Tag Archive | RuPaul's Drag Race

23,795 Days

Mar10

I’ve so much to be grateful for. These little irises going strong through snow and cold and sun all week exemplify the fragility, beauty, and resilience of life. They show up day after day, year after year, just like the rest of us. Even as their blooms fade and their leaves grow tall, then brown and die back, their little bulb hearts keep beating underground all year, even when they lie dormant through winter.

After sharing the dramatic photo of tumbleweeds in Utah over last weekend, I noticed the new weedpile stacked up in the corner fence of the neighbors’ field along my driveway. Mostly weedy tall mustards, but that darker spiny blob toward the west is a tumbleweed… and there are several more along the fenceline. I can only be grateful there are not more, and then turn my attention to find gratitude elsewhere.

Like in this perfect loaf of sandwich bread. Because sourdough is a living thing, and bread is an art, I have yet to get utterly consistent results, but I continue to practice. I have to laugh at my attachment to my contentment ritual, which includes a cheese sandwich for lunch while watching one TV show, and then another show or two after the workday is done, with another meal or snack. So when I don’t have bread I can get a little flustered about what to make for lunch. When I don’t have TV, well, that was a new challenge last week. It worked out pretty well, as I had to focus on a project early in the week and spent the evenings on the computer. But the second day of no TV, the first day of new bread, I broke the mold and made a sandwich for dinner and streamed RuPaul’s Drag Race España All-Stars episode 5 so I didn’t get behind. I’m grateful for ample technological options in this first-world entertainment emergency.

I’m grateful always for drag queens, and to RuPaul who has brought this art form into the mainstream, introducing many of us who were raised in rigid, self-righteous, judgmental, narrow-minded and bigoted families and subcultures to the expansive, fabulous creativity, humor and diversity of the drag world. Any given week, I enjoy watching whatever current English-language Drag Race season is airing, and usually an episode from one of the many international franchises available. Once I finish España All-Stars I’ll start Drag Race Belgique Season Two.

Tonight I enjoyed the latest episode of the current season of the original Drag Race, an episode whose time has come. At last the drag queens are stepping up their political presence! In this episode (S16E10, available on MTV or for purchase on Prime), their main challenge was to write verses for and perform this song encouraging gay people and those who love gay people, as well as everyone else, to register and vote! It’s no secret that one presidential candidate will continue to advocate for LGBTQ+ people, and the other will persecute them mercilessly, implementing more hateful laws that will cause even more suffering. I repeat, if the sexual orientation of you or someone you love is anything other than straight, YOU BETTAH VOTE! And there’s only one viable candidate:

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen on another night, because I can’t eat a cheese sandwich for dinner every night, I made Tofu Musubi. I mixed Dijon mustard with a little water, and added some spices and baking powder to flour, then dredged the drained tofu slices in those and fried them until crispy. After cutting the Nori wraps to the right size I tried a scrap on Wren, and she loved it.

I was grateful I could text my Portland sister to remind me what I was forgetting in the construction of the delicious snacks and it was the Furikake, which I located in the tertiary spice cabinet. Then I scooped some Hoisin sauce into a little bowl and sat down to enjoy an incredibly messy supper listening to Radio Swiss Jazz. On account of no TV still.

“You BETTAH not try to take my seaweed!”

Days continued to pass, and spring bulbs to open. Spring again. I got to thinking, Realistically, how many more springs might I get to experience here? And the number shocked me. Maybe more than ten, or maybe in the single digits. That got me thinking how many actual days might I have left, which also didn’t seem like many, and that led to wondering how many days I’ve been alive. I am supremely grateful for each of the 27,795 days of this one precious life so far.

Different day, different cheese, different condiments; same perfect bread.

I could start wondering how many cheese sandwiches I’ve eaten in all those days, but I’m not gonna go there. I will say, I’m grateful that they seem to be good for my teeth! Or at least, not doing any damage. I went to a new dentist this week, got a new set of x-rays as those haven’t happened since 2012, and got a kick out of the newfangled full-mouth x-ray, which shows no worrisome abnormalities in my mouth and jaw. Yippee! I’m grateful for a clean bill of dental health. (But yuck, look at all those amalgam fillings from the old days, which are starting to crack some of the molars.)

I’m grateful for another lovely sunset inside the kaleidoscope last night, and for a fun playdate for Wren this afternoon. The new neighborhood puppy has learned some restraint since his first encounter with her, and they had a blast chasing each other around the yard. She showed off all her favorite places, and then she showed off her long jump. We were down by the pond, Deb and I minding our own business, and seconds after she told me “He loves the water,” Oso ran right into the curly rushes edging the pond. Which led to him splashing into the water in the middle and paddling to the near side where we stood. He needed a little lift to get out. As we laughed he shook off and took off again. A few minutes later, Wren ran straight for the pond and leapt, clearing the full width of it. What was she thinking? Was she showing off? Was she teaching him? Was she trying to trick him into the water again? He ran after her, right up to the edge, and stopped; stood there for a few seconds puzzling out how to get to her, then ran around. And off they went again. May I find as much delight and gratitude in each of my remaining days as I have in the past five.

So Much

Jan13

I’m grateful for so much today. For a functioning, pain-free body; for all the beautiful green and/or flowering plants in my sunroom and making time to water and tend them; for an exhilarating zoom with Foundations Course graduates across the country, for exercising and laughing with my frousin (yes autocorrect: frousin: it’s my friend-cousin), for a delicious lunch with a bunch of leftovers in a tortilla wrap, for RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16; for my best girls back east planning a birthday zoom with me… for community, companionship, friendship, love; and for the mindfulness that makes it possible for me to appreciate it all, despite the climate, political, and other human-induced chaos plaguing our precious, fragile planet; and for cultivating the capacity to hold the ten thousand sorrows and the ten thousand joys with both hands and an open heart. This is it.

This is the only life we know we’ll ever get. We might get another one, but can we know that? No. The only thing we know for certain is that we have this present moment in this singular life. I’m grateful for the pure awareness that allows me to appreciate almost every moment of it just the way it is. I’m grateful for equanimity, contentment, perspective, and the gazillion stars in the night sky–oh, in the day sky also–whether or not they’re obscured by clouds. I’m grateful for knowing my place in this universe. All I can do with this knowledge is love.

I’m grateful for loving this little creature that came into my life, no matter what she does, just loving her for who she is. I’m grateful for the growing capacity I experience with practice for loving myself just as I am, no matter who I am. I’m grateful for having a roof over my head, a bed to sleep late in, a kitchen filled with tools and food and the resources at hand to nourish this animal body who loves what it loves. I’m grateful for people like Mary Oliver who say things more eloquently than I have yet. I’m grateful for this carrot-orange-ginger soup that I made tonight to nourish me for three or four more meals, with organic carrots, ginger grown in the sunroom, and regular old oranges, as well as a handful of spices from around the world via Penzeys and Amazon. What a world we live in, with so much available to us!

OMG so simple so delicious. This carrot-orange-ginger soup took about half an hour to make start to finish, and is absolutely delectable. I used leftover coconut milk instead of cream, and homemade vegetable stock heavy on the celery. I love keeping a bag in the freezer for celery, broccoli, and cauliflower stalks, mushroom stems, parmesan rinds, and any other veggie scraps that will enrich a stock. I added a couple of small potatoes, a few outer onion layers, and a few garlic cloves when I dumped the stock-bag into the pot the other day to simmer for a few hours. Pulled the jar out of the fridge tonight to make this delicious soup.

I’m grateful for all of this, with the caveat that I understand there is impact and injustice involved in me getting what I need to make a simple carrot soup. We live in un-simple times. I do the best I can with what I have in each moment, to be the best human I can be under the conditions leading up to this moment. If we would all do the same, what a wonderful world it would be.

Laugh at Myself

Jul21

I was so grateful this morning to see the first praying mantis this summer, a young European mantis, according to iNaturalist. I accidentally swept it off a pepper plant with the watering wand as I dislodged some grasshoppers. Hope I didn’t interrupt its meal or its hunt, but I’ve no worries for its future as there are a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand hoppers for every mantis.

I’m grateful, with a hearty laugh at myself, that Jimbo the Drag Clown from Canada won RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars Season 8. Her final competitor at the end was one for whom I experience an irrational and totally subjective aversion.

The Earth’s climate is rapidly approaching or has already arrived at Tipping Point; political chicanery and corruption are at an all-time high in this country, and white nationalism is on the rise around the world; everyone suffers from something, and most of us are suffering right now with anything from heatstroke to war to plantar fasciitis. And I’m grateful for a TV show that gives my attention a vacation once a week, an escape into an alternate reality, where I can appreciate human creativity and laugh at myself.

Drag Queens

Dec26
Bob the Drag Queen, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8, performing at a recent ‘Say Gay’ rally in Florida.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m grateful for Drag Queens. Over the past six or seven years they’ve taught me so much about compassion, kindness, authenticity, inclusivity, and shattered so many of the negative biases I was raised to believe. They’ve opened my heart, broadened my mind, and enriched my life immeasurably. My love affair with drag queens started when on a whim I decided to check out RuPaul’s Drag Race on Amazon Prime. For awhile it was an obsession, then merely an addiction, and for the past few years it’s been simply a joy.

The other day I tripped over another drag queen show unexpectedly, ‘We’re Here’ on HBO. I’ve only watched two episodes out of the three seasons currently available. The first was filmed in Grand Junction, Colorado, the closest big city to where I live, and the place I go to see the dermatologist, pick up visitors from the airport, the nearest Natural Grocer, and once upon a time a shopping or restaurant destination when I used to drive up there once a month or so for errands. Just before Covid hit the US, friends had plans to take me to a drag show up there for my birthday present. Oh well. This episode was a consolation prize. The other episode, which I watched tonight, was ‘Florida-Part I’. In the series, three drag queen stars, Shangela, Eureka, and Bob the Drag Queen, travel to small towns in the US mentoring queer people and putting on a drag show starring their mentees.

Shangela, Drag Race legend, at the central Florida ‘Say Gay’ rally, as seen on ‘We’re Here’ on HBO.

‘Florida-Part I’ was a fabulous representation of the ramifications of the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill popular there now. The episode is culturally and politically relevant, inspiring, moving, and hopeful. The three queens mentor a ten-year-old trans girl whose mother is a schoolteacher now prohibited by law from mentioning ‘gay’ or ‘trans’, a 58-year-old gay man living in conservative bastion The Villages, a 75-year-old recently trans woman and her wife of 50 years, and a Pulse survivor who brought his celebratory party of twenty friends to the club that night where four of them were soon shot to death. Imagine living with that: it was your idea to move the party to the club, and four of your friends died as a result.

Ten-year-old Dempsey has known she was a girl for as long as anyone can remember. From the age of two, she was choosing girls’ toys, girls’ clothes, anything sweet or sparkly. She has been socially transitioning for five years. Her mother is prohibited from speaking about her or others like her at work because guess what? She’s a schoolteacher in Florida. So they take their conversation to the street.

The intolerance, hatred, misrepresentation, and fear that perpetuate tragedies like Pulse, Club Q, and any other culture-wars mass shooting have got to stop. Obviously, me saying that won’t accomplish anything if governor after mayor after governor saying so hasn’t stopped it yet. But all of us saying it, time after time, in our homes, our communities, our churches, and our ballot boxes, can finally make it stop, or at least slow it way the hell down. LGBTQ people are people. We are all people. In my world view, deer, mountain lions, juniper trees, even skunks are people.

Why can’t we live and let live? We are all connected. Whoever you are, someone you love is gay or trans or differently gendered or sexually oriented than you think is ‘normal.’ Anyone who votes for ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation is hurting or killing someone they love. This isn’t the time or place to go into it, and also I don’t know enough to proclaim but the research is out there; I do know that throughout human history and across cultures, gender and sexuality have never been purely binary. Let’s learn from the drag queens, and just love each other how we are.

Allowing Joy

Sep26

I’m grateful today for allowing joy, in the face of sorrow, in the simple things: making a batch of salsa verde with tomatillos and peppers from the garden; eating some on a burrito with fresh chopped tomatoes and sour cream. I’m grateful for having the burrito in the freezer from when I made it a few weeks ago, to pull out for a quick, delicious, healthful meal at a moment’s hunger; grateful for all the implications of that gift.

I’m grateful for finding delight in the creative work of others, being joyful for their success. I’m grateful for camp, for British humour, for the return of the Great British Baking Show, and Season 3 of Drag Race UK; grateful to surrender my grasping mind occasionally to the entertaining delusions of being human. I’m grateful also for an increasingly healthy relationship with death, and all the ramifications that carries for a more meaningful and joyful life; and grateful for my soul sister who sent me this article about precisely that. I’m grateful for my growing capacity for allowing joy in this world of impermanence, of constant, inevitable loss.

Drag Queens

Mar13

This won’t be the last time I express gratitude for drag queens. But this particular time I’ll mention only this one special episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 13: Corona Can’t Keep a Good Queen Down. In the thirteenth year of this warm-hearted, Emmy-winning show, the Drag Race team was one of the first TV series to film live during the pandemic. They thought ahead and took exceptional precautions to produce a stellar series, and the conditions of Covid have only given every joyful episode even more emotional charge and creative energy.

People sometimes ask me, “Why?” when I confess that my guilty pleasure is Drag Race. I’ve watched twelve years of episodes in two years, and become utterly immersed in this astonishing cultural phenomenon. I’m grateful that this wonderful, kind person, RuPaul Charles, walks the earth, and celebrates, elevates, the art of drag and the gentle souls who live it, bringing everyone else in the world both entertainment and perspective. More about that later. Meanwhile, this particular hourlong documentary gives those with an open heart and an open mind a lot of insight, not only into drag culture but into the ingenuity and mettle of RuPaul himself.

Drag Race took the pandemic seriously.
While the queens quarantined before and after arriving at the show, and could film without masks, staff and crew wore protective gear.
Hilarious! They’re looking at fake boobs as earnestly as they would at real ones!
Judges sit distanced with plexiglass partitions between them. That didn’t hinder their banter or dampen their wit.
Special guest Anne Hathaway appeared on screen instead of in person, and brought just as much excitement.

The Joy of Each Breath

Feb9
I’m grateful for being able to breathe fresh, clean mountain air.

I’m grateful for every single breath, whether or not I’m aware of it, and I try to be aware of my breath many times during the day. Sometimes just a single breath, sometimes a few, sometimes for five minutes, or twenty-five, I focus on the sensation of the breath.

My friend Kim and I try to meditate spontaneously together once a day. One of us will text an invitation, and usually within a few minutes we’ve both settled somewhere quiet with a guided meditation, or just a silent timer set for five or ten minutes. “The joy of each breath” comes from a meditation we did this evening, led by Peter Harper, The Drunken Monk, on Insight Timer. The joy of each breath. It really is a joy when you can breathe fully, and take a moment to pause, notice, and really feel a single inhalation-exhalation cycle. Or give yourself ten minutes to truly allow yourself to relax, release, let go. Relaxation is a skill not well known nor practiced in this predominant culture. It’s so much more than kicking back on the couch with a beer watching TV, or sitting on the deck with a martini savoring sunset, or having a great time pursuing any kind of sensory stimulation. It’s letting go of all that, resting in the stillness of nowhere to go, nothing to do. Each breath really is a miracle.

I’m grateful I had shells and homemade sauce in the pantry, ricotta and kale in the fridge. It was a good day to make stuffed shells, sprinkled with a little mozzarella because everything is better with cheese. The recipe came from a Level 4 Vegan cookbook, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch. I fried the onions in bacon grease and used real cheese, but technically a vegan could make this delicious meal, which proportionizes readily for freezing.
Three for lunch (these are gigantic shells), and two fives for later.

Because several people asked for the Cheesos recipe, here are the sources of inspiration for both Cheesos and the Shells. I’m not entirely digital – I still love actual cookbooks, and have a few reliable go-tos besides my own 3×5 card file, a folder of printed recipes, my mother’s lifetime recipe notebook, and two staples that forged my appetite: mom relied on The Joy of Cooking, and the Colonel swore by Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School bible. I’m also grateful for cookbooks!

Cheesos recipe from the 21-Day Ketogenic Weight Loss Challenge book.
The “NEW” Fannie Farmer, ©1951 — it’s older than I am!

Sometimes during the day, after I notice something like these cookbooks, and pay attention, and take stock of the luxuries in my life, I take a deep breath – a big sigh – and am suddenly aware of this breath – and then this breath – and I recognize the astonishing chain of events that led to my being here, in this moment, holding this cookbook that is older than I am. Each breath is a miracle. Oxygen is the real drug; breathing, the ultimate high.