In which we pay $90 to have people throw dyed cornstarch at us....

Under the cloak of winter darkness, a friend (you know who you are)  and I, desperate to dream that spring might one day come, signed up to do Color Me Rad's Boston run. Basically we paid a bunch of money for the pleasure of being tie-dyed. 

Today was the day, and it is a day that will live in infamy.

We joined 5,000 people at a farm about 20 minutes from our house and traversed 3 miles of corn country while slowly turning into Easter eggs.

I have lots of thoughts about the experience. It was fairly disorganized and the two-lane road that leads to the farm was not equipped to welcome a few thousand cars. (read: two miles, one hour.) I think it's safe to say that by the time we parked and made our way to the start line, easily .75 miles from our parking space in the middle of a corn row, we were feeling a scoche frustrated. We headed straight for the starting line where they had disregarded the scheduled waves and were just sending groups of 50 people off every few minutes.

Maybe I should have read the fine print but I expected assaulted by blasts of colored powder every few feet. Yeah, nope. I think there were four, maybe five color stations along the 3 mile course. Halfway through Arden was less than pleased to find herself still relatively stark white. 

Exhibit A:

The course was unexpectedly hard. In my experience 5Ks tend to feature a lot of flat land with one or two hills for good measure. This was hill after hill. I didn't hate it - we do a lot of hills on our jaunts with the dogs - but it wasn't an easy course.

That said, it was gorgeous. Gorgeous day. Gorgeous farm. Even if it did kick my ass.

All complaining aside, I'm glad we crossed this off our bucket list. More photos of the day!

This photo feels very Maria Von Trapp, The Hills are Alive to me, no?

Arden was SUPER excited that I kept whipping out the camera to capture this experience. See?

Delighted to finally be out of the car and ready to get the show on the road:

Seriously. The fierceness that is our kid. Seriously.

Mortifying mother forced selfie FTW!

PINK (of note, asthmatics, wear a mask!)

PURPLE - this was right before the finish line.

Finisher

                                  

They had bags of 'color bombs' at the end - we each got one and she finished the job herself.

 In the end, we had fun. I wouldn't do a 5K like this again -- it's just too gimmicky -- but now we can say we've done it, right? Right.

Nineteen

Today is our official 10th anniversary. Our raucous celebration includes Dora being at a board meeting and me roasting a chicken and working on Annette's wedding plans. We know how to party. But hey, it's just another day in this life of ours.

When we got married 10 years ago we had no idea what awaited this country in terms of same-sex marriages. Would it last in Massachusetts? Would any other state adopt it? And then Connecticut did. And Iowa did. Then Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington DC. And on and on and on... 

This has been a big week for marriage equality with Oregon and state #19, Pennsylvania! 

With the addition of Pennsylvania ...

10 years. 19 states (plus Washington DC!).

Equality.

Oh and perhaps most important? We now share our anniversary with these fine fellows: 

Congratulations, Mitch and Cam! Welcome to the club.

The Gay Agenda, Take 753

Another big day on the Gay Agenda today. 

There was a lot of laundry, grocery shopping and meal prepping. Why is it already Sunday night?

(You know you've done it. Don't lie to me.)

Just another day of prepping to take over the world, one sock at a time.

Ten Years

Today we celebrated ten years of legal marriage in Massachusetts. Ten years! That's a whole decade, folks. It was ten years ago that Dora and I headed down to Cambridge City Hall and got in line with 300 of our new nearest and dearest friends to get our marriage license. 

We would marry just a few days later on May 21, 2004 in what was sort of the gay version of a shotgun wedding, only our shotgun was the fear that Mitt 'Mittens' Romney would be successful in his efforts to overturn our newly discovered equality. If nothing else we wanted to be grandfathered in in case he really was able to put our marriage asunder. 

We don't have a lot of photos from May 17, 2004, we were busy just living in the moment. The days before the iPhone! We did, however, stumble across this gem on the good ol' internet. 

This website captured some terrific photos from that night. So very special to relive that day through these images. May 17, 2004 In Pictures

And one from our actual wedding day. Wow we were young. Somebody pass the Botox.

Last night (May 16) Cambridge City Hall and Mass Equality joined together to have a big party and vow renewal. It was pretty excellent and a scoche surreal to be there 10 years later with Arden. Mayor David Maher hosted a wonderful night which featured the incomparable Mary Bonauto, the lawyer for GLAD who has worked tirelessly for her entire career to end discrimination for the GLBT community, and led our plaintiff couples to victory. To equality. Mary Bonauto in a room full of the gays - well, she's our very own rock star, it was pretty damn cool.

Our trailblazing plaintiffs!

Today Fox25 reached out to me via Twitter (shout out to social media!) to ask if we would be willing to be interviewed about the anniversary. We hemmed and hawed for a bit. We were out of the house for the day so there was no chance to actually dress for success (oof) but we were at the hairdresser when they contacted us so at least our hair was good (win). In the end we Dora decided we had to bite the bullet and do it and I have to say, it wasn't nearly as terrifying as I expected it to be. 

Our 15 Seconds

Here we are with the super sweet Heather Hegedus from Fox25.

And Arden on set. They were amused by her. She was pretty great. She made a joke on camera and told us she was just trying to make the people laugh. 

                                             

I have so many thoughts swirling in my head about where we are today and where we are headed in this country. They'll come out over the coming weeks - but it's been a long, long 48 hours so I think I will end this here with a couple more photos from the last couple of days.

Arden watching the video from May 17, 2004.

Cake. Is. Awesome. (And delicious. By the Royal Sonesta Hotel.)

We took her to Club Cafe - where we had our fabulous wedding reception - for a celebratory dinner. She's a fan - piano bar in one room, pumpin' techno in the other. She asked to go back again tonight. (PS: when did she get so old?)