An Open Letter to Our Politicians on Marriage Equality

If you follow my tumblr, excuse cross-posting; this is an issue that deserves talking about


Dear Members of the 50th New Zealand Parliament,


I'd like to talk to you about marriage equality. I'm aware some of you have already decided to vote in favour of the upcoming bill. That's great. It'd be neat if you could read this anyway. I'm sure you'll be getting letters from people telling you that it's a Bad Idea. I'd like to add my voice to the many telling you that it's a good one.


If you haven't decided yet, or, you're planning on voting against the bill, please do read on. Take a moment to consider the impact your decision might have. Around the world, countries, and states, are slowly but surely voting in favour of marriage equality. They're voting to remove one of the last legislated areas of discrimination. Do we want to follow their excellent example, or do we want to continue to uphold our, frankly, embarrassing laws?


You'll be hearing many arguments about why we should pass this bill. I'd like to address them one at a time.


"Marriage equality degrades what marriage is"


Across all cultures, marriage now seems to have a few common themes. It's about two people who love each other making a public commitment in front of friends and family, and in the process gaining some legal rights. It's not a financial transaction, or a union for procreation any more, and it's heterosexual couples who have changed that definition.


I can't see any way in which two gay men or two lesbian women marrying each other degrades this concept. It's a statement that makes as little sense as implying that one couple's marriage is degraded because another couple divorces after 72 hours of 'wedded bliss'. The marriage of one couple means no more, or no less, simply because another couple marries or divorces. We know plenty of them do divorce. 35% of couples married in 1986 divorced before their silver wedding anniversary.(source)


Marriage, as an institution, has a pretty chequered history. It wasn't all that long ago that a woman became her husband's property, and that rape couldn't occur within a marriage. In spite of that it remains the most widely recognised way for a couple to show their commitment.


Which brings me to the second argument.


"Marriage is a religious institution, so, what the Church thinks should be what goes"


The institution of marriage, in some way, shape, or form, predates modern religion. It is not a religious institution, although the history of the two are intertwined. We allow marriages between people who hold no religious affiliation, or between people of different religions without a qualm. We do this without caring what an individual church may think of that person marrying outside his or her faith. Heck, we allow divorces, and the church doesn't like that much either.


New Zealand is a secular country. Our laws are not, and should not be, decided on the basis of religious beliefs. Indeed, there are some churches who have stated they welcome marriage equality. The churches aren't being forced to perform the ceremonies and they don't own 'marriage'.


"Marriage is for creating children"


There's no requirement to birth children in current legislation, and we let infertile and sterilised men and women marry. Utterly ridiculous argument.


"We already gave them civil unions, isn't that enough?"


This is my personal favourite: discrimination disguised as acceptance. Separate, but equal. No, civil unions are not enough. Civil unions were a step in the right direction, but discrimination is not ok. It sends the wrong message about us as a society. It says the wrong thing to young gay and lesbian woman growing up--that their society, and their laws, still don't 100% accept and support them for who they are. New Zealand must be a country where young people can grow up feeling supported and confident in themselves and their sexuality.


Civil unions grant most of the same rights as marriage, but not all. That's an important distinction to make. Many people aren't aware that civil union partners don't hold the same legal rights as a husband or wife in some foreign countries. In New Zealand, the key difference is adoption laws.


That brings me to the final argument:


"Won't somebody think of the children?"


Yes, indeed, won't somebody finally think of the children? The best way for me to tell you how I feel about this is to tell you about me, and about two very different relationships.


I grew up in a nice suburb in Auckland with my mum, dad, and 2 brothers. From the outside, we were probably a Family First wet dream: White family, living in a nice, wealthy area, father a director of a construction company, mother a teacher, grandparents living in Remuera.


It wasn't all that. My father was abusive. I saw, first hand, what the glorious institution of marriage can be like when it goes horribly wrong. I saw what happens when one party feels like they can't leave because the Church says it's bad, and society tells you your kids should have a father figure. My parents finally separated when I was in my early teens.


Then my mum met someone. Someone who loved her, and whom she loved. Someone who treated her well, in a way that my dad never had, and who made her happy. That someone, as you may have guessed, is a woman, and 11 years later, they continue to make each other happy. She's pretty fantastic.


Which brings me back to thinking about the children. I remember being petrified of something happening to my Mum. She had quite a health scare just before my 16th birthday. We didn't have any other close family, and if anything had happened, we'd have had to go back to the nightmare of living with our father, because we live in a country where Mum's partner couldn't adopt us, even if she wanted to, and we wanted her to. Seems stupid, doesn't it?


There's an awful lot of scare-ranting about adopting needy babies away from husbands and wives who badly want them. There's talk about how we should give these children stable families. There's the obvious issue that those homes are no more likely to be 'stable' than one provided by a same-sex couple. But, more importantly, these days, that type of adoption is far rarer than the in-family type I'm talking about. It's better for a child to be in a safe and loving home, regardless of the sexes of the parents. You can get positive male, or female, role models from people other than parents, as any single parent knows.


There's one last thing I'd urge you to consider when deciding how to vote on this legislation: Vote for the future. Vote for our generation. Go and talk to them. For the last 11 years, I have watched how our society reacts to same-sex couples with a keen interest. I can tell you that for our generation, this law change is not an 'if' statement; it's a 'when'. We're embarrassed by our current laws. We're embarrassed when our parents, our grandparents, or anyone else for that matter, makes a homophobic comment. We see those viewpoints as ridiculous, and resolutely archaic.


I've watched young people apologise to me, or to my mum and her partner, for their parents' reactions. Stop making our generation apologise for yours. Make us proud of you instead. Send the message that discrimination is not OK in New Zealand. Being gay or lesbian is not easy for New Zealanders of any age. I've seen what my mum has been through. I've seen what friends have been through. It's not a path you walk just for the fun of it. It is not a love any less worth recognising. It's time we stood up and said that. It's time we recognised everyone's right to happiness and love.

A New Project, Nerves and an Excellent Weekend.

After many months of meaning to, but never quite getting around to it, I finally attempted a sewing project, in an attempt to break the stranglehold baking has on the therapeutic fun-things-to-do-that-double-as-gifts-for-people space in my life. Rochelle had mentioned an apron she had seen on her adventures in Australia and seeing as it was her birthday, I figured it was a good excuse to give it a try. I am most definitely hideously out of practice, and the finished product was nowhere near as polished as I would have liked it to be, but I definitely had fun making it, and I was confident enough to mess with the pattern a bit and to draw my own designs to appliqué on. 

All in all, I'd class the experiment a success, enough of one that I'm contemplating investing in a sewing machine of my own, so that I can play about more, as a large amount of my frustrations came from not knowing the machine I was sewing with, something that would be fairly quickly remedied, I imagine.

I did, however, completely forget to take any photos, at all, of the finished product, despite promising Izy that I would, given that she's been encouraging me to do this for ages. Oops.

In other news, I have a job interview on Wednesday. NERVOUS. It was supposed to be tomorrow, but it's been delayed, which is rather handy, because I have a horrid head cold and  can now stay at home in bed tomorrow and wallow. It's stupid to be nervous, because I know that I would be good at the job and I know that I generally present well in interviews, but still, I cannot help it.

Despite the aforementioned sickness, I had a most excellent weekend. Saturday was a general day-of-pottering about and then catching up with Rob and Rochelle in the evening (including eating delicious bento box goodness, zomg). Sunday was all about MOTAT. We discovered that MOTAT had a tea exhibition on about the history of tea in New Zealand and that they also served high tea on the third Sunday of the month so we decided it would be worth a day exploring around. High tea combined with cool old technology? Hell yes! A good excuse to be comically overdressed and get to play with cool stuff. Aside from a very brief visit there last year, I hadn't been to MOTAT in years, and neither had any of the other 8 people in our group. 

It turned out to be a fantastic day's expedition. We got to play with remote controlled tanks. We saw steam engines and vintage cars and old aeroplanes and miniature railways. They had the printing presses running so we got to see how they worked, too. We saw tanks. We saw a working forge in the Victorian village. We had a tea etiquette lesson from a fabulous old lady in a green velvet dress, lace bonnet and satin gloves, who took a shine to us and broke the rules so that we could have high tea in the vintage tea room. We had a tram ride (and didn't pay $10 for the privilege, unlike the Wynyard Quarter). At the end of the day, when we had to leave, we all felt like we could have spent several more hours exploring. It's definitely worth going, especially on a day when they have lots of the extras, like the tanks and trains, running. $14 well spent. I shall be going back for another visit, to see the things I missed, soon.

A recap and a Happy List.

It's been an odd jumble of a fortnight and my brain has been a bit fuzzy with it all so, foolishly, I haven't bothered to write about it. A mistake, it seems. Not that anything particularly grand has happened, but getting it out of my head seems to help!

I'm conscious of the fact that things have seemed rather negative, of late, which isn't really a fair representation. Things, as a whole, aren't going too badly, right at this moment. And they could always be worse. On top of that, it's really in my hands to make it better. I can't control some of the things, but I can take steps to make each week better than the last one, fixing the little things, giving myself something to look forward to, and hopefully that amounts to something.

So, the status quo. 

Home: Mum's partner is home from surgery and recovering, hopefully to start the next bout of chemo in the next week or two. The battle continues, but it looks like the surgery was relatively successful, a small victory!

Work: Application is in, and pre-interview task completed for a new position (with the same company). Nervously awaiting interview. Eep. In the mean time, I have a mountain of work to do on a mini-project that I've wanted to complete since I started there and finally have the opportunity to do. So, despite the many frustrations there, it's actually pretty cool. Progress!

Health: An unfortunate return of the pain in the last two weeks (boo, hiss) but I sort of expected it as I'd been more adventurous with food. Back to being a bit more cautious and giving my Doctor a colossal kick up the backside when I go to see him again in a couple of weeks.

in general, not a bad place to be starting from, definite progress on where things were a few months back, at least. And I'm not feeling too stressed out by it all. Hooray.

But the last 2 weeks have also had lots of little cool moments, and I have lots of stuff to look forward to. Izy recently made a worry list, to get her worries out, I think sometimes I need to be reminded of my happy stuff. So, a happy list, from the last 2 weeks:

+Random lunchtime expedition to Revel with Jonelle

+Spontaneously booked Wellington trip to visit Jackson

+Unplanned drink and dinner with Rochelle

+Craft market wanderings with lovely ladies

+Dinner with Annette, Andrea and Rochelle, followed by tea afterwards

+Cute pictures of small furry animals sent regularly to me by two lovely friends

+Long morning chats with Izy about Czech adventures

+Long chats with Mum at the Hospital about random funny stuff from childhood

+Morning cups of tea with Jonelle

+Dumplings with Rob and Rochelle, and then mint chocolate

+Dumplings with Mum (yes, that's right, TWO lots of dumplings)

+Lovely random messages from Bee and the midgets

+Friday evening chats with Alex at Red before the crowds arrive

+Being brought a cup of tea and croissant in bed this morning

+Plotting MOTAT high tea

+Plotting kidnap missions (I'm not crazy, promise)

+Doing a good deed for the day by walking a lost sportsball tourist to the place he was looking for (OK, OK, he was French, and cute).

+Pretty flowers on my desk

+A lovely pseudo-team at work

+Kitty smooshes when I get home from work, every day.

+NEW DRESSES arriving, ZOMG they're so pretty

+Cute necklaces arriving, A dinosaur AND a grizzly bear AND a plane. YAY.

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. I know there was probably heaps more. I have wonderful, lovely friends, who make me smile and laugh so much. Sometimes it's too easy to forget the little happy moments with the crap that's going on, but I'm definitely making a concerted effort to focus on the good stuff.

Courage and a Reality Check

I'm sitting at the hospital at the moment, waiting. Waiting and thinking and watching someone I care about faces her fears as she, in turn, waits for surgery. And watching someone else I care about try to be brave for her as she faces the fear that the person that she loves so desperately could be taken away, after everything else that she's been through.


It's been a scary year for my family. Our lives have, once again, been tipped upside down. It hasn't been easy. They (whoever 'they' might be) don't warn you that it will be like this. It's all the little things that you don't expect, that become the new normal in your life. The fear of getting sick, at all, in case you pass it on to someone whose immune system cannot cope with it. The intensity. The constant feeling of things just below the surface, of everyone walking on the very thinnest film over a bubbling lake of unrest, where one wrong footstep can throw off the delicate balance. These things have all become normal. It feels like this year has been an endurance test, for all of us. And we're all so very tired.


Despite all of that, there are beautiful small moments. Moments of humour and love and laughter. I don't know how I would cope, how I would adjust to the idea that I was most likely going to die. Watching someone I love adjust to that idea, over the course of a the last few months, has been a hard thing to do. Watching her make peace with the idea that the surgery today could not go well was also hard. And watching my Mum adjust to the idea that she may have to live life without the woman she loves was possibly the hardest thing of all.


But at the same time, that courage is inspiring. And for me, today, a reality check. 


I've always been a survivor. I've always gritted my teeth during the bad times, pushed through and held on to the tiny bit of hope inside me that, surely, it will get better. There are times however, when I am going through my dark patches, when I wonder if that is true. Whether the fight is worth it. Whether I am worth it. Whether it would just be better to stop fighting and to slip quietly into the calm darkness of it all. 


Sitting here today, watching them, inspires me. Despite the hard times lately. Despite everything. It's worth keeping on fighting another day. 

Brownies, Cupcakes and a Welcome Return.

The other result of having such a crappy Friday was that it required plenty of baking therapy. With fortuitous timing, the second owner of the flat, where I was recently staying, was due to return from a prolonged stay overseas on Sunday evening, so a thank you present of baking seemed in order.

A bad day like that required full baking therapy. No half-arsed efforts. So, much to the amusement of the other residents of my house (and possibly any neighbours who witnessed it through our kitchen windows), I attired myself in heels, 50's style dress black and white checked ruffle dress, including full net petticoat and patent black belt, and apron, turned up the music, and started to bake.

The album for the day: Younger Brother - The Last Days Of Gravity.

Amusingly enough, the first track on the album is called 'Happy Pills'.

The recipes for the day: Dark Chocolate and Macadamia Brownies and Lemon Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese icing.

I was good and disciplined and took process photos for the brownies. The cupcakes, not so much - I'm even missing a finished product photo of them with the icing on. If I manage to acquire one, I'll add it later.

Dark Chocolate Macadamia Brownies

Ingredients

375g unsalted butter

375g good quality dark chocolate - I used Lindt 85%

6 large free range eggs

1 tbs vanilla extract

500g white sugar

225g plain flour

1 tsp salt

300g macadamias

Heat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Chop the macadamias in half or smaller.

Melt the butter and chocolate together.

Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla together. You can use a handbeater, but using an electric beater is far easier, and tends to get better results. You want the mix to be light yellow and fluffy.

Sieve the flour and salt into a separate bowl, ready to mix. Allow the melted chocolate mixture to cool slightly and then slowly and gently add to the egg mixture. The secret to good brownies is to mix the ingredients together very slowly and gently so that you don't knock the air out of the egg and sugar mix. I use a folding motion to stir the chocolate mix through. It is heavier than the egg mix so it will sink to the bottom of the bowl.

Add the flour and salt and gently combine that into the mix. Once fully combined, add the macadamia nuts.

Pour the mixture into the baking tray and spread evenly. Be careful not to drop or jostle the tray too much of you will knock the air out.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until the top begins to crisp up. Brownies are best when the top is crisp but the inside is still gooey.

I haven't sampled this batch. Hopefully they came out ok, they definitely smelled good!

The second thing on the agenda for the day was the cupcakes. I'd been wanting to test out a new recipe for lemon and coconut cupcakes with cream cheese icing.

They seemed to come out ok and the recipe was pretty easy to make. Again, taste test pending!

Lemon Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

3/4 cup of unsalted butter, room temp

3 eggs

1 1/4 cup of sugar

2 1/2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice, divided (some is for the icing)

1 cup of coconut milk

1 tsp salt

2 1/4 cups flour

3/4 cup sweetened coconut

1 tsp baking powder

1 3/4 cups icing sugar

250g cream cheese, at room temp

Heat oven 180°C and line a 12 cupcake tray.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and continue to beat. Once combined, slowly add the coconut milk and the lemon juice and beat to combine.

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, salt and baking powder. In batches, add the dry mixture to the liquid until just combined, being careful not to over mix. If the mixture feels too dry, add a dash more coconut milk. Add in the coconut and give one last whirl to mix through.

Divide the batter evenly. Each cupcake liner should be about 2/3 full.

Bake for about 20 minutes, testing with a skewer to ensure cooked through.

While the cupcakes are cooking, beat the cream cheese, lemon juice and icing sugar together to make the icing. Once the cupcakes have cooled, pipe the icing onto the cupcakes.

A bad day and being lucky.

Sometimes you have those days where you really just wish you hadn't bothered. Friday was one of those for me. 

It started on Thursday night, in fact, when I discovered that my Mum's partner had been scheduled to have surgery. She is currently undergoing intensive chemotherapy for Stage 4 cancer, which has currently spread to three separate locations in her body.  My initial response was: Surgery? That's a positive sign. That means the tumours have shrunk enough to operate. Unfortunately, only two of the sites are responding. The other, the lungs, stubbornly refuses to respond in any way, shape or form. So my fleeting hopes were dashed again and my heart broke as I watched the mixed emotions flowing across on my Mum's face. I could see her allowing herself the hope that I had just written off.

Friday morning brought more awesomeness, in the news stories about the legislation around requirements for reporting of abuse of children. There's a whole separate blog post on that topic to be written, at some later stage, but the thoughts of the impact that the legislation would potentially have had on my family are a little scary. To top that off, I got a call from my Mum to let me know that it was looking like our dog was dying, which, if you read my previous post, you'll know came true over the weekend. And then I had to go to work. Ick. I wish we could have Fridays off when we felt like that!

The sum of all those factors was an overwhelming dose of the Glum. This year has been a trying year, at times, and days like Friday sometimes make it feel like it's all too much to bear.

I am, however, lucky. I am surrounded by wonderful people. People who, sometimes without even realising it, help me to fight the glum off, before it can take hold. The small things that these people do make the world of difference. The hug from a Jonelle on Friday afternoon. The little message from Iz in my inbox. The sitting at Alex's bar with ET, downloading cat pictures and giggling hysterically. The fleeting visit from Rob for a giant hug, whilst on the phone, on Friday, and then the driving lesson, tea session and dumpling fest on Sunday. The random funny and cute pictures from Jackson. And the lovely ongoing messages from Bee. Including the one the arrived just now, wishing me a better start to this week.

Despite everything. I'm very lucky, indeed.

Tears and Farewells

My last dog died while I was away traveling. By the time I had returned, the family had adopted another. Our neighbour at our bach was dying of cancer and had a pair of poodles, named Dodi and Diana, that she loved desperately. She had a home for one of them but she needed to find somewhere for the other, so she asked our family to take him in, knowing that we were currently without a canine companion. So when I returned from my travels, Dodi was there, waiting to greet me with flolloping paws and a giant lick, and when I moved back home to help my family with their own troubles with illness, he was still there.

Before owning a poodle, I had held many prejudices against them (poncey and poofey were two words that may have passed my lips) but he has been the most wonderful pet. He's a standard poodle, so stands nearly waist height, and as he was not kept in show clip, rather resembles a giant, fluffy lamb. This resemblance was exacerbated when he was younger, as his pure joy at being taken out walking translated into a tendency to gambol through grassy fields, something that was always amusing in locations like the Parnell Rose Gardens, where puzzled and delighted Japanese tourists watched open-mouthed.

Sadly, old age caught up with him and his days of gamboling are now gone. This morning we said farewell to him, gave him last hugs and kisses and took him to be put down. It's for the best: His eyesight was going and he was in pain. I'm glad that he's no longer hurting, but I miss him already.