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CONFESSION: Welcome to my neighborhood, kittens! Where I live, one can wander through lush gardens where butterflies flit around lavender bushes, coo at adorable puppies and babies at the swing set and then hit the Mission’s main arteries for fresh goodies from 84,000 bustling mexicatessens, lesbian tea dance parties, super thrifting, mindblowing cuisine from every last corner of the world and more. I love living here! It’s magical. It is also sinfully hot this weekend, and I was forced (forced, I swear!) to hack about 4″ off these already cut-off shorts today. Also?

HI, I TOTALLY CUT MY HAIR.

I haven’t been hiding, I’ve been busy and wearing mostly boring outfits and, you know, spending several days in that awkward getting-to-know-you phase of a new haircut. I did have to go back to the salon to have them make some slight adjustments after about a week, but now I’m pleased as punch. Life is very good indeed.

Some odd finds on our walkabout: The super creepy mural at the playground in which what appear to be trauma patients in a trolley are shooting a massive, celestial bazooka at a deranged, larger-than-life, distant cousin of Mickey Mouse, who is grabbing wee lumberjacks with chainsaws. It’s so…carnie, you know? Also, someone abandoned a scale on the corner, in front of the laundromat. It was broken, but we stopped to tinker with it anyway.

Ooh! Here’s my new hair when it’s all straight-like (I might need to, like, invest in and then learn how to use a flat iron):

Ooh! And then I wanted y’all to enjoy this Dolly, because it’s super magical:

PS. M & I made a massive batch of chicken tortilla soup from scratch – even the little strips! – for dinner tonight. In fact, we had no recipe at all, but it was a success! So delicious. We added potato, avocado and queso fresco. And French 75s made with Hendrick’s gin.

CONFESSION: This is just a mixed bag of delayed, overlooked or abandoned FFAF ensembles! M & I realized we’d missed a few here and there, and since I’ve been so super duper busy at work I figured this was a nice way to fill in some of the blanks. The above are photos from the night we attended the annual SF Drag King competition with a handful of out-of-town lovelies. I wore the BCBG dress that M got me last Christmas, with the patent neapolitan sandals in shades of plucky plum. M wore these excellent BDG slacks from Urban Outfitters with an Express shirt and a vintage bowtie. We were mostly well-behaved, if I recall correctly. Maybe we took a hot brunette home with us that night, but I’m not saying any more!

CONFESSION: Yet another instance of my failure to do laundry (I’ve been BUSY!) resulting in raiding of the petite’s closet. In my defense, she borrows some of my stuff, too. Anyway, this cheeky plaid tunic is hers, but I paired it with a lightweight cardigan, dark brown leggings, cozy socks and sleek boots. Um, and antlers. Moving on!

CONFESSION: Y’all have seen me in this dress 84,000 times, but the pics from the epic Labor Day BBQ we attended and fancy cocktails and desserts afterward were too good not to include. Especially since they involve my famous bourbon slush, bacon + Fiji apple + red onion burgers and a nifty street stamp that says BUTCH FEMME with a heart!

IN CONCLUSION: In addition to work being nuts, M & I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Tuesday, September 15th! It was amazing. After a tasty dinner at a local tequila lounge, we treated ourselves to chocolate fondant with whiskey ice cream at a dreamy French restaurant, where the sidecars and French 75s were painstakingly made by an adorable and very skilled French bartender. Back at home, the tomboy presented me with a gift, a book she’d carefully assembled and authored and had custom printed. It sweetly and beautifully captures our first year of marriage and I still get misty just thinking about it. I love it. It’s perfect. She’s perfect. We’re perfect, and it was a perfect first anniversary, one of so, so, so many to come!

CONFESSION: Brews On The Bay was so much fun. Going on Sunday meant that it was much less crowded, and the threat of another thunderstorm was minimized ever so slightly. Instead, we got this bizarrely muggy weather, overcast with some blue patches of sky peeking out here and there, and a slightly damp warmth. It was pleasant! The ship rocked to and fro a bit, and a drizzle came and went from time to time, but we got to sample tons of tasty brews from SF breweries with my Drink Me comrades and it was a good time. I rang the bell. I didn’t mean to! Well, I did. In fact, M suggested I should, and I only rang it once, but boy was it loud. Checking out the quarters for the captain and sailors and engineers and whatnot was exciting! The only thing I wasn’t fond of was the non-stop U2 cover band. Them, I could have done without.

Afterward, we trekked through the vintage arcade (which we have pledged to return to many times), through Fisherman’s Wharf and a horse-drawn carriage all the way into North Beach,  where we stopped at a Sicilian restaurant for an early dinner. Despite the fact that rain had begun in earnest, it was still warm out, so we took a table outdoors and enjoyed the passerby and sweet rain smells enjoying our bellinis and Sicilian Sangrias, respectively. It was a delicious, romantical meal. We caught a cab home in the rain and do you know something? That asinine Postal Service song about waiting since birth to find a love that would look and sound like a movie didn’t cross my mind, not even once.

I consider this triumph in both authenticity and the raw, undone edges of true love.

So, here’s some (boozy) ship action and M would like it very much if you knew that she took great pleasure in finding that half-broken watermelon resting atop a newsbox in the rain. If you’d like to read about the beer itself, you’ll just have to go here. Oh, and the morning of I let M cut off a whole bunch of my hair (a compromise from the night before, when I was struck by the urge to shear my locks off at 2AM, after we’d both had several cocktails). She offered to use the leveler to make sure it was perfectly exactly straight, and it was one of the most adorable things she’s ever said. Ha!

CONFESSION: Fall arrived in head-to-toe drag queen regalia in San Francisco in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, loud and brassy and thunderous and with all the sky’s gaudy sequins refracting through myriad bedroom windows. It was fan-fucking-tastic. Really splendid. Of course, M & I slept through most of it, or shall I say we experienced it from the comfort of our bed, but storms like that are really rare here, so I loved it. M said that it sounded a lot like an earthquake, and she kept waiting for the shaking to start! The rain that came was far less impressive, in fact, that part was more like walking around the Mission drenched in a vat of the appropriate CB I Hate Perfume scent. Lovely. Hope y’all had lovely weekends.

CONFESSION: At least we all know that I’ve been neglecting FFAF because I’ve been busy kicking ass in bartending school, which I GRADUATED from just an hour ago, I am most pleased to say. Yay! I am exhausted. It’s hard to get up 7AM to take the petite to school and then work all day and look after pups and be femme and fight off Mission creepshows and then spend over 4 hours on your feet hustling behind a make-believe bar, damn it! Even if I do sometimes (OK, most times) crawl back into bed with M for an hour or two in the mornings. Still. It was fun, I learned a lot, but boy am I glad it’s done with! Now I can get back to throwing parties and posting fancy outfits and whatnot.

This, though, is the REAL confession: I used to belt out this Expose song very earnestly when I was wee, and I still know every word. By the time I was eight years old, I’d mastered the art of making myself cry whilst singing every note perfectly from Annie’s Tomorrow on my Fisher-Price record player, from the window in my bedroom, all wet-eyed with hope against all hope.

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*Big bag by Betsey Johnson!

CONFESSION: So, the weekend! It was officially kicked off at bartending school, where we sped through our lesson to get to the tequila lecture and tastings. I learned that sipping tequila straight is like unleashing a pack of hellhounds on your palate, unless it’s an anejo, or extra-anejo. M & I stayed up late watching old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and eating the Indian food we had delivered.

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CONFESSION: Hurrah, hurrah for holiday weekends! Guess what?! WE ARE GOING TO DO SWEET AND BLISSFUL ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Having been going relatively non-stop since we moved in, I cannot even begin to express how delighted I am that we’re going to lounge about in our pajamas well after noon, take long, shuffling strolls through the park like old people, giggle through messy, langorous brunches and dig our hands deep into the dirt of our wee urban garden. It’s going to be wonderful. We’re starting by heading to one of our favorite places in the Mission for lunch, The Liberties, because their happy hour is to die for and they are friendly.

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