Anyway, for tomorrow’s picnic leigh has made spinach and ricotta triangles. The spinach came from the garden (via the freezer) and the ricotta came from the stovetop. The whey that leigh drained off the ricotta is in the fridge ready for next week’s pancakes.

She’s also made pesto with some of the thriving crop of basil we have going under the lemon tree (or maybe it’s the lime tree, I forget).

I expect leigh will probably make a batch of stock tomorrow after we’ve finished off the leftover chicken. She does this most weekends and cooks up a huge batch of split pea and vege soup that keeps us in lunches for the week.

We would not eat nearly so well if it was left to me to prepare the meals. We’d probably still get the weekly roast, which I do often cook, but probably not the stuffing. I did make it the other week but could not bring myself to insert it into the orifice.

And we sure wouldn’t be getting home made bread and cheese and yogurt. I am far too lazy and disorganised for any of those, though I am happy enough to eat it!

I feel pretty spoiled to have a keen gardener and excellent cook right here in my house. Lucky me!

UPDATE: Leigh asked me to note that she also made jelly this weekend. Hehe

I have finally managed to sneak below the 59kg mark. I am very pleased about this because it means I am now within 2kg of my official goal weight, which in turn means that my weight watchers lifetime membership kicks back in and I get to weigh in for free. It also means that all my clothes fit again.

Meanwhile, I think I have found my wedding dress! Leigh talked me into trying on a few on the weekend that I would not have even considered without her encouragement. I would have taken one look and thought “that would look terrible on me”. As it turned out, one of them was so fabulous that I was inclined to order it on the spot and I have pretty much decided not to look any further.

I didn’t place the order, because I am waiting to show it to my mum when she visits in a few weeks, but I am pretty sure I’ll order it then. There’s a four month turnaround time and I’d really hate for my perfect wedding dress to arrive after my wedding day.

I learned today that the mardi gras parade is being shown on TV on Friday night. It was broadcast on the actual night of the parade and then repeated the tuesday after but both those broadcasts were pay per view.

Friday’s broadcast is apparently not a pay-per-view event, though it’s still on pay TV. I don’t know the time or the channel – it’s either Fox 8 or Arena.

And how did I hear it’s going to be on? The married gay muslim woman told me at playgroup today. She’s planning to watch it.

I’ve heard about people who have struggled to reconcile their religious convictions and their sexuality but in truth I had never actually met anyone who had dealt with that struggle.

Well, I have now, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I go from feeling sad for this woman, to being angry with the religious institutions that have made her life so complicated, to feeling judged by her because I am living a life that she considers sinful.

The woman is someone from the playgroup we go to. I like her. She’s funny and friendly and she mucks in when there’s stuff to get done. She’s also a hijab-wearing Muslim and up until last week I’ve wondered what she would think if she knew my partner was female (I don’t hide it in any way, but we hadn’t discussed it so I didn’t know if she knew or not).

At last week’s playgroup something came up in conversation about Mardi Gras and she said that eight years ago she was in it. When she said that, my initial thought was, “oh, so there must be a progressive faction in the Muslim movement and she must be part of that – cool”. Playgroup moved on and I didn’t think any more of it.

Then at the end of the group there were just a few people left and we got talking. In the course of conversation I came to ask her what led her to convert to Islam. I made an assumption that as an Australian-born woman who grew up in Tamworth (Australia’s country music capital), she probably converted because she married a muslim man.

Well, that was kind of right. In fact, her father is turkish and she’d been raised in a religious home. I’m not clear on what happened in between, but she was either never a strictly practising muslim, or she was and she moved away from it for a time, but she donned the hijab and has followed the religion’s teachings closely since she married.

I figured that was the end of the story, but then she volunteered that her “natural sexual orientation” was homosexual, to use her words. She said she made a choice to go back to islam, get married, have babies and live unhappily ever after because she thinks the alternative is to go to hell.

She believes that because the major religious texts (the bible and the koran are what she cited) say that homosexuality is a sin, then it must be true, and that her same sex attractedness is a test from god.

I really don’t know what to make of it all.

For days after the conversation, my brain was spinning, trying to think of how this could ever all work out for her. I can’t let go of the feeling that she might one day conclude that she is who she is and that being married to a man is a sham she can’t continue.

But what happens if she does reach that conclusion? She has two children. How can a lesbian and a strict muslim man who believes that gay people go to hell have any hope of raising healthy children together?

So then I think maybe now that she’s started down this path, perhaps it’s the best thing to continue it. And then I feel sad because she’s openly unhappy in her marriage.

And in between times I feel deeply judged. She says she has chosen this path because she does not want to fail god’s test. So she must see me as a failure, right? She hasn’t said or done anything at all to suggest that, but that’s the implication.

Of course, what I think and what I feel is totally irrelevant but I have a slight sense of panic about the whole thing, as though I’m somehow diminished while this person thinks her own sexuality is sinful and wrong.

It’s just thrown me a bit. I’ve met bigots and narrow-minded fools and religious zealots and simply uneducated people before and plenty of them have thought my relationship is not valid or sanctioned or morally defensible. I’ve never been too worried about those people. But I feel confused by this.

I can’t get clear in my head whether this woman is a friend or a foe. She’s gay: She must be a friend! She thinks gay people burn in hell: She must be a foe!

I don’t expect I’ll reach any real conclusions. I expect I’ll probably continue to enjoy her company and her conversation at playgroup, and I’ll try to just put all the other stuff aside because none of it has anything to do with who she is at playgroup. She’s just another mum there with her kids wanting to have fun and get out of the house.

I certainly don’t intend to discuss any of this stuff with her, because at the end of the day it’s her personal baggage to deal with and it’s not actually anything to do with me, even though it feels strangely like it is, right now. I’ll probably continue to feel a bit sad that she’s not able to accept who she is, but I’m going to make an effort not to dwell on it.

So we went along to the mardi gras parade on Saturday. We had such a fantastic time last year that I was really looking forward to it.

This year? It was okay.

We knew it was going to be a challenge with our little darling approaching two years of age and very resistant to any kind of containment, but we thought the two hour wait before the parade would be an opportunity for him to cut loose a bit and run off some of his energy. Last year we had stacks of space – about 20 metres long and the full width of the road. The kids were riding bikes and scooters and running around while the adults sat back and talked.

This year we were closer to the front of the parade and they had floats packed in side by side as well as end to end. We were jammed in between a bunch of trucks and all up had about a quarter of the space we had last year – and there were more of us.

There wasn’t room for everyone to sit so I stood from the moment we got out of the car at fox studios (where we parked) at 4pm until we got back to the car at 10pm.

We did a lot of walking. Our group met at Town Hall and it took us over an hour to walk there from fox studios. Then we all walked down to the parade meeting point in Oxford Street – only about 15 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of forcing our way through an enormous crowd. The entry point worked differently this year, and not in a good way. As we were going to our waiting area the kids and I all got battered by a very cranky woman going against the crowd, shoving people out of the way while saying sorry in a decidedly un-sorry way. The actual parade was about a 45 minute walk and then we had another few minutes back to the car.

So yeah, probably not that much walking really I guess, but with the hours of standing around in between, it felt like it.

Hugo was crazy in the marshalling area. We took his harness because we knew he’d run off into the crowd, and he did his best to make sure everyone noticed the resemblance to a leash by spending most of the evening on all fours, barking. I can’t tell you how many drag queens nearly went ass up because they didn’t spot him down there till the last second.

When the parade finally started, hugo was totally petrified. Lots of the floats had very loud music and it freaked him out completely. Leigh got him out of the stroller, where he was attempting the fetal position, and carried him. He tucked his knees in under his chin, put his head on her shoulder and refused to look up the whole way. But if we asked him to wave he’d poke his little hand out and do a funny little wave without ever looking up.

By the time we got home the kids were both asleep in the car. We plonked them into bed and drank diet coke till 11pm. We are party animals.

We really didn’t see much of the parade at all. Just the PFLAG float in front of us, the Come Out Suburbia float that was next to us in the waiting area and the people behind us. We really have no feel for how well the parade reflected this year’s theme (nations united) or what was funny, or political, or anything really.

I’m still planning to join in again next year though. Hugo will be three so he won’t need such close management and I think the whole thing will feel less stressful.

We took a few pics, but I am incapable of keeping my eyes open so I look totally drunk in every shot (I wasn’t, in case you’re wondering – I am a teetotaller). See what I mean?

Today at playgroup a woman asked me if Hugo was my grandson. My GRANDSON!

No, lady, he is not my grandson. I am in my thirties, thankyouverymuch.

I could see one of the other mums snickering a bit when she asked – not in a snarky kind of way, in a “what the hell is she on about?” kind of way, so it seems I’m not the only one who finds the question utterly outlandish. I told another friend and she literally doubled over with laughter.

I mean, really. I am not about to be invited to be the poster girl for some anti-ageing product but I don’t think I look ready for the nursing home yet. (Um, not that Hugo’s actual grandparents do. Ahem. Hi mum!)

Anyway, the truth is that I wasn’t all that offended because the woman who asked was a dotty old thing. A friend said she’d told her the same story four times that morning. So I am okay about it.

And I’ll be at the cosmetic surgeon’s if anyone’s looking for me.

Up till now, I’ve pretty much assumed organic is the better option when buying food. Environmentally friendly? Must be. Better for you? Surely.

Then on the weekend I was re-structuring an article that a colleague had written, comparing organically grown produce with conventionally grown produce.

I don’t want to say much about that because the piece was written for a client and I just don’t want to get myself into any hot water at work. It’s fair to say that the client does have a vested interest, of course, but the article really did get me thinking.

The main thing it got me thinking was that I just accepted the premise that organic was better without doing any kind of independent research at all. I heard some woman on the radio talking about how organic apples taste so much better and I just thought, “Of course they do!”

And maybe they do, but I realise now that I haven’t actually done anything at all to attempt to verify any of the claims of either side. I didn’t really think about the fact that organic producers are allowed to use a range of potentially harmful pesticides, so long as they’re naturally produced. I hadn’t thought about the fact that yields are so much lower with organic produce that if all production was organic we could not feed everyone on this planet. I didn’t know that research had shown that in taste tests many people simply couldn’t detect any difference between organic and conventional produce.

I recognise that I’ve seen a skewed account (though the article does canvass the claims of both sides, and concludes that there is a place for organic produce). I attempted to take a broader look and see if I could balance the score, but what I found was that the volume of material was just so great that I could never really feel like I had a good handle on what was out there.

You could easily convince yourself in either direction with just 10 minutes at the computer. I suppose it might be possible to reach a more educated conclusion by doing real research, but who has time for that?

I DO still think that the fruits and veggies that come from our own garden are better for us. We don’t use any chemicals on them, natural or otherwise. Leigh and Hunter pick offf the snails by hand! And we know they’re fresh. There is no cold storage facility at our place, unless you count our freezer.

But the stuff we buy? I’m confused!