This week on my Queer Agenda

That’s right, I have an agenda and this week it included pumpkin carving, getting over illness, doing work to get paid, twittering and writing stuff.

As always, the pumpkin project was handled by my daughter and me, which has always really meant I did all the work and she advised me until she grew bored, tired or cold. My daughter is almost 9 and for something like 7 years now, I’ve carved a pumpkin for me and one for her. I almost got her to pull gunk out a couple of years ago, but one touch and she withdrew to her observation post, looking over my shoulder. I’m happy to say that this time around, she was fully involved.

I broke the project into two stages.  Stage one on Wednesday night involved tapping and gutting.  My spawn enthusiastically dug in with both hands, sinking almost to her shoulder, pulling slimy pumpkin guts out while chattering away and singing parts from Phantom of the Opera. It was highly entertaining. She spends a lot of her time singing and the musicals are on frequent rotation in our family room DVD player. We finished by pulling the seeds out of gunk for roasting later this weekend. All the while, my spawn was weaving an intricate story involving her best friend, the characters from Harry Potter and the Phantom, with occasional scatting and bursts of song. As I said, she’s highly entertaining.

Stage two, on Thursday, was the actual carving.   Again, in years past, this is where she’d advise me but I’d do all the actual work. Not this time. She got a Sharpy out and drew the face, getting some advise from me on the mouth. Then she set to work with her kid-safe carving tools. I kept thinking, she’s gonna stop at any moment and ask me to finish for her… any moment now… but she didn’t. She needed a little help getting the mouth finished without knocking out her carefuly carved teeth but otherwise it was all her. Sniff, she’s growing up so fast, sniff.

Beyond pumpkin carving, the big priority this week is getting over the snotty ick.  I’ve given myself sick leave (as a contractor, I don’t get paid sick leave) and take a lot of naps.  I like naps, so that’s not a problem.  I don’t really like missing work, though, but I managed to get enough done regardless.  And now, just in time for the weekend, I feel like I might be close to almost-well.  And that’s a very good thing because I want to go out with my girlfriend tonight and she’s promised me a very special surprise:  her dressed in something skimpy.  Yay, my favorite! I hadn’t planned any costume for myself, thinking that we’d probably stay in. Now that I’m feeling better, though, I want to get frisky with her in public. I guess I’ll throw together a western inspired butch look and hope the Halloween costume police don’t bust me.

Intermixed with the working and the napping and blowing my nose, I’ve been twittering up a storm (it really does remind me of being on an IRC channel), getting to know more fun, smart people and also squeezing in some writing here and there. Most of it is still in my notebook, waiting that final spit polish before I push them up to the blogosphere. Not sure how much writing time I’ll have this weekend, my wife is going out of town starting Saturday, for several days, meaning I’ll get extra girlfriend time and lots more parenting time. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a parent and I am fully capable of doing it on my own, for short bursts. I would not want to be a single parent, though, I’m way too spoiled at this point. My daughter will love it, however, she always loves getting extra time with me and she tries to take advantage of my somewhat softer nature by staying up later and getting extra treats.

On next week’s agenda: election night (w00t! finally!), working on my technical presentation on Entity Framework for an upcoming Code Camp (yep, I’m a geek), getting back on my bike on a daily basis and probably a whole lot of other stuff, hopefully including more writing.

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