Lucky for me, Ami arrived a few minutes later, just about the time that the representative’s new communications person arrived, too. He said that he always tried to sit in with David, since he was so knowledgeable. I wondered if this was a way to make us feel like we were meeting with someone important, even if it wasn’t Inslee. We rearranged for the best translation vantage point, and got started.

We explained our trip, and got to our talking points. I’ll admit, we did some research and rehearsed them beforehand so we wouldn’t forget any. We talked about inheritance, and how we are unequally taxed for property we inherit from one another. We talked about how we can’t have a family business as far as taxes go. We talked about hospital visitation and medical decision making. We talked about the fact that we don’t get Social Security benefits from one another, and how we can’t claim a non-working spouse as a dependent on our taxes. Ami said, “I’m forced to lie on my taxes. I say I’m a single person when I’m married.”

We didn’t want to draw out the conversation unnecessarily, but we were invested in waiting to see if Inslee would show up. I kept feeling like if we said just the right thing it would make a difference. I couldn’t read David’s reactions to us and what we were asking him to relate to Inslee, but I decided he was on our side because he had cool glasses. I won’t say that conservative people have bad glasses, but I will say that the better your glasses are, the more likely I am to think you vote left.

Sooner or later, David brought up Barney Frank. I hope he didn’t take my reaction personally, because I’m sure the disdain I feel for Frank’s position on the Respect for Marriage Act–and the National Equality March, for that matter–was evident on my face. I tried to explain that his lack of support for the bill was not popular amongst LGBT people. But it was frustrating, because I didn’t have anything specific to quote or point to in order to prove my assertion.

So finally I said, as respectfully as I could, “With all due respect, Mr. Frank doesn’t live in Washington, and isn’t represented by Mr. Inslee.” Barney Frank lives in Massachusetts, where should he choose to marry, he could have state-level benefits. Must be nice.

The conversation started to wind down, and maybe I panicked a little. “Is that Mr. Inslee’s grandson?” I asked, pointing to one of the many pictures of an infant boy in the office. There must be something more to say!

And before David had a chance to answer, in walked the man himself.

He looked a little like Superman, only with grey sideburns. He asked us to call him Jay, and quickly sat down with us, apologizing for being late.

I was stunned for a minute. At this point, I hadn’t expected him to show up. I realized that until he did, I didn’t really believe that he was held up in another meeting. I thought that was an excuse, politics-speak for us not being important enough.

In my next post on our meeting I’ll talk more about what it is to be an ordinary, reasonably informed person meeting with an experienced politician. But for now I’ll just give credit where credit is due. Representative Inslee showed up to meet with us. You don’t have to be a guy in a suit. You don’t have to be a lobbyist. You can be a couple of dykes in jeans, ragged and road worn, and you can talk to the people who make the decisions that affect your life.

If we can do it, so can you.

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Wild Dogs of the Chesapeake

Today we took the dogs to a dog beach on the Chesapeake. That sounds so much better when I write it than it was in real life. We drove about thirty miles out of the way to give them special doggie time on the beach.

Now, I should say that we have some great dog parks in Seattle. There’s one at Warren Magnuson that we like. There’s about a mile-long walk to a fenced off spot on the lake where hundreds of dogs gather every weekend morning. It’s that heaven all dogs are supposed to go to.

This was, well, not really heaven. We had to pay six bucks to get into the park. The dog beach itself was small and cramped, even for the two dogs there–ours. There was no fence at all to keep the dogs on the beach, either. So I acted as a human fence, shooing them back whenever they tried to run wild into the rest of the park.

After, we stopped at a deli. Pulling in, I drove over a curb with the trailer. It’s the kind of minor driving incident that makes me like cars with lots of clearance. And clearance wasn’t a problem at all this time, either. Weight was.

Once we were on the road again, Ami said, “Do you hear that noise?”

Ami and Lug Nuts

I groaned inside. Yes, I heard that noise. Sure enough, I looked in the rear view mirror, and the front, driver’s side trailer wheel, the one I’d driven over the curb, was flapping.

We stopped, and I looked behind us at a gas station across the street. It was barely a block’s length away.

They were almost closed, but not quite. And not thrilled about lending us their lug nut wrench, but they did. For my penance, I worked the jack, which was handily already attached to the trailer. We had a spare. It was full-sized and new. Somehow, we were in and out of there in about 25 minutes.

Oh, right. This was a post about a contest.

For this contest, I want to hear your best car trouble story. We’ll pick one storyteller to award the prize to. (Hint: it’ll help if you make us laugh.) And this prize is a good one.

You will win your very own, only barely used National Equality March commemorative t-shirt! Almost as good as if you were there. There’s only one size, so you might have to give it away if it’s not the one you happen to wear. I wore it on the day of the march, but it will be clean and fresh smelling when I send it to you, promise.

So, send us your car story by 11 p.m. tomorrow, EST, and you’ll be entered in the contest.

Good luck!

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Love!!

I’ve never really liked D.C. Sure, the first time I went was a little marred by adolescent angst, and the next time was for work. The highlights of my two previous trips were Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum–if you can call that a highlight.

Mostly D.C. seemed fraudulent. I can’t help but wonder how much of our money is spent keeping it as clean and manicured as it is. I can’t help but think about the rest of D.C. and the contrast to the National Mall.

But today I love D.C.

We got off to another late start, this time not because of our usual morning, West-Coast-time inertia, but because we boarded the dogs. We knew we would spend long days in the city while we were participating in National Equality March events. We didn’t want to leave them in the car, and couldn’t leave them alone in the trailer some thirty miles out of the city. So we found a kennel online who would take them last minute, called our vet for shot records, and deposited the dogs in Woodbridge for the next couple of days.

What was supposed to be a second or third stop for the day became our first stop: the Milk and Cookies welcome for LGBT parents and kids. Frances is not exactly of cookie-eating age, but it was a good way to meet other parents at the march. I was a little worried that it would be ill attended–after all, we’d heard that nobody would be able to make the march because it was so hastily planned.

As soon as we entered the hotel where the event was held, I knew I had worried for nothing. We followed the sound of children laughing, playing, screaming until it led us to the second floor ballroom. The place was packed. Every table seemed to be full. Set out were art supplies, and kids were making signs, hats, banners, bracelets, you name it.

Before we found a seat, we were approached by a couple of women with a video camera. We told them about our trip. The woman holding the camera put it down. “Let’s go outside,” she said to the other woman. We were asked if we’d like to do a longer interview, out in the hall where it was quieter. They were making a documentary called March On. We followed them out and sat in a couple of chairs wedged together in front of a tripod. We threaded mics under our shirts and told them all about ourselves, our trip, our hopes for what the march might accomplish.

Later I told Ami I hope they edit us to make us sound smart. I regretted not having our elevator speeches memorized. And I worried that my bra was showing. But all in all, the documentarians were sweet and warm, and the experience was a positive one.

After we live tweeted some pictures of the kids at the event in all their face-painted glory, ate some cookies, and talked to a number of parents, the party ended. We decided to go to a happy hour sign-making event next, and pushed a napping Frances in her stroller through the streets of D.C.

At the restuarant, people were everywhere with their markers, their posterboard, their happy gay gayness (sorry folks, but LGBTness just doesn’t have the same ring). I circled the room–rooms–and found a table that was emptying just as another group approached. Amy, a college student at Indiana, and her hometown friends, a couple from Atlanta, became our table mates. They shared their markers. We spent hours there, staying long past when the event was scheduled to end, through the President’s address at the HRC dinner.

I know that Obama was only trying to make peace with the queers–and some of the most mainstream queers, at that. Don’t confuse my emotion watching the speech, which could be judged by the tears that ran down my face, with approval of the incremental approach to equality. Don’t think just because I detoured from a diaper change to wave at the motorcade as it made its way back to the White House I endorse separate-but-equal civil unions.

But while Obama spoke, everyone in that room was gripped with a simultaneous emotion, one we were urged to believe in again through the presidential campaign last year. Together we held hands with our partners and looked up at the screens overhead. Some of us clapped. Some of us cried (me). Some of us crossed our arms and waited for something new to be said.

All of us. All of us. All of us, together, hoped.

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